How to buy from eBay: A Guide for Malaysian Photographers Community

I believe most of you have already know about eBay. If you don’t know, eBay is an online marketplace that sells a lot of used stuff – that is including camera and lenses. I personally love to find the rare film camera lenses by using eBay.

Since eBay is already well known for a lot of people, I’m not going to introduce it again here. Hence, this blog post is purely going to focus specifically for Malaysian photographers on how you can buy a used lenses or cameras on eBay. If you have an interest to buy your next photography gear on eBay – so read on!

Below is the list of important stuff that you will need before eyeing on anything that listed on eBay.

1. You’ll need an eBay account (of course)
   
2. You’ll need a PayPal account - If you don’t have this, then forget about buying anything on eBay. Some of the seller does except Credit Card but most of them is using PayPal for payment. Therefore, PayPal account is very crucial for any transaction within eBay marketplace. If you don’t know how to create one, just Google it, I’m sure there is plenty of information and guideline available online that can assist you.

Assuming that you already have those important stuff ready, now let’s browse through the eBay listing for an item that we want to buy, shall we?

Install an eBay apps on your mobile phone

Even though you can buy stuff using computer and a good old browser, personally, I’d prefer buying using mobile apps. It is much easier and intuitive. Now open your eBay apps, use the search button and browse through the listing one by one and look for something that really interest you. For the sake of our discussion, let’s just assume that you are interested in the lens below:

Now scroll down from this listing and see who’s the seller:

Find a Trustworthy Seller

Click on “About the seller” to see the details about them. This is where you can see whether the seller is trustworthy or not:

See that “Recent Feedback and ratings”. This is where the buyers provide their experience and feedback about the items they bought from this seller. Click on that arrow I’ve shown above and see their feedback.

From the date stated in each comment, it is clear that there is no complaints about this seller from the recent purchases by the buyers.

My personal tips:

1. Always find sellers with 100% positive feedback. Period. Look away even if they have only one negative feedback.
2. Based on my experience, sellers from Japan is mostly trustworthy and their description about the items is 100% accurate. Nevertheless, always look for sellers with 100% positive feedback.

Side note: I’ve never bought any items from seller’s other than Japan, so I can’t comment on that.

If everything looks great, now let’s go to the next step!

Postage, Returns & Payments

The information about the “Postage, Returns & Payments” is very important. Always click on this and read through them line by line, from top to the bottom of the description. At the “Return” section, this is where you can find the trustworthiness about the seller and the item that they are selling. If they can offer Money Back guarantee, buy from them. Otherwise, look away and find other sellers.

For me, this is some sort of “personal insurance” for my money. I know they will honour their promises should the item that they sell is faulty. eBay are also aware about this section and you can always assure that you are protected once the seller is offering a Money Back guarantee.

Next, proceed with your purchases and get ready to pay for the Import Tax!

Malaysia Import Tax for Used Camera and Lenses

If you have bought lenses or any used camera below than MYR500.00 of the total purchase value (including the postage charges within the same invoice) than you are saved from the Import Tax.

Otherwise (as of this writings) the import tax for used camera and lenses is 5% from the total purchase value. Assuming that the lens that you have bought is MYR2,000.00 (including the postage charges) then the tax implies for this item is MYR100.00. When this happened, your item will be held by Malaysian Custom Department located at Pos Malaysia International Hub (KLIA). You will get the notification by the Pos Malaysia online tracker apps as below:

My personal suggestion is, once you know that your item is already being held by the Malaysian Custom Department, go there personally to pay the taxes and collect your item(s). Where is the office location? Click here for the location map.

Why collect by ourselves you may ask? If you are allowing Pos Malaysia to send it over to you, you will need to pay an additional MYR85.00 (as of this writing) – that is NOT including the taxes that you need to pay – and you will need to wait at least for 3 to 5 working days for the item to reach you.

Yup, you are paying an extra money so that you can wait for the next 3 to 5 days to get your item – for me that is totally ridiculous.

Calculation for the Import Tax and other Charges

So, you have decided to go there and collect the item(s) by yourself. Below is my calculation based on my recent purchase from eBay.

• Assuming the total invoice value is MYR2,000.00
• Import Tax needed to be paid is 5% of the total invoice value = MYR100.00
• Customs EDI Fees (Borang BK1) = MYR18.00 (This value may vary. Based on my experience, normally for used camera and lenses is not more than MYR20.00 for one item) **To be honest, I don’t know how they calculated the fees. Sometime it maybe more than MYR20.00.
• Don’t forget the SST charges is 6% from Customs EDI fees = MYR18.00 x 6% = MYR1.08
• So, the final charges that you will need to pay is MYR119.10 (nearest round figure).

AND! They are only accepting cash! So, remember to bring an extra money before going there.

My Final Advise

Apply for a half day leave should you decided to collect the item(s) by yourself. Or take a full day leave for god sake. Because your day will be full of activities and waiting. I repeat. A lot of patient and waiting is required. Be prepared that you will be directed to Counter 1, Counter 2 and Counter 3 several times, AND! the service is f***ng damn slow. So, patient is virtue. It is advisable that you are totally free on that day and not rushing to go anywhere. Otherwise, it will be very stressful.

So, there you go. I hope this information helps a lot for the new eBay buyers out there. Should you find this information useful, please kindly share it with everyone!

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