Using eBay these days feels like playing World of Warcraft.
If you're a high level eBay user, it's a fantastic place to move goods, but god forbid someone new signs up to buy or sell something. Just like what it must be like to sign up and play World of Warcraft for the first time.
Yeah, there are all kinds of tools and procedures available to you but not made obvious, and all kinds of unwritten rules and guidelines to be aware of that you're never told about. Things you only learn because you get burnt once (or more).
And this applies equally to WoW and eBay, definitely. At least in WoW you generally have a guild to let you know in advance what mistakes you're likely to make. On eBay, you're on your own.
Also rules change between regions, in AU eBay they encourage an email address on the listing for support. In the US the API will give you some abstract message about policies which you have to go away and guess yourself what it might be (turned out to be the email address)
At the risk of going off-topic, this is yet another example of regulatory capture at work: as systems evolve they often forget to cater to outsiders.
Codebases exhibit a similar dynamic. Open source projects need to track how long ago their newest regular contributor joined. I think they'll find the results illuminating.
Eh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lucky, but selling stuff on eBay (which I have done a grand total of three times during four years or so) always seems to work out for me.
In summer I sold my year old iPad 2 with a broken glass cover (otherwise fully functional, the 32GB/3G model) for €349 (someone bid €350 but told me after the auction that they thought the iPad was not broken – I was already writing off the sale at that point but the next bidder happily paid and left a very positive review). That’s just crazy! I thought I could get €100 or so tops, not half the original retail price!
Selling a camera and an iPod went similarly well. It probably goes wrong sometimes, though probably in a small minority of cases. And really, those $2 for listing the product really aren’t the end of the world. (Also, eBay has since forever been very explicit about those fees and that they have to be paid regardless of what happens. There is no way you can miss that when putting a product on there.)
I mentioned it below, but just to reply specifically here: eBay is very specific about fees that have to be paid regardless of sale, that's cool. I'd understand it totally if the auction just failed to be successful or if I'd backed out or whatever.
But when you fail that hard to provide a good product or service and people ask you for a refund, you give it to them. I've done it cheerfully for accounts up to a hundred dollars in fees even. This is just two bucks, and it's more the principle of the thing than the actual money anyhow.
I didn't just not sell my phone, I wasted weeks of time trying to fight their system to do it, and lost probably a good hundred dollars of resale value due to timing.
Don't accuse me of something I didn't do. I very clearly marked the iPad as broken in its title. It was also categorized as such. I tried it out: When you search for iPads you have to explicitly mark a checkbox to even make broken iPads (including mine) appear in the search.
I'm still somewhat mystified how someone looking for a intact iPad could even have stumbled across my iPad. You have to be pretty explicit about wanting to see broken stuff on eBay.
(Resolving that issue, by the way, was actually a bit annoying. The mistaken buyer wrote me an e-mail, pleading me to not give her a negative review and asking for cancelling the sale. At that point you have to ask them to tell eBay that they mistakenly bought the product, otherwise you won't get your fees back. Offering the product to a lower bidder, however, is very painless and it did all work out in the end.)
I recently tried to sell a Samsung Galaxy Tab on eBay, and had a similar experience. The second chance buyer, on the second listing, was the first person who was actually willing to buy the product and at that point the procedure went smoothly.
However, it should not take until the second buyer of the second listing, and if it is going to take that long ebay should indeed make it easier to get to someone who will actually buy my item.
eBay has listing fees, of course you are going to be up for them regardless. Personally I would just set a reasonable price buy it now with immediate PayPal payment required, no need to waste your time then with anyone who hasn't already sent money your way.
Actually, if your auction doesn't sell, you can get most of your fees refunded. There are, however, some fees that they don't refund, for whatever reason, and those are what are leftover here.
And honestly, I don't fault them for that part specifically. I used their service which has fees as advertised, okay cool.
But what wasn't advertised was the incredible anti-seller bias, the terrible scammers I'd have to fight, and the absolutely awful customer service I'd have to endure. Normally when a company fails to provide a product that hard, you can ask for your money back and get it.
I've had a number of attempts at adding a "Buy it now" and some scammer from Nigeria (every time) ends up "buying it" and sending phishing emails. Only to have to wait again to put it up for sale after a few days.
Of course you can. But for now, scammers seem to be relatively rare compared to eBay. And maybe, just maybe Amazon has better dispute resolution and anti-scammer policies than eBay/Paypal.
Same experience here. Once I found the 'block other countries and people with zero feedback' option I sold a few phones successfully at a good price (don't even try selling without setting that option).
