Selling Your Laptop on eBay — Software News

December 12, 2008 by Software Post
Filed under: Software News 

My mother, a longtime flea-market shopper, says it’s always easier to buy than to sell. Man oh man, is she right about that.

Twice in just over a week, my efforts to sell a laptop on eBay were thwarted. One effort climaxed in an excruciatingly anxious dash to the post office–to retrieve the laptop I had just shipped.

Here’s the story, in a nutshell, followed by a few lessons learned.

Acting Without Authorization

In early 2007, I bought my sweet little Sony Vaio TXN19P/L ultraportable to use as a secondary computer. (Read my review of a similar Vaio laptop. It’s been an ideal traveling companion: The laptop weighs just 2.8 pounds and goes for 5 hours or more on a charge. It has a gorgeous screen and beautiful Slate Blue carbon fiber casing–it truly is a masterpiece of industrial design.

The laptop was pricey, however. In January 2007 I paid $2800 for this model, which has 2GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and Windows XP Professional. And so, in December, I decided to sell it. I felt it was time to try something new and oh, all right: I needed the money. Plus, I have an older, less glamorous, but still working IBM ThinkPad 240 in my closet. Why not use that?

At any rate, I listed the Sony laptop on eBay on December 8, thinking it would catch the interest of holiday shoppers. I put a reserve price on the laptop as well as offered the “Buy It Now” option.

One week later, as the auction ended, the reserve price was met and the laptop sold. I boxed up the laptop, considering it a done deal. But two hours later, I received a message from eBay, informing me the listing had been “cancelled due to bidding activity that took place without the account owner’s authorization.”

And then eBay wiped out the listing. It was as if it had never existed. Worse, eBay informed me of the following: “Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to automatically relist these items for you. Instead, to relist these items you will need to start from the beginning of the listing process…We know that this is an inconvenience and we apologize for the negative impact it may cause you. We are working on tools to allow you to relist your items without starting from the beginning, but they are not available at this time.”

Read More : Yahoo Tech

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One Comment on Selling Your Laptop on eBay — Software News

  1. Hot Ebay Store » Blog Archive » Selling Your Laptop on eBay — Software News on Thu, 1st Jan 2009 2:00 am

    2. [...] Software Post wrote an interesting post today onSelling Your Laptop on eBay â?? Software NewsHere’s a quick excerptTwice in just over a week, my efforts to sell a laptop on eBay were thwarted. One effort climaxed in an excruciatingly anxious dash to the post office–to retrieve the laptop I had [...] [...]

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