For those who are interested in quality shoes Ebay can be a real gold mine. The range of both new and second-hand shoes are huge, and the chance to make real bargains increases if you have the energy to engage a bit extra. Below are some good tips.
Misspelled brand names
It is not unusual for a seller to misspell the name of the shoe manufacturer, either just by mistake or entirely due to ignorance. This often results in the fact that far fewer find the shoes since it’s very common that people are searching things by their brand name. Ebay’s search engine is not as smart as for example Google either, but just looking at exactly what you wrote (if it’s not so that it can’t find something you are looking for, then it can change to another suggestion automatically). Ebay also has the preset setting to search only in the title, so many people miss items even in cases where it’s only where the title is misspelled, and not the description. To find shoes that are misspelled, you can either go through different selection as “Dress Shoes-brown size 10” and so on, since you’ll find them in the list. Or, by simply search some of the likely misspellings. For example, I have found shoes where the vendor have written “Crocket and Jones,” “Jonn Lobb” Gasiano & Girling “” Gaziano and Giling “,” Edward Gren”,”Mermin”” Sutor Mantelassi “and so on.
An example where the seller has misspelled Crockett & Jones in the auction ad.
Uncategorized shoes
People who put up an ads on Ebay is quite often lazy, and the only requirements Ebay have when selling shoes is that you select what kind of shoe it is, shoe size and brand. All other details are optional, and if you then in their search, click on for example “brown” all brown shoes where the seller has not bothered to click in the colour disappears. So just choose for example “Formal Shoes” and size, and browse through the long list in search of bargains.
Seller who state they only ship domestically, may ship to you if you ask
It’s very common for sellers, especially when they are private individuals, to routinely click in that they only send within the country. It makes a lot people from other countries fall away, and only people in the origin country of the seller are involved in bidding. In many cases, they have no problems sending internationally, just ask. Send a message to the seller and say you are interested in bidding on the shoes, and ask if he/she could ship to your country, and mention that you of course pay the higher shipping fee and that you like them to be shipped as a registered package. The fact that they send by registered mail is just as safe as sending within the country, and the vast majority are happy to do it.
On the French Ebay page you can find some French brand that’s only available on that site.
Check local Ebay sites
Considering the tip above, it may also be worth checking out smaller local Ebay sites, for example Ebay.it and Ebay.fr and others. If you upload an ad on a local Ebay sitechoose not to sell international the ad doesn’t show on other Ebay sites than the original site, and the number of visitors who can discover the shoes are greatly reduced. But since many still ship internationally if you ask, you can find gems this way. If you also for example are particularly interested in Italian shoes, it’s insanely much easier to find a wide selection of for example Santoni, Sutor Mantellassi and other classic Italian brands on the local Ebay.it. If you have trouble understanding the language use Chrome as a browser so you can run Google Translate on the page while you browse around, or search the Ebay site through Google and select “Translate this page”.
Bid in the last seconds
This is hardly a unique tip and applies of course not only when purchasing shoes, but since I’ve noticed that many don’t realise that this is the best way to get the best price, I include this tip anyway. The thing is that you shouldn’t put in any bids during the days the auction is opened, it just helps increasing the price, perhaps unnecessarily. Instead look to sit prepared with your absolute maximum bid and place it when about 15-20 seconds remain (after all it is good to have some margin, since the computer/phone may need to buffer a little before the bid is placed). In this way any other stakeholders don’t have time to respond to your offer before it’s too late, even though they might be able to go even higher. And even if they would not go over your maximum bid and you still would have won the auction, others don’t have time to push up the price unnecessarily either, so you get it as cheap as possible.
Jane hancock papers