Bad buys: nearly all the clothes I’ve ever bought off eBay

Another in my occasional series of laments about bad buys I’ve made.

I love eBay. We call our house “the house that eBay built” because we bought so much stuff – appliances, furniture, accessories – off eBay in the first few months after we moved in. I use it as a find-anything bazaar and a virtual charity shop. But I’ve had failure after failure when it comes to buying clothes off there.

From seeing just one or two deliberately flattering pictures of the item, I create a best-possible-case 3D animation in my head: me wearing the item, it fitting perfectly and looking great. Surely that’s worth £1.50 plus p&p! Unless it’s something that really excites me, I won’t get caught up in eBay drama or bidding wars – my bids stay charity-shop-price low and if I get outbid then nevermind. But often enough, I do win and my “fits perfectly, looks great” fantasy continues for a few days until it arrives.

It’s happened with the weirdly (deliberately) patchwork leather jacket, the far too boxy polyester Hawaiian shirt, the strappy tops which were apparently made for someone with a half-sized torso, the “I could fit three of us in there and we’d all look like weird scientists” dressing gown, the shoes in the picture are nice but super narrow (and clearly very cheap quality to start with)… I could go on and on. None of these items have cost more than a few quid all in, but those few quids do add up.

Most of those bad buys were a good few years ago now. I’m not that slow. But recently I thought I’d cracked it and started again. I had good logic – I’m not usually brand loyal but there is a particular brand and size of jeans that I like: comfortable fit, nice shape, decent quality. They’re a pretty expensive brand but it’s better to buy one pair of those than a couple of pairs of not-so-good ones, I get my wear out of them and thanks to sales, I’ve never bought a pair full price anyway. I have about four pairs of them already (I live in jeans) but like to keep an eye on their sales because they don’t always sell off the type I like, recently it’s been all skinny or stupidly bleached, and one pair has started to show their age a bit so needs replacing.

So I turned to eBay. I realised I could make a saved search of the brand name & size, and check it periodically to see what came up – I know the quality, I know the fabric, I know the shape. Jeans that match my criteria come up a lot – nearly all new or just worn once. I got a pair last month which were perfect and thought I’d cracked it. Then I bought a second pair which were a) a different colour than they looked in the photo (but I could live with that) and b) Long rather than Regular. As anyone who knows me in the flesh will know, I’m not exactly a Long type of girl. Of course I could take it up with the seller, explain the ad wasn’t clear about the length, send them back, get my money back – but it doesn’t seem worth it for £1.52.

Lessons learned: When buying clothes in the flesh, I have some rules: it has to be at least 50% (in practise, at least 80%) natural fibres and whether it’s a £1 vest from a charity shop or a £80 winter coat, I have to try it on before I buy. While I can stick to the first, I can’t really do the second online – and particularly not from eBay. I need to figure out some rules for shopping on eBay and I think the main rule is really clear: I really, really need to stop buying random clothes on eBay. I can possibly keep buying the jeans (and other things that can be tightly searched like that) if the description clearly states the colour and all the size dimensions.

Have you had any more success buying clothes on eBay? If so, got any suggestions?

Other posts you might like:

Bad Buys: the garden swing My top 5 clothes line drying tips Where chickens go shopping for clothes Charity shop bargains from Shipley