eBay

[Sugar_Kane]

Yea I had to do that recently, sometimes people won't pay or answer your messages, probably regretting their bid and hoping to kick it under the carpet and walk away whistling a merry tune.


It's a really disgraceful system for sellers as it wastes so much of your time. You have to contact them and wait days for a response, then you are allowed to open an unpaid item case against them and wait while ebay tries to contact them, then when that fails they grant you your fees back and give them an unpaid item strike, of which I think you need three before they'll suspend your account.


The most annoying thing about this type of behaviour is that if they just explained the situation to me, or even lied nicely about it, then I would have been sympathetic and relisted. Instead they have to cause everyone ball ache and waste your time.


eBay really can be Satan's botty trumpet.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Once i won a bid on a transformers figure that would normally sell for well over a hundred euros on ebay. the bid ended at about 50 dollars or such.


When i contacted the guy he said he couldnt poswt it as the postage prices he was quoted were huge. In simple terms he just expected to make alot more money selling the figure and the final bid price was not enough for him so he made up rubbish about huge postage prices. Id already had many large transformers figures sent to me from the us before and the prices were normal.oh well.

 

[milkshake]

@wrath of kahn so what happened with that figure in the end?

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

I know the feeling of someone not sending an item when it went for less than expected, won a knuckles chaotix for £60 complete and in good condition, he told me that he wanted £150 for it and wouldn't send it until I paid the rest.... Isn't that what reserves are for?


I have a lot to sell and I want to rid myself of these things before I move to America, a few consoles and games among other things and I utterly refuse to use eBay because of how bad my experiences with it is.

 

[Prometheus]

I know the feeling of someone not sending an item when it went for less than expected, won a knuckles chaotix for £60 complete and in good condition, he told me that he wanted £150 for it and wouldn't send it until I paid the rest.... Isn't that what reserves are for?

Exactly. And many sellers shy away from them because 1: if memory serves, they cost more, and 2: they do put people off, because they're so often used for unrealistic amounts. :lol: (Obviously this doesn't apply so much to certain types of items, but as far as games go, this seems to be the most frequent use for reserves.)


EDIT: As an aside, the ones I find funny are those who write a ton of (usually inaccurate) guff about how rare the item is, how it's the only one on eBay, and how they've had it appraised by experts, and how if the item doesn't sell for £Ridiculous, they'll be happy to keep it, when they've failed to research that one or more actually sold on eBay recently for a fraction of what they're looking to get. :lol:

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

I know they put people off, I'm guilty for shying away, but you have no idea what the reserve is until you place a bid equal to or greater, if I had some idea of what they expect then I'd be more inclined to bid on them.


If I'm buying from eBay I tend to use an app, iPhone or what not, I find the site a chore to navigate and often frustrating, I try not to use eBay at all but sometimes it's the lesser of an evil. (have just brought a card reader a few minutes previously as I brought a new laptop today and it doesn't a card reader built in unlike my last one which just knackered up).

 

[Prometheus]

^ Some sellers don't mind if you drop them a line to ask them, at least... Though some can be quite rude about it, unfortunately (more fool them, as there have been some cases over time where I would have been willing to offer the price up-front but their rudeness turned me away ).

 

[vcoleiro1]

On the whole my ebay experience has been good, sure Ive had this recent bad experience, but I have bought 105 items on ebay so 1-2 bad experiences out of 105 isn't bad. In the end it just represents the community as a whole, the good, the bad, and ok, yes the ugly. That said you will find all that elsewhere, for eg I have noticed more scams on Gumtree (a local classifieds site) than on ebay.


