I agree as a seller- Ebay SUCKS

jonathan1138

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So recently i sold bunch of Stuff on ebay, maybe 50 items. Gaming mags and books, PCBs,old game systems, just stuff i will never use and figured i could use the extra money.

I sold a couple of Pinball Mods (made by someone else). The buyer won both. One was $5 the other was $30. My wife ships both.

Guy contacts me, says he got just one (the higher priced item). I grill my wife, she swears she sent it. Whatever, i refund it. The guy then asks for his $2 refund on shipping. Give me a break. I refund that, i am not going to argue over it.

The guy then says he doesnt like the first item - he thinks that there is too much glue on the back of the mod (that i didnt make - someone else produced it). I point out its exactly as pictured, its sold as is, good luck. At this point, i am thinking how can i be wrong??

He takes it up with Ebay. They ask me for my take, i say sold as is, item as pictured, etc.

A few days later, they rule in his favor. To top it off i cant leave this guy feedback?

Wow.

I know, i know, you guys have been saying it for years, but man alive, once you go through it, i now really appreciate how disgusting it is. Its an insult - there was absolutely no basis, no explanation, No consideration to the seller. It leaves the floodgates open for buyers to potentially do ALOT of harm to honest sellers.

Ebay, you truly suck (and so do you, Pinball mod guy).

I think i am going to short the crap out of the Ebay stock. If they continue to run their business like this, its definitely a good investment.
 
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i deal in fairly expensive musical equipment, vinyl records, and vintage electronics. recently i sold a very rare drum from the 1960s for some $600. i took lots of close up pictures and described the item in detail, i noted pitting on the chrome in the description.

well, the guy sends me an angry email when he got the drum, "this thing is rusty and wont shine up" what do you expect? pitting isnt going to shine up, obviously. its a 50 year old drum and this particular model always has some pitting, its unavoidable.

does this look rusty to you???? this is one of six close up pictures i took. the guy never asked for additional pictures, if he didnt think it looked good enough maybe he shouldnt have bid as much as he did!!!

cimg0105lp.jpg


he opened a case with ebay, so i sent them this:

"Pitting corrosion, or pitting, is a form of extremely localized corrosion that leads to the creation of small holes in the metal."

the metal is corroded, of course it isnt going to shine up like brand new chrome!

v. pit·ted, pit·ting, pits
v.tr.
1. To mark with cavities, depressions, or scars: a surface pitted with craters.

needless to say they sided with the buyer and froze up my paypal account for close to a month and then offered the buyer a full refund...
 
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I think ebay is in the unique position that the buyer, your buyer is both theres and your customer. But they seem to forget that the seller, you/us is also there customer. if every seller on ebay went away ebay would have nothing for there/our buyers to buy. Not a sermon just a thought.
 
I've had ebay side with the seller and the buyer - and me as the seller and me as the buyer - So I've had it go all 4 ways in the last decade. It's just part of the ebay experience it happens to all of us. Chalk it up and move on because once they judge it's done and you've either won or loss. I say fuck ebay in general, but I'll want to buy something off of there eventually, it almost always comes to that. lol I haven't sold anything on there in a LONG time because I get FUCKED.
 
i deal in fairly expensive musical equipment, vinyl records, and vintage electronics. recently i sold a very rare drum from the 1960s for some $600. i took lots of close up pictures and described the item in detail, i noted pitting on the chrome in the description.

well, the guy sends me an angry email when he got the drum, "this thing is rusty and wont shine up" what do you expect? pitting isnt going to shine up, obviously. its a 50 year old drum and this particular model always has some pitting, its unavoidable.

does this look rusty to you???? this is one of six close up pictures i took. the guy never asked for additional pictures, if he didnt think it looked good enough maybe he shouldnt have bid as much as he did!!!

cimg0105lp.jpg


he opened a case with ebay, so i sent them this:

"Pitting corrosion, or pitting, is a form of extremely localized corrosion that leads to the creation of small holes in the metal."

the metal is corroded, of course it isnt going to shine up like brand new chrome!

v. pit·ted, pit·ting, pits
v.tr.
1. To mark with cavities, depressions, or scars: a surface pitted with craters.

needless to say they sided with the buyer and froze up my paypal account for close to a month and then offered the buyer a full refund...

