eBay listing red flags: 12 checks and what untested means

Run these twelve checks in order

They're ordered cheapest first, and the first four cost nothing but attention: no messages, no waiting, no leaving the listing. Run those before you spend real time on anything, and reaching number twelve should be rare.

1. Read the condition field before you read anything the seller wrote. It's a structured field picked from a list eBay supplies, and eBay writes what each label means. The seller only picks which one to use.
2. Check the quantity available. If the listing has more than one, the price you're looking at is the price of one, not the price of everything in the photograph.
3. Count the photos, then look for the unflattering one. A seller holding the actual item usually shows the scuff. A seller with nothing in hand shows four flawless angles.
4. Find the one detail that carries the value in this category. A serial number, a seal, a stitched label, a slab number. If the photos don't show it, the listing isn't describing the thing you're paying for.
5. Read the description for words that fight with the condition field. Untested, as-is, unable to test, powers on but not fully checked. Each one is the seller stepping back from the field above it.
6. Read the seller's own returns policy, which is a separate field. It sits on the listing. It's a promise from the seller and not from eBay.
7. Check the item location and the handling time. An item shipping from another country is a different purchase from the same item three states away, and the handling time is where the difference shows up.
8. Go past the headline percentage and read the seller's recent feedback. The last section covers how, because the percentage on its own is close to useless.
9. Compare the price against the rest of the results page before you decide the listing is cheap. One listing on its own has no context.
10. Read the title for padding. A title carrying three model numbers appears in searches for all three, and only one of them is in the box.
11. Add the shipping cost to the price before you compare anything. A low price with expensive shipping and a high price with free shipping can be the same purchase, and only one of them looks like a deal in a sorted list.
12. Ask one question, and wait for the answer. What you ask depends on the listing, and the version that works on a stock photo is below.

Everything except eight, nine and twelve is already on the page in front of you. Those three cost real time, and by then you're already interested.

What eBay's condition labels actually promise

Two labels carry the weight for used goods. Used implies an item that has been owned before and is fully operational. For parts or not working sets the opposite expectation: the seller is telling you it may not do the thing it was built to do.

That's a large gap, and the seller chose which side of it to stand on.

Both labels are defined on eBay's item conditions page. The seller picks that field off a fixed list and doesn't type it in, which is what makes it worth more than anything else written on the page.

Two qualifications before you lean on this too hard. The labels available differ by category, and eBay's page lists them that way instead of as one universal set, so read the field on the listing and don't assume the set you saw last time. And the label is the seller's own pick. It isn't a verdict from eBay.

The bottom two rows are where most disappointment lives. The next two sections take them one at a time.

Is "untested" an official eBay condition?

No. Untested appears nowhere in eBay's condition taxonomy. It isn't a label a seller can pick, which means a seller who writes it in the description has already picked something else from the list above it, and on used goods that something else is almost always either Used or For parts or not working.

That's a fact about eBay's fields, not an opinion about sellers.

• If the field says Used and the description says untested, the listing is making a promise the seller is trying to walk back in prose.
• If the field says For parts or not working, untested is consistent with it, and you're buying a gamble the seller labeled correctly.

The reason to care is that your protection is measured against the listing. eBay's Money Back Guarantee covers an item that doesn't match what the listing said, and the condition field is part of what the listing said. We wrote up the guarantee separately, including the window it runs on and the one mistake that puts you outside it.

Here's the one thing this post can't settle for you. We couldn't find an eBay-hosted page that says which one wins when the condition field and the description disagree, so we're not going to tell you that the field beats the description, or the reverse. The disagreement itself is the risk, and you found it before you paid.

Untested does more work in electronics than in any other category, because so many faults are invisible in a photograph. The used electronics guide covers what to ask for and which eras to be suspicious of.

Does "as-is" in a description override the condition field?

No. As-is is seller shorthand. It isn't an eBay field, it has no definition on eBay's condition page, and writing it doesn't change the label the seller selected or remove the buyer protection attached to it.

What as-is signals is intent: this seller would rather not deal with a return. Useful information about the person, but not a term of the sale.

