Ebay - good or bad?

Lately I have been trying out the wonders of selling stuff on Ebay. All seems rather good fun, I thought. Take a photo, write a few details down and then sit back and wait until someone purchases your old junk. They pay you, you send it off and everyone is happy. You end up a little richer and you have more room, hooray!

So far I've sold half a dozen things - nothing major : a couple of pairs of climbing shoes which I'd bought, worn a few times and discovered they just didn't suit me, a pair of china ornaments my mother had picked up at a boot fair and also a couple of items of clothing.

The clothing has proved to be the most difficult item of all to shift. Understandably people want to get a bargain on Ebay. They want to purchase designer names, or at the very least well known High Street names, at a fraction of the original price.

So I attempted to sell a beautiful silk skirt which had once had pride of place in my wardrobe. I'd only worn it once or twice, but these days it's just too big (hooray!). So I sold it for just over £5. A silk skirt. A very nice silk skirt from a very well known up-market shop. A classic silk skirt, wear anywhere, dress it up, wear to weddings, parties, etc. etc. You know the sort of thing. All for £5. Within 24 hours of the auction closing the buyer had contacted me - had I posted it yet? Erm…no actually I hadn't, but I would do the following day. The next day I was contacted again - this time the message was barely readable and it would seem that the buyer has some problems with the use of everyday English. Basically the gist of the message was that I had not put the correct postage on the parcel and the postman would not deliver the package to the buyer. Could I please sort this out. I had only just put the item into the post not more than two hours before, so this message was utter rubbish. Rather than reply with remarks along the line of, 'This is utter rubbish', I decided to wait until the weekend had passed (this was Friday) and contact the buyer to see if they'd received the parcel. On Monday they had indeed received it. Hooray. However, they now wanted a discount as the skirt had two holes in it. Erm…not when it left me it didn't.

So my reaction has been to suggest, politely, that they simply return the skirt.

I haven't heard anything since so I'm guessing that one of two things will happen - they'll send back the skirt because it was too late for an event they wanted it for (just my suspicion), or they'll keep it and I'll hear no more because they were just after an even better bargain and it was all a try on.

We shall see.

Oh boy, my life is exciting!