Being a fellow drummer, I have to ask what was the drum? That buyer must not be familiar with vintage drums. You'd be lucky to find rims that are only pitted, and not rusted and pitted.
 
as a rule you shouldn't keep money in your paypal account. if you get money transfer it to your bank.

when they try this shit, you tell your bank it's an unauthorized transfer. you get your money back. ebay/paypal, and the scammer are screwed. then your account is put back into good standing with paypal.

done it twice when people tried to fuck me.
your bank will be on your side, but you can't have any money in your paypal account sitting around for them to steal from you.
 
Being a fellow drummer, I have to ask what was the drum? That buyer must not be familiar with vintage drums. You'd be lucky to find rims that are only pitted, and not rusted and pitted.

its a rogers 14" floor tom, the 14" ones are quite rare, its not the kind of drum someone would buy by accident. even the smaller kits usually came with a 16" floor tom, and a 16" rogers floor tom of the same vintage would sell for well under $100. nobody would have accidentally spent $600 on this drum. its a tower series, manufactured in cleveland. tall boy hoops, bread and butter lugs.
 
Thanks Tronguy. Good advice especially for those with larger transactions.

In this case, it was exactly as you suspected. I heard about this for years, but never went through it - wow... $35 or whatever completely effs up the whole account ... My PP Account went red, and i had new transactions coming in for MUCH more than $35 - they weren't wiping out / clearing the negative balance.

I'm watching this money come in that i can't even interact with! My Account was frozen. I'm now thinking about the horror stories on PPSucks.com. All over $35!!

Ebay owns PP, just a big Sh*tshow. I had to call PP and get it resolved - as if i was some kind of bad guy, waste of my time too. What a joke.

But again, the money is less my problem with it all. The guy had no right to a refund on that item. It was exactly as pictured and described. AND He rips me off on the first item he claims he never got (but i know he got it). Ebay is no better, they stick up for it, as if all sellers are evil.

If this were an actual face to face transaction, it would of ended ALOT smoother and fairer. I can say that i dont need these clowns at Ebay to "mediate".
 
As a seller I do not count the item as "paid" until the money has come out of my paypal account and is in my bank account, takes a couple of days but I wont ship until it has got beyond ebay's reach.

Ebay is ALL about growth, growing their members, they will always side with the buyer as it is more buyers that they want, more buyers push up prices so the % ebay gets on items gets higher. They have millions of sellers already, what they want is a bigger cut of auctions, and keeping it all warm and fuzzy "for the buyers" is their default position. They will do everything to avoid media stories of buyers getting ripped off. Sellers they can always write off as dodgy in any media stories, its hard for them to write off buyers as dodgy so they will always refund on request.
 
ALWAYS use some kind of trackable shipping! If you're using USPS and the item is small, it's actually quite convenient to print the shipping label through PayPal. Then give the tracking number to Ebay (when you mark the item shipped, there's a spot for the tracking number if you didn't go through PayPal for it).

The advantage here is that if you've given a tracking number, then it gets really hard for the bozo on the other end to claim it never shipped/wasn't delivered. Not that they might not get away with it, but it's a lot harder for EBay to take your money over it not showing up when you can show it was delivered.

On the condition problem: There's just no good way to deal with this (other than dealing in person). I've gotten lucky so far and not had any issues with this, but from what I hear EBay is kind of random on this. And it's never enough money to lawyer up and start suing people.

Here's a thought - if you had a multi-hundred dollar item that EBay decided to refund, could you take EBay to small claims court? I don't know enough, but it seems to me that they've accused you of fraud and taken your money inappropriately (especially since you didn't get your item back!). I'm not sure you can (the agreement between you and EBay may preclude such actions), but is this something that's been investigated?
 
Here's a good one to add to my eBay selling experiences. Sold a working iPhone as-is, I later received positive feedback from him saying 'Works great, great seller'...Six months go by and he emails me and says there is something wrong with the phone and needs to return it! I basically responded with a "Sorry, this was sold as-is, you gave me positive feedback, not to mention nearly 6 months have passed!"

I thought that was the end of it...a few weeks later I get a Paypal notification telling me that he has initiated a chargeback with his credit card company.

I provided shipping proof, auction details and also mentioned the fact that he already gave me positive feedback and more than 6 months had passed on a Sold As-Is auction.

Once a credit card company is involved Paypal seems to stick it's tail between it's legs and cower in the corner. (It's in Paypal's terms of service that whatever the cc company decides is what stands...)

Needless to say I was eventually out $150 bucks and never got the phone back. I still to this day can not believe the absurdity of this one. I still have a sour taste in my mouth over this one..
 
