I don't usually take to a blog to rant about how much I dislike a service, but my normal social media channels wouldn't accommodate the lengthy complaint I hoped to write. You see, my mother had a Microsoft Surface Pro 3, the latest generation as of this writing, that she had purchased in August of 2014 and barely used since then. She decided that it would be better if it were sold. Naturally, to make the sale, I turned to my old favorite: eBay. That was a mistake.
After reading through the fees that are associated with selling on eBay, I regretfully agreed to the 10% final listing value fee. Thinking all was good and well, I placed the Surface on eBay. A week later, it sold for $750. Subtract the 10% fee and I was looking at about $675... but when the money finally hit my PayPal account, I only saw $727.95! Apparently, there is a second fee to use the "preferred" method of payment, and it was around 3% of the final listing value. After calculating for shipping costs that include insurance and packaging materials, the net sale was below the $600 mark...
Moral of the story: eBay is not worthy as a selling platform. I am going to look into Amazon, Etsy, and other competitors and see how they stack against eBay / PayPal.
Showing posts with label eBay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eBay. Show all posts
2015-03-07
2015-01-27
My new/old MacBook Air
While traveling home for Christmas, I suddenly got a spur-of-the-moment idea to buy a MacBook Air. I had thought about getting one for quite awhile, so long so that all of my friends jumped on the band-wagon before I could find one in my budget. Well, suddenly my budget was looking pretty flexible as a searched through multiple eBay listings.
I had found many different listings that looked promising, only to have a feature that wasn't what I wanted - an 11" screen instead of a 13" screen, or a 64GB SSD instead of a 128GB SSD. But I did not give up hope! I kept looking through listings until I came across one that met all my requirements, and it was within my budget. The only catch: it was a 2011-model that had some cosmetic wear and minor damage.
After bidding on it and eventually winning the auction, I received the MacBook Air in the mail. It had no accessories, not even a sleeve or original box - it simply came in bubble wrap and a cardboard shipping box. Appropriately for the season, I quickly dispensed of the wrappings like a kid during Christmas. Synchronously, I also opened the Amazon box that contained my replacement charger, and connected it to the half-charged Air. I was up but not yet running.
After downloading and installing a clean copy of OS X Yosemite, installing updates and software, and logging into iCloud, I was not only running, but running faster than I thought possible on a computer that is now three-and-a-half-years-old. This little bugger is fast! It has completely replaced my desktop and my other laptops as most-frequently-used-computer. Mac OS X Yosemite has something to do with this as it is a clean and simple interface that I found readily enjoyable for someone who has long beed a Windows (and sometimes Ubuntu) OS guy.
Speaking of Windows, Boot Camp made it a breeze to install Windows 7 64-bit, and VMware Fusion make it easy to run Windows software when I can't find a Mac alternative. All-in-all, it was a well-spent $450 to upgrade to something older than most of the other computers in my house.
Specs:
I had found many different listings that looked promising, only to have a feature that wasn't what I wanted - an 11" screen instead of a 13" screen, or a 64GB SSD instead of a 128GB SSD. But I did not give up hope! I kept looking through listings until I came across one that met all my requirements, and it was within my budget. The only catch: it was a 2011-model that had some cosmetic wear and minor damage.
After bidding on it and eventually winning the auction, I received the MacBook Air in the mail. It had no accessories, not even a sleeve or original box - it simply came in bubble wrap and a cardboard shipping box. Appropriately for the season, I quickly dispensed of the wrappings like a kid during Christmas. Synchronously, I also opened the Amazon box that contained my replacement charger, and connected it to the half-charged Air. I was up but not yet running.
After downloading and installing a clean copy of OS X Yosemite, installing updates and software, and logging into iCloud, I was not only running, but running faster than I thought possible on a computer that is now three-and-a-half-years-old. This little bugger is fast! It has completely replaced my desktop and my other laptops as most-frequently-used-computer. Mac OS X Yosemite has something to do with this as it is a clean and simple interface that I found readily enjoyable for someone who has long beed a Windows (and sometimes Ubuntu) OS guy.
Speaking of Windows, Boot Camp made it a breeze to install Windows 7 64-bit, and VMware Fusion make it easy to run Windows software when I can't find a Mac alternative. All-in-all, it was a well-spent $450 to upgrade to something older than most of the other computers in my house.
Specs:
- Intel Core i5 1.7GHz CPU
- 13" 1440x900 matte display
- 4GBs of DDR3
- 128GB SSD
- Decent battery... approximately 6-8 hours at minimal usage and dimmed display
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