A few weeks ago I attempted to sell an iPhone 4S. The first buyer pulled out with some pathetic excuse about his amplifier breaking. I re-listed and the second buyer didn't pay with some equally unlikely excuse about his daughter accidentally buying it.
eBay doesn't penalise non-paying buyers anywhere near enough, It's a huge waste of everybody's time, especially with time-sensitive sales.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
I tried selling my car on ebay motors and was a victim of spammers bidding on my car. I would get bids but within 2 days ebay would delete it automatically and email me saying bid was invalid. The whole bidding cycle went in vain so I re-listed again. This time I din't get any bids but I still ended up paying eBay $49 listing fees after numerous emails. eBay has become insane.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
I don't get why the default action of most people is to feel compelled by whatever a company's accounting system tells them to do. Both this and that also-popular cable box story. There are two autonomous sides to every relationship. If you don't value your ability to use ebay again in the future at more than $2, give their customer service department a good-faith 15 minutes of your time to fulfill their elective processes. If you can't come to an agreement with that reasonable time expenditure, tell them to go screw.
So at that point you repudiate the debt again, this time to the collections agency. If they insist on unilaterally publicly claiming you owe money without any sort of actual proof, take them to court for slander. Clearly the buck stops somewhere, as I can't just call up a collection agency and tell them that bduerst owes me $1 for responding to his HN comment.
The fact that they only offer phone support is not a company doing its fair share to try to connect with me over problems. It's them putting up roadblocks to try to avoid having to deal with me. Given that, I don't feel I have the obligation to attempt to sit through their various roadblocks.
It was honestly far easier and satisfying to just give them the two bucks and then report the facts of my experience onto the internet.
Plus, with any luck someone thinking about selling on eBay in the future will run across this post, think twice, and be saved the trouble I was. So I feel pretty good about that too.
The choice you made was between the two options they gave you. Either outcome is part of their system, and perfectly fine by them. There was also third option wherein you notify them that the debt is invalid because no services were rendered, and that it is not your responsibility to convince their systems and processes of that fact.
Yup, and in the end, I'm fine with the choice I made - pay them and then let people know how awful the experience was. This has been worth $2 for me, I hope it was worth $2 for them.
The proof is that you listed the items which is clearly logged and visible.. The charge is for the listing not successfully completing an auction/sale.
See, this is a prime example of what I mean. There's no dispute that he listed items, so proof of such is irrelevant. However, you're taking the purported meaning of the cryptically phrased document-that-nobody-reads as immutable truth. Fact is that ebay failed to successfully execute the auction - they accepted bids from the guys in the back with the way-out-of-range numbers hand-drawn on cardboard.
>...cryptically phrased document-that-nobody-reads as immutable truth.
If you agree to use a service without reading the fine print, then you're obligated to what you agree to. "Nobody reads it" is not an excuse that a judge uses to nullify a contract.
eBay is a great place for scammers to get free stuff!
every few years, my girlfriend gives eBay another chance and tries selling something. Every single time, she gets scammed. Each time, the buyer claims he didn't receive the goods or received the wrong thing. eBay automatically sides with the buyer and immediately refunds their money. In cases where the buyer claims they received the wrong thing, they either fail to return it or return something different.
Furthermore, sellers cannot give negative feedback to buyers so there is no concept of buyer reputation. On top of this, you will still be charged for the listing.
I've used eBay to buy and sell furniture locally with some success. This is, however, a very small niche that is starting to be better served by http://gumtree.com.au here.
A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed. I sold some iTunes gift cards and provided the redemption code from the card after I received payment. We both left positive feedback for each other (he already had 18 feedback).
A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse. Worse still, Paypal charged ME $50 more because of the chargeback! Despite my sending them the code (which they requested, and through ebays messaging system), I had to have delivery confirmation from a shipper to prove I sent it. Even though they have the messages proving the delivery/receipt, too bad for me. I tried calling paypal, and that got nowhere. They said something like "sorry, it will cost $200 to investigate the chargeback further, so it's probably not worth it". I told them I'd write it off to my not understanding their policy on "seller protection", but at least do something about the scammers account. Of course they said they couldn't, nor could the refund any of the fees.
So now I'm out the $30 for my item, $50 more because paypal incurred a chargeback, plus ebay fees, plus the guy got positive feedback and went on to do this to other people! Totally incredulous.
