eBay is a large online marketplace and auction that conducts many thousands of transactions every day. Many businesses and individuals rely on eBay as a trustworthy marketplace to buy and sell just about anything. Overall eBay is a safe place to buy many products, including forklifts.
Can You Get Scammed on eBay?
Yes, it’s possible. Some sellers misrepresent their products and others may never intend to send you the advertised product. But most sellers are very trustworthy and do their best to make sure every customer is happy. And eBay does their best to protect buyers from fraud.
eBay also incentivizes sellers to deliver as advertised by allowing buyers to leave feedback. A seller’s feedback score can be reviewed by all potential customers and also affects how high a seller’s products get listed in the eBay search results.
To help keep safe when shopping for forklifts on ebay, keep these tips in mind:
- When looking at a forklift for sale on eBay see if you can determine who the seller is independent of ebay. If the seller has an intelligible username you might be able to use it to look up the company through a search engine.
- You can also check the product description to see if the seller states who they are, such as Acme Forklift Company or something similar. Then you can check the seller’s website, look for Google reviews, and Better Business Bureau information.
- Click on the seller’s username on ebay to look at their profile. You will be able to see how long the seller has been an eBay member, review their feedback, read their About section, and look at other items they have for sale.
- Carefully review the product listing for photos, a video of the forklift for sale, and other information in the description about the machine and the seller.
- Ebay allows sellers to offer a 30 day money back return policy. When looking at a product click the Shipping, returns, & payment tab to review the seller’s terms. When the transaction is done through ebay, and the seller allows 30 day returns, you will be able to make a claim if the product does not match the product description. This will protect the buyer from seller misrepresentation or simple misunderstandings about the product quality.
- Send the seller a message through eBay. You can gauge the seller’s responsiveness and willingness to answer detailed questions about the forklift. Does the seller seem to be familiar with forklifts? Is the seller being straightforward? If the seller making excuses?
We sell forklifts on eBay so we might be biased, but we think it's perfectly safe to buy a forklift on eBay if you keep these tips in mind. And the alternatives are quite limited. There really aren’t any other online marketplaces that provide seller reviews and feedback, detailed product descriptions, and the ability to conduct a transaction completely within the platform like eBay does.
eBay Listing Example
