Buying big-ticket items on eBay is scary.
There are more scammers than there used to be, but the selection of legitimate items is bigger than ever. I have used eBay to buy some expensive goods: up to $40,000, in fact. When I say big tickethere I define it simply as this: any amount of money that would change your life to lose. In this installment I’ll talk about the most important factor in taking a big risk on eBay: your relationship with the seller. It’s also the hardest to verify through automated means, though I’ll discuss that in a later installment.

What do I mean by big ticket? By analogy: If the drivethrough window at your favorite fast food joint gets your order wrong and you’re a few miles away when you find out, you probably won’t go back. If someone botches the special anniversary dinner you’ve been scrimping for, though, it’s a different matter.

Let’ s get the simplest solutions out of the way first. Don’t be afraid to use PayPal. As far as eBay purchases, if you’re a novice you may not realize that using PayPal is probably less of a risk than using a credit card at your local grocery store, and it provides some excellent buyer protection. One probem is that some sellers have a legitimate reason to avoid PayPal: they don’t like the PayPal bite, which on an expensive item can be hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

You may also not know that eBay recommends escrow.com, which lets you inspect an item before accepting delivery. It also works for intangible items in some cases, like domain names. Expensive, but well worth it.

It’s all about the Benjamin

If you read Benjamin Franklin’s hilarious, insightful, and truly inspiring autobiography, you will often find that people then relied on letters of recommendation when they moved to a new town. In the 21st century, it turns out, we must do very much the same thing. Since Franklin and his contemporaries lacked instant forms of communication like texting, email, or even that old-fashioned telephone thing some people are using, they relied on the reputation of the letter writer. In other words, it was all about relationships.

It still is. I have found that the most reliable way to buy expensive things is to build up a relationship with the seller both before and after you have won the auction. No matter how excited you are about the item, imagine that you are an antique dealer buying a supposed George Washington ceremonial sword-over the phone. You will want satisfactory answers to many questions, such as provenance (a reliable history of the item), the seller’s background and qualifications, and any previous blemishes to the seller’s history you can find online.

You are completely remiss if you do not obtain the seller’s phone number and have a talk. The best way to get this going is to have a reasonable question that is not answered by the auction description. This is inevitable for high-ticket items. If the seller doesn’t wish to give you the phone number, fine, move on. It may not be worth the seller’s time to deal with you. Your idea of high ticket may be different from the seller’s. Or the seller could be a scammer.

Disregard anything the seller says about this being the last item of its kind, get it now before someone does a BIN, yada yada. That stuff may possibly be true, but the scarcity threat also happens to be one of the most powerful weapons of manipulation a seller can use, one that punctures your conscious thought processes and goes right to your reptilian brain. Scarcity is an ages-old bugaboo and good sellers exploit it mercilessly.

Make sure you have questions designed to let the seller discuss any imperfections the object have. Does the back of the guitar have buckle rash? Why wasn’t there a picture of the back, anyway? When you say it has “the normal wear and tear” why don’t you show a closeup of that wear and tear? If this really is a 55 Buick Special in mint condition, why do all the pictures look like they were taken on an old cell phone? And so on.

If the seller doesn’t admit to perfections in a forthright way, if the seller doesn’t treat you the way you would treat your best friend in the same position, run. The seller should understand that you are making a decision that may be life-altering. If the seller doesn’t, you need to move on to a different item.

Next up: More on how to develop a good relationship in 10 days or less.