Helpful Information for Bidders

The purpose of this page is to answer some questions that might occur to you all as bidders on my auctions on the Internet. Some things may seem pretty obvious and others irrelevant but that is the trouble with trying to cover everything. There is an e-mail link at the bottom of the page for questions and they will receive prompt attention.

      .All buyers, even if they have already contacted me and had a reply, will get a copy of the ebay 'End of Auction' notice, edited and with my details and a few comments. This is a routine that takes me a few mouse clicks and ensures that no-one is missed so please bear with me if you are a multiple or previous buyer, but it is handy for me me if you use the header to title your replies as it has the item number in it.
Two little things that you  could do would help me somewhat.

The first is that all correspondence should have some reference to the ebay item  number, as there may be 100 recently sold and up for sale items to choose from.

The second would be to highlight and delete the address and information blather that is on the end of sale notices that I send out as I print off hard copies of your addresses etc. from your replies and this deletion would save a page of useless print each time.It also saves internet bandwidth and helps speed up our surfing.

Now a few useful tips.

Firstly, about credit card details and e-mail.

It seems to me much more likely that a shop assistant or gas station attendant will mis-use the copy of the credit card details that you leave with them than anybody would go  trawling through millions of random e-mail messages to find one with information they could use. There are far easier  ways to get this information. My suggestion if you are worried is to split the card details between two e-mails, they  never take the same route and only come together where they are addressed.

Please note that we need the number, expiry date and the full name as it appears on the card, together with the address for shipping.
US Postal money orders, the kind marked "Not negotiable outside the US" are an expensive problem to cash for the reason stated on  the money order, Britain happens to be outside the US.

Personal and bank cheques are no problem and neither are International Postal Money Orders.
We cannot take American Express cards, only Visa and Mastercard, as Amex  charges the retailer about three times as much as the others.

Postage from the US to Britain should be 80c for a half oz. letter,  but some of you are using just 34c postage and some letters are certainly getting through as fast as others with  correct or more postage stamps. What I do not know is how many are coming the slow way, by surface post, and  these may take a month to get here. Bear in mind that overseas postage costs more. There is no need whatsoever to   go to the added expense of using Global priority Mail or similar as it is no quicker, probably no more secure and costs 3 bucks or more  that you could be using to bid with.

Now a word about how long everything can be expected to take.
From feedback and messages that I have received (thank you all who have written) the turn-around time to complete a deal should be three weeks maximum, allowing a week + each way for postal transit and a maximum of three days here to get the
order shipped. The delay here is because I am occasionally away buying or selling for a day or two and my able
assistant is only in three or four days a week, and even then might be stumped by some detail of shipping I had forgotten to
leave specific instructions for. To date nobody has reported any delays due to customs inspection. Generally this will
not occur as all lots go out with the appropriate customs form filled in and attached and relatively low value individual
postal shipments seem to go straight through on the nod
For all practical purposes you can treat an international transaction very much like a national one , paying in dollars and receiving your goods in the post as you would be accustomed to, with perhaps a week or so extra wait due to shipment times. ( Apology to non-US based customers--I can only take dollars or sterling or of course credit cards without some special arrangement due to exchange costs. Dollars cash and cheques I can change in batches at a cost that becomes trivial per item but cash yen, lire. or HK$ dollars etc. attract a notably worse exchange rate)
Heavy items are fairly expensive to ship and this needs to be kept in mind when bidding. Surface post is a lot cheaper for items up to 2 kilos if you do not  mind a lengthy wait of a month or so for delivery. Books go out by airmail book post which is cheaper than letter post and takes about the same time or  a bit longer.. Surface Book post is an option for very heavy books.

Please contact me at once about any problems. It would be unrealistic to say that they never occur or will  never occur and it is in my interest to get them sorted out ASAP

The most likely source of confusion is in special shipping instructions or arrangements, so , please, if there are any of these, state them on a note sent with your payment or an e-mail with your card number, as this would be really helpful.

IF THERE IS ANY DELAY IN ARRIVAL ABOVE WHAT SEEMS REASONABLE FOR POST TIMES PLEASE CONTACT ME.

This is just about enough for now, I think,  any comments welcome, and I hope that at least a few of you will find and