Thought this was a good time to put up a sticky on how to protect yourself as a Seller and/or Buyer. Mostly just commonsense. Please add your best practices.

1. Always send toys with at least Delivery Confirmation if not insurance and/or tracking. DC is only like $0.75 extra.

2. Some might argue it's safer to make large payments via Paypal with your credit card account so you have extra protection.

3. Don't send to an un-confirmed address.

4. Don't send to a different address than what is tied to the buyer. Several scams have occured here with stolen credit cards.

5. Be wary of sending payments as a gift on ebay. You lose your right to dispute.

6. For high priced items, ask for shipping with some sort of tracking up front before you agree to purchase.

7. If you have never dealt with this person before, search the board to see if there has been any previous complaints or issues.

8. Communication as seller or buyer is the key. If you can't get the toy in the mail for whatever reason, just explain the issue to the other party. good communication makes up for a lot.

9. my personal rule of thumb is to get the toys in the mail in less than a week. and I can promise you with a full time job including travel and two kids at home, i'm busier than you are. Less than one month is forgivable. Longer than a month is not.

10. Give your fellow board members the benefit of the doubt.

thank you toybotstudios. another point i'd like to add is that it is probably worth paying an 8% premium when purchasing items from boardmembers with over 6000 posts. Life is a numbers game and through my research, these people that have spammed... i mean, contributed to this community have a good track record in sales... you may be spending a little bit more now, but you're saving alot in the long run (not to mention the headaches)

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ebay: http://shop.ebay.com/sirrhino324/m.html

apparently, some noobies don't understand how paypal works so I'm bumping this !

I never understood why people don't confirm addresses on paypal accounts. It's so easy to do. Also why does paypal even allow people not to have confirmed addresses? Seems like they're just asking for headaches and scams. I get that a lot when I sell records and I'm always telling them you need to confirm the address. I don't like to generalize, but people who don't often are the ones trying to pull that "Oh you never sent the item" BS. It's a known scam.

Common sense but still a good idea to start this thread. I've hardly ever sold anything but I was considering selling some stuff here on SB so this is all good to keep in mind. Thanks.