Actually even on small community forums you get the bad also. For eg I was after a Vectrex as Ive always wanted one. So I placed a wanted note in the wanted section of a forum I visit almost as much as this one. Its a small forum about the same size as this and everyone is pretty nice. However, about a week later another user replied and said that if I was serious about acquiring one, they are worth $1300 (with 10 games in this example). I had been looking at them on ebay and one had just sold with 10 games for $245 so I posted it as a reply. His reply, Oh but then youll have to pay $400 or so for delivery. So I posted the fact that the delivery was a $100. They still argued until by utter coincidence the person who won the ebay auction was part of the same forum and had then posted that he bought it and all the particulars including the shipping etc. One more parting blow, the guy replied one more time and said oh, it wont work with our voltage (hmm, heard of voltage convertor). So theres good and bad everywhere.

 

[Phelsumania]

when that fails they grant you your fees back and give them an unpaid item strike, of which I think you need three before they'll suspend your account.

heres a random one for you i bought multiple items of an ebay seller and paid for them (i am adamant i payed clicked pay now and input my password) however for whatever reason the payent never processed. and this was during a time when i never checked my emails because i never recieved anything of any imortance at the time and it was always clogged with messages from facebook about comments on pages, so i just ignored the email account.


Anyway a month has now passed and my items have not showed up so i thought i would check my ebay/email account for the first time in ages to see what was going on. This resulted in me discovering my account had been suspended, however all this is or did at the time (this is a good two years ago) was suspend my paypal account not ebay account. and i was able to set up a new paypal account using the same card from my previous paypal account just using my alternate email adress. and bang could use ebay again using the new paypal account for buying items. and i still am using that account to this day.


It was a genuin mistake and i did email ebay explaining this and appologised to the matey i owed money, but this was obviously a good month after i had comited to buying from the seller and he had already made an unpaid case and won it (which i would have done myself and hold nothing against him for it)


But ye if this systems still inplace with the ebay account set up i dont think banning users actually works unless specific bank cards are now blocked its possible to get round a ban which did work out quite nicely for me, but does seem like a bit of a shame that unwanted users can still gain access aswell if they wish

 

[Prometheus]

but does seem like a bit of a shame that unwanted users can still gain access aswell if they wish

Unfortunately, that seems to the case everywhere - even here, sometimes.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

Yea I have no illusions that anything bad will happen to the nasty people on eBay, the buyers are just too important to them to ban indefinitely.


I do like to use ebay still though because it's a bit of a rush watching your items, particularly if they're successful. I had about 50 items on there at one point when I sold my games collection, although out of those I had three non-payers and one person gave me my first bit of neutral feedback, tarnishing my perfect record (he bought a Genesis cartridge that I advertised as "good condition" which it was, and the picture showed it well, he rated me neutral because he said that it wasn't in mint condition despite looking so in the picture! I told him that The picture showed it to the best of my ability and it was clearly not mint hence why I had advertised as "good", I hadn't had time to write a detailed description as I had listed almost 50 items at once, assuming that if anyone wished to know more then they would ask a question. So he replied by graciously accepting my statement as an apology, which it was not, and then telling me that in the future I should take better pictures and write better descriptions, the utter twat. What makes it worse was that he paid the princely sum of £2 for it, who gripes over £2!).


It's always a gamble when you have to deal with humans. Most of the time I've had positive experiences on there, but as my illustrious colleagues have already pointed out; There's nowt so queer as folk, and you'll see that first hand in all corners of the internet

 

[Phelsumania]

one person gave me my first bit of neutral feedback, tarnishing my perfect record (he bought a Genesis cartridge that I advertised as "good condition" which it was, and the picture showed it well, he rated me neutral because he said that it wasn't in mint condition despite looking so in the picture!

what an A hole

 

[Jumpman]

one person gave me my first bit of neutral feedback, tarnishing my perfect record (he bought a Genesis cartridge that I advertised as "good condition" which it was, and the picture showed it well, he rated me neutral because he said that it wasn't in mint condition despite looking so in the picture!

what an A hole

Don't let the feedback bother you. I used to worry about it, and then I got guys like this who just have nothing better to do, and I stop trying to fight the system. I just figure if I have 1000+ satisfied customers, and a few clowns leave nuetral or negative feedback, my reputation speaks for itself.


