You’ve finally found the perfect gift item on eBay. There is only one hour left before the auction is up, and you are currently the highest bidder. Excellent. Not only will this make a great one-of-a-kind gift for your friend, but you are getting it for a great deal on eBay. You eagerly watch the clock, counting down the time before the eBay online auction is over and you can purchase the item you have won. Suddenly, the phone rings-it is your mom, asking you to hurry and pick up your brother from school because he had early dismissal, and she is busy at the moment.
With only 45 minutes left on the auction, you bolt out the door, race over to your brothers elementary school, drag him away from his friends, and together you and he race back home. Screeching to a halt in your driveway, you race inside with the keys left in the ignition, turn the screen of your computer back, and refresh your eBay item page. “You’ve been outbid by a higher bidder. This auction has ended.” With a sinking heart, you realize that you got home just moments too late, and were outbid by someone waiting till the last five minutes of the auction. If only you could have monitored the auction and still picked your brother up at the same time.
eBay is one of the greatest bargain websites around, and it is truly the world’s marketplace. However, with the default format being an auction for most items, it is easy to lose an item, especially if you’ve ever been faced with a scenario like the above. After all, some auctions have absolutely awful ending times, often either really late at night (especially if it is an auction from overseas), or during the day when you have to be somewhere away from your computer. So, what can you do when the item you want on eBay will probably go to someone else because they’re at their computer, and you can’t be at yours?
Enter UnWired Buyer, with the ability to monitor and bid on eBay auctions on your cell phone. UnWired Buyer is a free service that basically frees you from having to be at a computer when bidding or just watching an item on eBay. Sounds good? I thought so too, and gave them a shot.
Here’s how UnWired Buyer works. First, you’ll have to make an account at UnWiredBuyer.com. You’ll have to be an eBay member with at least 10 feedback, and a password that doesn’t have any security issues (more on that in a moment). You will have to give them your eBay account info, as in your user name and password. Some people may balk at this step, but UnWired Buyer is a seems to be avery reliable service, and I’ve had no security issues with them.
Finally, after registering an account with UnWired Buyer, you’ll need to give them your landline or cellphone number. This is how they contact you, allowing you to place bids or monitor an item from anywhere that you can access your phone. Personally, I would recommend using your cell phone number, unless your landline phone can receive text messages.
Now that you are registered, start using UnWired Buyer! Find an auction that you are interested in, and either place a bid, or just add it to your watch list on eBay. Next, login to your UnWired Buyer account and setup the calling options you. You can change what UnWired Buyer calls you, and if they send you a warning text message a few minutes before they call.
So, let’s say you are bidding on an item, but it ends while you are at the mall with your lady friend. Have UnWired Buyer call you before the auction ends (it auto call you a few minutes right before it ends) and keep your cell on. Once you get the call, and automated system directs you to login, and then the status of the item you are bidding on/watching will be told to you. Using your telephone pad, you can then place a higher bid if you want, just minutes before the auction ends.
The system works really, really well. They’ll even pay you an extra $5 for each friend you get to sign up and use UnWired Buyer by bidding on an item on eBay. I did have a problem with UnWired Buyer in the begining, because it reached an error whenever I logged in. This was due to my password not being secure enough with eBay, and eBay popped a warning message up every time I logged in. This seemed to confure the automated UnWired Buyer system, but a change of my password to a more password that eBay didn’t popup warnings with fixed the problem.
If you need a cellphone/landline phone based eBay bidding and monitoring service, consider checking out UnWired Buyer. If you like it, get your friends to join too! With UnWired, you can pretty much bid on eBay from anywhere.
Sources: Anything4free.com, UnwiredBuyer.com