Instead of blogging about it though, I've decided to build a company to compete with ebay. Wish me luck =)
If you ever launch it, let me know and I will do my utmost to promote it.
If you'd launched already I would have happily sold my iPhone through you. There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.
>A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed.
Most of the big online sites (Paypal is the worst offender, but the others aren't much better) favor buyers over sellers. Amazon certainly works that way, and, as a result, I'm mostly use Craigslist to sell computers and cameras/lenses. I don't sell all that much stuff, though I do it for family members, but I'm familiar enough to have an opinion.
Craigslist has its own dangers, but those can be mitigated through meeting in public or in police station lobbies.
I've bought, and sold, many things via Craigslist. I funded a cross-country move by selling the things I couldn't fit into my truck and u-haul trailer using Craigslist.
Having said that, I dislike the meeting-up aspect of Craigslist. For all of the money I've "made" by selling my stuff through them, there have been countless times where the person on the other end of the phone never shows up and leaves me there waiting.
Overall, it's been a positive experience. I'll continue using them for the foreseeable future.
Bonanza.com (the site I've been building for about four years now) has become one of the largest non-eBay marketplaces by scooping up sellers like you & the OP. We're now up to 25,000 active sellers and 4 million listings by virtue of having seller-friendly policies.
Admittedly, there is enough gray area in marketplace transactions where determining "right and wrong" can sometimes prove difficult. But I like to think that we start from a neutral POV, rather than the "buyer is always right" mentality that eBay has increasingly gravitated toward.
2 years ago I caught a lady selling handbags (that she didn't really have) from your site. I caught her because she was having people pay through an account with our service (nextproof.com).
Guess who had to eat the chargeback fees? I did
Guess who had to call other people, inform them the handbag they ordered as a Christmas gift was bogus, then listen to them cry? I did
All that to say, if you (or anyone else) has a successful marketplace, shady folks will swarm to you and you will have no choice but to figure out buyer and seller protection policies.
Don't make critical purchases from random people on the Internet? We should never blame the victim, nevertheless everyone should be thaught a basic level of "Internet street smarts".
You should work with Brian Armstrong to allow sellers / buyers to use bitcoins on the site. The advantage is that bitcoin does not allow chargebacks. Their interface is very close to PayPal, and makes it much easier to get started with.
With bitcoin you can do some surprisingly complex things. Such as move money into a fund that the other people can verify are there, which only pays out on a trigger condition.
Only use Buy It Now ever.
Require Immediate Payment.
Not only are the fees lower for Buy It Now than for auctions, but there's no way for buyers to game you. The listing will sit until someone actually pays you.
As someone who uses eBay to buy specific out-of-print books, I vastly prefer the Buy It Now option, as long as the price is reasonable. I'm not really looking for incredible bargains, so auctions are just annoying.
With some items you might not know how much they're worth, but it's easy enough to determine the going price of a used iPhone.
Speaking of buy it now, I find it moronic that the buy it now button disappears when even one bid has been entered for the item.
This weekend I bid for an item, then 1 hour later decided that I wanted to pay the 10% extra for buy it now, discovered to my dismay that the buy it now option was gone, thought that the seller had manually removed it, got annoyed and retracted my bid, then saw the buy it now button come back (!) and then managed to buy it now.
I have no idea why they'd make the behavior like this...
If you know that Buy It Now disappears as soon as someone bids, then you're more likely to Buy It Now because if you don't Buy It Now, you can't buy it later; you can only bid on it later, and then you might not get it. So if you want it, eBay wants you to Buy It Now.
I wanted to provide somewhat of a counterpoint – I have been using e-bay (Australia) for about 7 years. I sell all kinds of stuff ranging from a broken bookcase for $1, which I didn’t want to haul to the tip, all the way up to a boat for $950. I also run a small business selling items via a website and my e-bay account [1][2].
Overall I’ve found my e-bay experience to be very positive. I’ve only had one person who I suspected of scamming me, when they claimed they didn’t receive the item I posted. The vast majority of users are just normal people looking to pick up a bargain. It helps that some of my items are pick up only and that I am not selling electronics.
Every few years an article like this pops up and I get concerned and start looking at other places to sell my products. What I inevitably find is that no other auction site has the users base that e-bay does, so my items inevitably don’t sell, or the price is significantly lower than what I would get on e-bay. It’s possible to build a better experience than e-bay, but up until now nobody has managed to do it.
