Home  New  Search  Gallery  How-To  Books  Links  Workshops  About  Contact

How to Win at eBay:
Record Keeping
© 2009 KenRockwell.com. All rights reserved.

Use this link to get to eBay whenever you buy and it helps me write more like this, thanks! Ken.

December 2009     top of How to Win at eBay     Index of detail pages

eBay does a great job of remembering what you've bought over the past two months.

Then eBay throws the data away.

For taxes, I keep a spreadsheet of everything I've bought. I manually enter what I bought, when, from whom, how much, the serial numbers, and everything.

I have one column for when I bought it, and another column for when it was received. If the "received" column is empty, that means I haven't gotten it yet.

Only once has something not arrived, and this is how I knew. No big deal. I contacted the embarrassed seller who sent it right out.

Sellers often operate anonymously and don't send you their address. Therefore I always copy their personal information from the outside of the box onto my spreadsheet.

I also save all the listings and their photos. This makes it easy to find the seller again, or see if I got what was promised, even after eBay deletes it.

Since you'll have all the screens up as you're winning and paying, it's easiest to record all these screen shots and copy-and-paste data at the same time you're closing and paying.

Feedback

As soon as you've got the item and it's OK, leave glowing feedback for the seller. They like that, since as I've tried to say a hundred times, a seller's feedback is his most valuable asset. One negative item could bung down his rating a very significant amount.

If the item stinks, contact the seller. Most are happy to make it right.

Never leave bad feedback, since it will come back to get you, even with the new 2009 rules. Sellers still can add replies even after they've left you good feedback.

If I have something bad to say, I don't leave feedback.

If there's a problem, I don't leave feedback until everything is resolved.

As soon as a problem, like a return, is resolved, I leave especially glowing feedback.

The one time I needed to involve PayPal to get my money back, I left nice feedback, got good feedback in return, and proceeded. This was because it was clear from the seller's crummy feedback that he loved to spew out negative feedback, and I didn't want any of it.

Even when I've gotten garbage and it arrived late, I always find something true and nice to say, unless I'm trying to return it, in which case I say very, very nice things when it's all done.

That's right: even when people have set me lenses with broken glass described as LIKE NEW!, as soon as it's back and I'm credited, I find something very nice to say for them putting up with me.

Next: Frauds, Fakes and Stolen Property

back to top of How to Win at eBay.

PLUG

I support my growing family through this website.

I've invested over a year researching, interviewing, gathering data and then writing this book. Instead of charging you for it, I thought it would be much more generous to put it on my website below where everyone can read it for free, first. If you appreciate my efforts and find this as helpful as another book or seminar, your generosity will help me to keep adding more books like this to my website for all to read.

If you've gotten your gear through one of my links or helped otherwise, you're family. It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site full-time. Thanks!

If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a gift of $5.00.

The biggest help is to use these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Calumet, Ritz, J&R and when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help to me. eBay is always a gamble, but all the other places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.

Thanks for reading!