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Selling Items on eBay or Craig’s List  (ppt)  (pdf)

Meeting Minutes

Computers & Technology Group Co-Chairman Phil Goff opened the meeting at 9:00 am. Executive committee members in attendance were Dean Steichen, Phil Goff, Floyd Skelton, Dick Curry, Jack Bevis, Ollie Greenlee, Frank Crua, Derek Southern, Lo McCarley, and Vic Moore. Total attendance was 60.

Floyd Skelton started off with a request for two volunteers. A replacement is needed for Tom Bates who has retired as refreshment volunteer. And, a replacement is needed for Chris Satterthwaite as Coffee Master. Chris needs more time to care for his wife who is in poor health.

Phil Goff then reported on various open items:

· Our laptop is unable to run Vista. Dean will buy a new one. The present one will be auctioned off in august. The intent is to recover its actual value, not to make a profit.

· There will be no meeting in June.

· The July topic is yet to be determined. It will be announced in the June newsletter.

Some possible topics which are floating around: Blogging, How to scan 2000 slides, the history of the Net and video editing.

Phil was assisted by Plato Grivas to make the main presentation on eBay and Craig’s List.  A brief Q&A session followed with Dick Curry.

The volunteers for this meeting were: Refreshments; Floyd Skelton, Coffee Master: Vic Moore, Setup Chairman; Lo McCarley with Bob Brady, Don DeGraf and John Ringer.

Selling Items on eBay or Criag’s List

Presented by Phil Goff and Plato Grivas

eBay is a popular and heavily used service. Phil asked for a show of hands of who has used eBay. Over half of the group has done so. There are so many transactions conducted on eBay that they are able to derive their very significant income from the collection from the seller of a multitude of very small fees, such as $0.35 for a slightly larger picture than the free one. Some fees are as low as $0.15. Phil called these the Golden Crumbs.

The first thing that you must do to use eBay is register and set up an account.

If you wish to sell on eBay you must provide a source of funds such as a bank account. Otherwise a credit card will do. If all you want to do is look it is not even necessary to login.

The normal way to make payments is by using Pay Pal. This is a separate service, owned by eBay that handles the money part of the transaction. You also have to register for Pay Pal and pay them small fees.

There are security issues that surround Pay Pal. Phil called for horror stories. There were a few, but it seemed that for the most part it worked as it should.

It is important to do an advanced search before deciding on a price. You look for a list of similar items and what they sold for.

eBay provides Tutorials that tell you everything that you need to know about the total process, from listing your item to shipping it after the sale.

Be aware that shipping is expensive. Allow for it in the amount that you decide to bid on an item.

There is a wide range of items from which to choose but don’t necessarily expect to get a bargain price.

Phil continued on with the Craig’s list part of the presentation. It is like the classified ads section of the newspaper. Unlike that it is free.

You may list most anything. There is very little control. There is also no protection for you .It is a personal transaction.

One member told his story of how to do it safely. He reached agreement with a buyer of his $8000 automobile. He refused certified checks. He insisted that they meet and conclude the transaction at the bank. The buyer had his bank transfer the money to his, the seller’s bank.

Another example of how to do it involved a listing to exchange tickets to a performance. They were of about the same value just on different nights. They met at Lunardi’s market and made the exchange.

Dick Curry took over at 10:30am.

He said that he would be handling the computer auction. The tickets will be $5 each or 5 for $20. Details of the computer will be provided by email.

Dick mentioned an email he had received regarding use of SSL, secure sockets. This prompted a lengthy discussion of the subject. It closed on the advice that in Internet options you have SSL boxes 2 and 3 checked.

There were a variety of discussion points from your own domain for $5 per year to waking Vista from sleep. Also discussed was purchasing new power supplies from Fry’s and limitations that are placed on the number of emails that can be sent. All in all an interesting range of topics.

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