Finally, I think what the writer of the article was looking for was an ‘unpaid item dispute’. He needed to open once against the original bidder, and if they didn’t don’t pay within a certain time limit, and then I believe e-bay will refund the fees. E-bay also records unpaid item disputes against buyers and will limit what they can do. [3]
OP here. Glad eBay is working out for you! Honestly, there are a lot of tools and useful techniques for sellers to get a positive experience, but they're just hidden or you only seem to learn them after you've gotten burned already. As a seller who hasn't been on eBay for many years though, it's just a very harsh experience filled with hidden pitfalls.
And I was able to submit unpaid item disputes successfully for the majority of the oustanding fees or I'd have been on the hook for closer to $70. However, there was a final $2 that they refused to refund because certain selling fees are un-refundable for some reason, and that's what I got stuck with in the end.
So wait, you basically got around $68 back and you posted this blog post ABOUT losing less than 5% (around 3%) from a failed transaction? Whereas there are other people who have legitimate complaints having lost >50% of their item value along with fees. Wow..... I really do want to understand the rationale behind this. Explain.
I think he did it for all the time wasted and dealing with such a horrid experience on top of the $2. It's also opened up a discussion here where people have had even worse experiences. I think it's a great discussion to have.
Realistically, how much time did he waste over the benefits of the actually selling the item to someone who pays for the item. You take a risk when you enter into a contract without knowing what you are doing. How bad was the experience really? He said he got back MOST of what he wanted, but it appears that he needed to get $2 more in order to close this case, but they would not refund an unrefundable $2, that I would bet is told to you when you hit the confirmation page.
The OP goes to the extreme length saying to never sell on eBay, which is a crap response considering what he got back. eBay is a reasonable place to sell products to legitimate customers. Bad experiences exist everywhere, but it is not the overwhelming culture the OP makes it out to be. The generalization of his "bad" experience is not reasonable, so I'd like to know his rationale for doing that.
So let's say you sign up with a hosting provider and they are just terrible. Your site's down all the time and FTP is slow as molasses, etc. You go ask for a refund because not only did they not provide the level of service they advertised, they actively wasted your time. You'd be just fine if they said "Sure, but only most of it because of reasons"?
There's a lot of people echoing my experience here. So if there's a lot of people selling on eBay and getting nothing out of it but losing small amounts of money each time, I'm cool if that's something I prevent.
Should I follow your flawed logic? How does a crap host relate to eBay? Are you saying that eBay is a shit marketplace? Please provide proof to back up this defamatory claim. You took a risk using eBay's resource, you lost money due to a fee for using their resource, that is reasonable.
I gave you a chance to explain your rationale and you failed as all I'm getting is the feeling of someone who has a silver spoon in their mouth. It is a marketplace, you used their resource, someone didn't pay, you said you used one of their protections, it worked, but you needed to get an unrefundable $2 back, so you went to CS who did not want to refund it. There are more people who had a worse experience than this such as losing their item, fees, and not getting any support. If anything you got the closer to ideal case of this and you are complaining about it. That's crap.
I no longer have anything to contribute to this as I am wasting my time here.
Good heavens on some scale every injustice is petty. You imply that the OP's problem is petty compared to more serious eBay dispute - but what stops someone from descrying the pettiness of those thousand-dollar disputes, because someone got screwed on a mortgage, worth tens or hundreds of thousands? What's to stop someone attacking you for bring up an injustice that just involves money when women are being systematically raped and murdered in sub Saharan Africa?
You need to get off your high horse and stop attacking someone for expressing disgust over a small amount of money.
I would add an important fact, one which I've never heard expressed but which I have not seen an exception to: the net sum of petty injustice in this world is far, far greater than the great injustices done in this world. The reason? Because people like you shut down those who would spend the time to fight it. Meanwhile, eBay takes $2 here, $2 there and laughs all the way to the bank with millions.
So wait, you basically got a full story about my frustrations and issues with a major company and you posted a comment about the least important part of the story (the $ value)? Whereas there are other people who have legitimate complaints about being lied to about >50% of campaign promises along with facts. Wow... I really do want to understand the rationale behind this. Explain.
How does this contribute to the discussion at all? Answer the damned question. The immaturity that emanates from this is amazing. :) Go troll somewhere else. EDIT: Sure this could have been phrased better had the parent poster show some respect. I said I wanted to know the rationale behind the post, he chose to add an empty post, so yes this is warranted. I did not say anything vitriolic enough that warranted the parent post. If you didn't like the "explain" portion, that's fine, point it out and respond appropriately.
