I have been selling and buying on eBay since 2003 and have ran across all sorts of scams and unethical sellers. I've even fallen for a scam once, but was able to recover my payment thankfully. Here are some ways that you can protect yourself as a eBay buyer and spot fake eBay sellers and listings.

Check the feedback

Many scammers will boost their 100% feedback rating by purchasing lots of small items prior to attempting their scam. These are often $1.00 items from big sellers that have auto-feedback software. This assures the scammer that he or she will receive a lot of positive feedback quickly and for little cost.

If a seller has a lot of positive feedback from the same day or over the course of a few days, and they are all cheap items such as cell phone cases, the seller is probably boosting their feedback score and could be getting ready for a scam. It is also possible that it is a legitimate seller just trying to boost their feedback. Either way, I advise caution when dealing with these sellers.

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I work as an online salesperson and sell product on eBay. Over the years eBay's fees have steadily increased, while service has steadily decreased. It has gotten to the point where eBay's (and Paypal's) fees have become a very large dollar amount; an amount that I do not feel is justified. I write this post to share information. Unfortunately I cannot share hard dollar numbers, but I can share approximations and percentages.

Our eBay account receives about 1000 feedback per year, with the items we sell usually between $150 and $800. We have the maximum discounts available for our account level, which is 20% off eBay fees. Despite this, between eBay and PayPal we lose 10% of our gross sales dollars to fees, with 75% of those fees going to eBay and 25% to PayPal. Our profit margins are fairly slim, so the 10% makes a huge impact on the net profit.

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