Two things do govern the return, and both are real fields on the listing:

• The seller's returns policy. Thirty day returns, no returns, buyer pays shipping. That's a field, it's on the page, and it's the seller's own stated policy.
• The condition field and the description together. That's what an item not as described claim gets measured against, whatever informal phrase sits alongside it.

Keep those two apart. Whether a seller will take something back voluntarily and whether the item matched the listing are different questions, and as-is only speaks to the first.

How do you tell if an eBay listing is using a stock photo?

Ask the seller for one photo of the actual item with a piece of paper next to it showing today's date. A seller holding the thing can do that without thinking about it. A seller who isn't holding it stops answering, and the silence is the answer.

Before you send that message, four tells are usually enough:

• Studio lighting and a white background on something described as pre-owned.
• One photo. Real photographs come in threes and fours, because people take several and pick.
• No wear anywhere on an item whose age makes wear certain.
• A photo that doesn't match the description. A manufacturer image of a boxed item on a listing for a loose one.

One older piece of advice has stopped being enough on its own. A reverse image search exposes a stock photo by finding its source, which only works when the picture came from somewhere. Listings using generated images are documented and rising, and a generated image has no source to find. That's why the dated paper is the check that settles it.

What "lot" means, and the quantity trap

Lot isn't an eBay field either. It's a word sellers put in titles, it has no fixed definition, and what it means changes by category. The trap isn't the word. The trap is that a listing offering more than one unit prices per unit, so the number your eye lands on isn't the number you're comparing against the photo. You can prove that on any multi-quantity listing by raising the quantity and watching the total move.

Check the quantity available first. Then read what lot is doing in that particular title, because the failure looks different in each category:

• Trading cards. A listing showing a stack of cards can be a multi-quantity listing priced per card, so the price you saw is what one costs.
• LEGO. Lot usually means loose bricks by weight instead of a complete set with its instructions and box. The retired sets guide covers what completeness is worth.
• Funko Pops. A lot priced at the sum of guide values for each figure, as though every box in the picture were mint. The Funko guide goes through box condition, which is most of the value.

The general form is the same everywhere. A lot is priced as though you want all of it, and usually you want one or two things out of it. Price those on their own before the bundle starts looking like a discount.

Reading seller feedback for what the percentage hides

Recent negatives and neutrals in the category you're buying, not the percentage at the top. The percentage is a ratio, and ratios hide the thing you need.

Do the arithmetic once and you'll stop reading it as a score:

• 99.2 percent means eight ratings in every thousand the percentage covers went against that seller. On a busy seller that's dozens of people who had a bad enough experience to say so publicly, and not one of them is visible in the number.
• A seller at 100 percent with 11 ratings has told you almost nothing, in either direction.
• A seller at 97 percent with 300 ratings may be excellent in one category and hopeless in yours.

The text is what's worth reading. Open the feedback, sort to the most recent, and look for three things:

• Negatives clustered in the last few months and not spread out. A run of them is a business that has changed.
• Complaints about the category you're buying. Perfect clothing feedback next to three recent complaints about electronics not working tells you something precise.
• The same complaint repeated. Item not as described, three times, from three buyers. That's a pattern and not a bad day.

Read the seller's replies too. Someone who argues with buyers in public will argue with you in private.

All of that happens before you compare the price to anything, because a good price on a listing that fails these checks isn't a good price. When you do reach the number, compare it against the other listings on the same page instead of against your memory. Working out whether an eBay price is good is its own problem, and the short version is that asking prices and sold prices are different numbers.

Our own search is one way to do that side of it. The results page compares every listing against the others that same search returned, then marks the ones sitting well below the rest of the page and the ones sitting well above it. It compares asking prices of active listings, never sold prices, because we hold no sold-price data, and it labels nothing at all under five comparable listings. Set the condition filter to Good or Better and the For parts listings drop out of what gets averaged. eBay US, free, no account needed to search.

None of that reads a description for you. Twelve checks, in order, and the first four are still the ones that save the money.