Honestly, it's usually trolls using the word troll. That combined with the lack of empathy and entitlement displayed in your original comment compelled me to check your comment history. You're a nice person in there though. What gives? I'm genuinely curious if I struck a nerve or something.
But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and let me ignore how entitled and demanding your "Explain" was, and actually explain.
It's not that the transaction was a failure that upsets me, nor is it the actual end cost to me. It was the abysmal entire experience, from start to finish. There are plenty of reputable companies that - when faced with a customer who has had a bad experience are happy to refund them their money and apologize for the inconvenience. eBay doesn't do that, and makes it as difficult as possible to actually contact them to resolve it.
Now, this is entirely speculation based on what I've learned from the comments here and on my blog and via Google, but odds are very very good I would never have gotten that money back anyway. And odds are very very good I would have been on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes in queue.
But ultimately in the end, the fact that I had to pay any money to them after having such a terrible experience, just to get them to stop bombarding my inbox with "SWEAR TO GOD, WE WILL SEND YOU TO COLLECTIONS (also don't reply to this email we won't read it)" is a complete failure of customer service. That's what's unacceptable, not the % of the fees I got back.
IMHO your original 'request' was phrased as an indignant demand. Of course, the OP should have just downvoted and moved on. But now there seems to be some confusion, so I hope this clarification from the peanut gallery is useful.
For used cars, gumtree is the business. I just sold a used car on there and had several times the response I did from the same ad on carsales.com.au, which cost $60, was much harder to use and so was basically poor value for money.
Coming into a market as a new seller is always hard. The established merchants have already figured out who the thieves are, so the thieves generally target the new sellers. The established merchants don't want new sellers there, so they elbow them out in various ways.
Your experience would also be bad the first few times selling at a flea market or a street corner. Only with a fair bit of experience can you get your profit margin above zero.
Scammers, confusing auction settings, limited integration with paypal despite owning them, terrible invoice generation, image uploads that don't work without Flash, etc. I despise eBay.
That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing label for you, plus deduct shipping charges from your payout. Scammers are mildly annoying, but they waste very little of your time and don't cost you any money.
I've sold a few iPhones and an iPad on Amazon and it has been great. I'll never sell items anywhere else if I can possibly help it.
Edit: in addition to the iPhones/iPad, I've sold a few games and other electronics on Amazon. Out of maybe 10 sales, two were "bought" by scammers. Amazon sends me an email saying that someone purchased my item, but they may be a fraudulent account. Do not send anything until Amazon confirms that they are valid. It's such an easy, friendly process.
I believe you can also sell electronics TO Amazon. Probably at a reduced price, but I got several hundred dollars in amazon credit (equal to cash for my personal use) for an iPhone once. It was absurdly easy.
I was pretty frustrated when I sold my iPhone 4 when the 4S launched, had a winning bidder, who then never paid or contacted me. Couldn't leave negative feedback on them at all, and they continue to bid on stuff they don't intend on actually paying for, with sellers none the wiser that the bidder is a shitty person.
I've been a long time eBay user and have also had issues over the past year with a couple of unpaid items and having to relist. The annoying part was not being able to give the buyer negative feedback, allowing him/her to waste someone else's time.
What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?
131 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadIf you're a high level eBay user, it's a fantastic place to move goods, but god forbid someone new signs up to buy or sell something. Just like what it must be like to sign up and play World of Warcraft for the first time.
And this applies equally to WoW and eBay, definitely. At least in WoW you generally have a guild to let you know in advance what mistakes you're likely to make. On eBay, you're on your own.
Codebases exhibit a similar dynamic. Open source projects need to track how long ago their newest regular contributor joined. I think they'll find the results illuminating.
In summer I sold my year old iPad 2 with a broken glass cover (otherwise fully functional, the 32GB/3G model) for €349 (someone bid €350 but told me after the auction that they thought the iPad was not broken – I was already writing off the sale at that point but the next bidder happily paid and left a very positive review). That’s just crazy! I thought I could get €100 or so tops, not half the original retail price!
Selling a camera and an iPod went similarly well. It probably goes wrong sometimes, though probably in a small minority of cases. And really, those $2 for listing the product really aren’t the end of the world. (Also, eBay has since forever been very explicit about those fees and that they have to be paid regardless of what happens. There is no way you can miss that when putting a product on there.)
But when you fail that hard to provide a good product or service and people ask you for a refund, you give it to them. I've done it cheerfully for accounts up to a hundred dollars in fees even. This is just two bucks, and it's more the principle of the thing than the actual money anyhow.
