This summer I have been keeping busy cleaning up my apartment and getting rid of or digitizing stuff. Part of that project has been to sell off stuff on eBay. I go through cycles of selling stuff and buying stuff. I am trying to offload stuff that I don’t need, is in good condition, and actually still has resale value.
In the past few weeks I have sold an old iPod Classic 160gb that I haven’t really used since I got an iPhone last year. I finally decided to part with it when I realized that it still has decent resale value. I sold my iPhone 3G when I realized it too could be sold even with all of AT&T & Apple’s limitations on it. I was amazed at how much one could go for. It didn’t pay for the new 3GS I bought at non-new contract price. It did come pretty dam close though. I also finally sold my old Airport extreme base station I had, and an old IP phone I had. I have a few more phones to clean up and sell, plus I am pondering a sale of my netbook since I like the size but the screen makes it hard for me to use it much. I am looking at some slightly larger screened stuff. There is a dell with an 11.6″ screen and some 12″ models are coming down in price. I am not ready to buy yet, since I think I want to wait till Windows 7 comes pre-installed but I am looking.
eBay and Paypal was nice and easy to use. I have used ebay for years, but the shipping of stuff was always a pain. I had previously bought some labels for shipping. After I realized that the USPS will pick up packages and my door man will hold stuff to be picked up my life of selling stuff got a lot easier. I can setup shipping and print out labels right from Paypal. That makes the system great. What really sucks about eBay and Paypal are their rules and all the fee’s. I had an auction that I wasn’t happy with the buyer so I refunded the money and canceled the auction. eBay only refunded me the final value fee. I still had to pay the insertion fee. Granted it was the cheaper fee, but the auction was made null. Why should I have to pay for buyers stupidity? What really got me was when I refunded the payment via Paypal I was charged a fee for returning the money. I could swear that in the past I was able to refund money without any fee’s. Now I have to pay money to return money? Come on. If there was competition I would say fine fee away, but Paypal is owned by eBay. What other payment system works with it like Paypal does? The answer is none. I won’t get started on the inability of sellers to leave negative feedback anymore. That is just stupid.
In the end my only real options on selling stuff is ebay or Craigslist. Both are good for some things, and not so good for others. I haven’t tried Amazon marketplace after they wouldn’t let me sell a mobile phone without a contract, but I should give it a try in the future.