It does suck when this happens, and that you can't really leave the same for slow payers, or the buyers that cuase you nothing but problems. Ebay is always on the side of the buyers, and I doubt that will ever change.


Chris

 

[WizardStan]

Whenever I see someone with hundreds of perfect feedback and nothing bad I get suspicious because I KNOW there are these assholes that put negative (or neutral) feedback for stupid reasons and if you've really been dealing with ebay for as long as you say you have been then odds are that you've encountered one of these jerks and if you haven't then I'm guessing that all your good feedback is friend, bot, or otherwise fake accounts.


Not necessarily, of course, but it makes me curious.


On the other hand, if you've got 98% positive feed back and I start reading your negatives and see they're frivolous things (especially if you've responded to the bad feedback with your side of the story) then I'm going to trust you almost implicitly.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

In that case would you like to buy some magic beans?

 

[Prometheus]

Whenever I see someone with hundreds of perfect feedback and nothing bad I get suspicious because I KNOW there are these assholes that put negative (or neutral) feedback for stupid reasons and if you've really been dealing with ebay for as long as you say you have been then odds are that you've encountered one of these jerks and if you haven't then I'm guessing that all your good feedback is friend, bot, or otherwise fake accounts.


Not necessarily, of course, but it makes me curious.


On the other hand, if you've got 98% positive feed back and I start reading your negatives and see they're frivolous things (especially if you've responded to the bad feedback with your side of the story) then I'm going to trust you almost implicitly.

Some relatives of mine have a 100% feedback record, just through doing things right.


It's worth knowing that it is possible to get unwarranted negative feedbacks removed under certain circumstances, which they have had to do about twice in all the years they've been using it (about a decade or so). Apparently eBay frowns upon libellous or threatening feedback, or, if memory serves, feedback that's a blatant lie (and can be proven so).

 

[Asmo]

I got a negative feedback removed (my only one out of around 250 at the time) with just a couple of emails. A non paying bidder who (it seemed apparent to me) got freaked out that after 2 weeks and no payment or communication, I was still sending emails asking whether or not they were going to complete the transaction. No rudeness on my part, just asking what the story was. They then decided to pre-empt any action by placing a negative on me claiming I had 'ignored all attempts at communication'. I used an email address exclusively for dealing with buyers and gave eBay complete access to it to see for themselves. 48hrs later they were suspended and I got my clean feedback back!


I think the type of item you sell is going to be a determining factor in how many idiots you attract. Sadly, games & gadgets probably top the list.

 

[Prometheus]

Ok, guys, try this one on for size...


I recently listed an item, and the winning bidder outbid the top bidder during quite literally the very last second. The now-winning bidder appeared to be some sort of dealer for the same types of item, and even had a couple listed for a much, much higher price than mine sold for (but which don't appear to have been selling). I don't mind who buys, as long as they pay...


But the bidder has not paid - it now appears that it was done to remove competition.


Anyone encountered that before?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

havent encountered that before but often you can buy an action figure for 600 dollars and the same figure is also available at just 100 dollars by someone else.Some people are just scalpers. for example in this auctionhttp://www.ebay.ie/sch/i.html?_nkw=sideshow+highlander&_sacat=0&_dmd=1&_odkw=.ebay&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313 the highlander kurgan figure is listed at 500+ euros whilst also available for just over 100 euros.Scalpers.

 

[Jumpman]

Ebay really needs to step up and make a better system for non paying buyers. Almost everytime I have a good amount of listings during the week, I always get 1 or 2 non paying bidders(it's like clock work). When it is all said and done, it is just a complete waste of my time and effort.


Yeah, I get whatever fees back, but when these losers out bid a legit buyer, I lose business and Ebay could care less. Ebay really does follow "the buyer is always right" mentality, but that is just not the case a lot of the time.


Chris