Tips: Buying from Ebay

Buying my crafts stuff from ebay has became a routine for me.

Reasons:

1. Huge variety of choice
2. Prices are varying from good to really good to unbeatable!
3. Hard to find stuff, like retired or new releases

What it takes to achieve a purchase that will make me smile is just searching for a while:

1. I use the ebay search engine (advanced mode) and there I define what I'm looking for. My standard criteria are: new, available to Greece, buy now (I don't have the patience to monitor an auction) and then the description of the object I'm looking for, i.e. fiskars trimmer
2. Then, I sort the results, usually by the price (lowest to highest) and go through them.
3. I always calculate the total cost (price + shipping) to determine what I should consider buying and what not
4. If I'm looking for something small and light, i.e. clear stamps, thickers, embelishments, punches (not huge ones), I prefer USA because the prices are really good (with shipping costs included). I also pay antention not to exceed 30-40 euros of total cost (I'm scared of greek customs!). If I 'm looking for something heavier or more expensive, I always prefer europe ebay (uk, ireland, france, italy, whatever)
5. Once I decide what I want to buy, I check the rest of the stuff that the seller has for sale, because they combine shipping costs, and if I find something else that I currently want and is within my budget limit, I choose to buy the object I was searching for and the extra object that caught my attention.
6. I go through the checkout process but I request the total from the seller, so as to receive a total invoice with the shipping costs recalculated.
7. Once the seller sends me the total invoice, I pay via Paypal
8. ALWAYS USE PAYPAL, if there is a "safe" way to send money via the net, that is Paypal.
9. The delivery varies from a week to a month (rarely and only when buying from usa)
10. Once I receive, I leave feedback for the total experience.

So far, everything I ordered was received as described, no bad surprises, with one exception: a dcwv matstack was corrupted on one corner (not something that could happen from bad handling from the post services). I sent an email to the seller with a picture of it (before leaving feedback), the seller was kind to send me another matstack free, I left positive feedback, everybody happy!

What I'm not buying from ebay?

1. Heavy cardstock packs because the shipping costs are very high. I usually purchase them form online retailers in europe (I like american crafts and I usually buy them from http://www.sarahscardsltd.com/).
2. When I need something asap, I always choose http://www.scrapbooking.gr/.
3. When I want a specific object from a well known brand and can't find it, I always send a quote to http://www.scrapbooking.gr/ and ask about it.

So, I have to leave you now, I 've got some nestabillities hunting to do!