New Motorola V265 cell phone

Motorola V265 (Verizon Wireless)


ended - Thursday, May 1, 2008

Auction grade: C+

Starting bid: $25.99

Final selling price: $25.99 (Buy It Now)


Up for sale in this eBay auction is a brand new Motorola V265 cellular phone for Verizon Wireless.

As expected, the title for this auction is surprisingly short and lacking a few key words & phrases. The seller needs to include words such as "cell phone", "new", and even "camera phone".

The auction's description looks very good. I like how the seller tells us a little about the phone in what appears to be his own words before giving us the technical information that most serious cell phone buyers need to know. The technical information neatly copied from CNET, which is fine since the seller made mention of using the CNET source in the auction's description.

To help aid the buyers, the seller should have made a listing of the different cables included with this phone. It's relatively safe to assume that the standard ones are included, but you know what they say about assuming.

The other problem with this auction deals with the starting bid and shipping costs. When you put the two together, unless you live in Ohio (sales tax reference, not an education joke) you're looking at paying around $36 total. While this is still cheaper than buying the phone in a retail store, many other online retailers are offering the same brand new phone for around this same price. In other words, people are most likely not going to make a bid since it's not an online bargain that eBay is so famous for having. People expect to find deals on eBay. Taking at least $5 off of the starting bid will help gain a lot of attention and potential bids.

The other problem is that this phone is over three years old. That integrated VGA camera with its mighty 640x480 resolution may have been fine back then, but that's nothing compared to what today's camera phones can do. The target audience for this cell phone is going to be limited.

The picture of the cell phone and cables is nothing to write home about. You can see the phone
, but it's a bad angle and you cannot make out the different cables hidden behind it. The seller would have been better off using an elevated shot of the phone and cables taken out of their bags and neatly laid out next to the phone. Pictures like the one above don't get people excited about the phone. Using personal pictures is better than only using stock images, but you still need to learn how to take better pictures.

Overall, this isn't that bad of an auction, but it still has a few areas for improvement.