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Here's a thought - if you had a multi-hundred dollar item that EBay decided to refund, could you take EBay to small claims court? I don't know enough, but it seems to me that they've accused you of fraud and taken your money inappropriately (especially since you didn't get your item back!). I'm not sure you can (the agreement between you and EBay may preclude such actions), but is this something that's been investigated?

Nice thought, but you agree to binding arbitration when you accept the Terms of Service as part of signing up for eBay.
 
Ebay is shit. That's the bottom line. It used to be usable but now with the newer policies it's skewed so far to the buyer that it is too easy to scam a seller.

I've gotten to the point where I try very hard to never sell on ebay anymore.

I'm also fed up about PayPal and their 'hold' policies.

Paypal and ebay have a near monopoly on their markets and they are excellent examples on why monopolies suck.
 
as a rule you shouldn't keep money in your paypal account. if you get money transfer it to your bank.

when they try this shit, you tell your bank it's an unauthorized transfer. you get your money back. ebay/paypal, and the scammer are screwed. then your account is put back into good standing with paypal.

done it twice when people tried to fuck me.
your bank will be on your side, but you can't have any money in your paypal account sitting around for them to steal from you.

That is exactly why I do not use PayPal. That happened to a boss of mine many years ago and he lost a lot of money. I do not trust PayPal for one second. When I sell, it is usually a game and I require cash on pickup. Though, I tried recently to sell something small that I would have to ship. I did not realize that money orders are no longer allowed. Because I cannot take credit cards directly and do not want to use PayPal, I cannot sell anything that I do not want picked up locally. Nobody is going to drive halfway across the country to pick up a dollar bill acceptor. Those jerks even have it set up so that if you have the words "money order" in your listing, they can remove the listing. Buttholes. If I get money order scammed (not all that likely) its my fault and my problem. I thought it was still a free country.


On the other hand, they did come through for me one time. I had a project Tank II on there and stated in bold letters that it was pick up only and some guy in California (I'm in Nebraska). I went through the standard junk about him picking it up, though I knew it was highly unlikely. After not hearing from the guy for however long, I reported it and he negged me. I disputed it and they eventually removed the neg. He said something like "seller unlwilling to come to a mutually beneficial agreement" when I was practically bending over backwards to do what was originally agreed to. Yeah, I was steamed, but at least they removed the neg.
 
I will rob a liquor store before is use eBay if I am desperate for money. You have less chance of getting fucked with the first choice.
 
The monopoly they have couldnt be any truer. After this incident, one of the first thoughts is "Eff Ebay, i am not using them again".

Of course, I am immediately reminded - what else do i have to turn to for specific market segment items that need maximum exposure? Its like Americas dependence on oil. They are the only game in town. The only other FS resources i have are CL, and msg boards here, both location or small community focus.

It would be great to see somebody come along one day and actually compete with Ebay!

One good trend i see - I do find myself buying LESS through Ebay. Is tough to find any good deals, seems like everyone now is running at retail pricing. Ebay set up a market where everything under the sun has been pretty much sold there, which established a market price for these "rarer" items, so sellers have a reference of value and use that + a markup. Items have been marked up considerably -i am less inclined to buy through them.
 
i think it started to really go down hill when eBay bought out PayPal. That was the beginning of the end as far as I was concerned.

I didn't know they ban money orders now, jeez.
 
Also I'm pissed at paypal because they put holds on money received outside of ebay as well.

Ok enough ranting.
 
Here's a good one to add to my eBay selling experiences. Sold a working iPhone as-is, I later received positive feedback from him saying 'Works great, great seller'...Six months go by and he emails me and says there is something wrong with the phone and needs to return it! I basically responded with a "Sorry, this was sold as-is, you gave me positive feedback, not to mention nearly 6 months have passed!"

I thought that was the end of it...a few weeks later I get a Paypal notification telling me that he has initiated a chargeback with his credit card company.

I provided shipping proof, auction details and also mentioned the fact that he already gave me positive feedback and more than 6 months had passed on a Sold As-Is auction.

Once a credit card company is involved Paypal seems to stick it's tail between it's legs and cower in the corner. (It's in Paypal's terms of service that whatever the cc company decides is what stands...)

Needless to say I was eventually out $150 bucks and never got the phone back. I still to this day can not believe the absurdity of this one. I still have a sour taste in my mouth over this one..

Paypal doesn't get a choice about obeying the CC company - from the CC's point of view, PP is just another merchant and the CC companies don't take much of anything in the way of pushback from merchants.

The problem (as usual with PayPal) is that they have NO incentive to actually care that there's fraud going on - they aren't the ones who are paying out.
 
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