I didn't just not sell my phone, I wasted weeks of time trying to fight their system to do it, and lost probably a good hundred dollars of resale value due to timing.
I have had no problems selling and buying on ebay, in Australia and the UK. Maybe US is worse?
I'm still somewhat mystified how someone looking for a intact iPad could even have stumbled across my iPad. You have to be pretty explicit about wanting to see broken stuff on eBay.
(Resolving that issue, by the way, was actually a bit annoying. The mistaken buyer wrote me an e-mail, pleading me to not give her a negative review and asking for cancelling the sale. At that point you have to ask them to tell eBay that they mistakenly bought the product, otherwise you won't get your fees back. Offering the product to a lower bidder, however, is very painless and it did all work out in the end.)
However, it should not take until the second buyer of the second listing, and if it is going to take that long ebay should indeed make it easier to get to someone who will actually buy my item.
And honestly, I don't fault them for that part specifically. I used their service which has fees as advertised, okay cool.
But what wasn't advertised was the incredible anti-seller bias, the terrible scammers I'd have to fight, and the absolutely awful customer service I'd have to endure. Normally when a company fails to provide a product that hard, you can ask for your money back and get it.
… Better just to sell via Amazon and use their fulfillment service.
eBay doesn't penalise non-paying buyers anywhere near enough, It's a huge waste of everybody's time, especially with time-sensitive sales.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
It was honestly far easier and satisfying to just give them the two bucks and then report the facts of my experience onto the internet.
Plus, with any luck someone thinking about selling on eBay in the future will run across this post, think twice, and be saved the trouble I was. So I feel pretty good about that too.
If you agree to use a service without reading the fine print, then you're obligated to what you agree to. "Nobody reads it" is not an excuse that a judge uses to nullify a contract.
Basically never use ebay.
A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse. Worse still, Paypal charged ME $50 more because of the chargeback! Despite my sending them the code (which they requested, and through ebays messaging system), I had to have delivery confirmation from a shipper to prove I sent it. Even though they have the messages proving the delivery/receipt, too bad for me. I tried calling paypal, and that got nowhere. They said something like "sorry, it will cost $200 to investigate the chargeback further, so it's probably not worth it". I told them I'd write it off to my not understanding their policy on "seller protection", but at least do something about the scammers account. Of course they said they couldn't, nor could the refund any of the fees.
So now I'm out the $30 for my item, $50 more because paypal incurred a chargeback, plus ebay fees, plus the guy got positive feedback and went on to do this to other people! Totally incredulous.
Instead of blogging about it though, I've decided to build a company to compete with ebay. Wish me luck =)
If you'd launched already I would have happily sold my iPhone through you. There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.
Oddly enough, that's been tried at least once:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pa...
Most of the big online sites (Paypal is the worst offender, but the others aren't much better) favor buyers over sellers. Amazon certainly works that way, and, as a result, I'm mostly use Craigslist to sell computers and cameras/lenses. I don't sell all that much stuff, though I do it for family members, but I'm familiar enough to have an opinion.
Craigslist has its own dangers, but those can be mitigated through meeting in public or in police station lobbies.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake
I've never used Craigslist. But is it really common or advised to meat with the buyer/seller in a police station lobby?
Having said that, I dislike the meeting-up aspect of Craigslist. For all of the money I've "made" by selling my stuff through them, there have been countless times where the person on the other end of the phone never shows up and leaves me there waiting.
Overall, it's been a positive experience. I'll continue using them for the foreseeable future.
Admittedly, there is enough gray area in marketplace transactions where determining "right and wrong" can sometimes prove difficult. But I like to think that we start from a neutral POV, rather than the "buyer is always right" mentality that eBay has increasingly gravitated toward.
2 years ago I caught a lady selling handbags (that she didn't really have) from your site. I caught her because she was having people pay through an account with our service (nextproof.com).
Guess who had to eat the chargeback fees? I did
Guess who had to call other people, inform them the handbag they ordered as a Christmas gift was bogus, then listen to them cry? I did
All that to say, if you (or anyone else) has a successful marketplace, shady folks will swarm to you and you will have no choice but to figure out buyer and seller protection policies.
That is heavy.
http://coinbase.com/
Especially with callmeed's post[1] above...
[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730281
What data do you have to support your belief that you're doing a better job?
eBay is great for buyers, a horrific minefield for sellers.
Only use Buy It Now ever. Require Immediate Payment.
Not only are the fees lower for Buy It Now than for auctions, but there's no way for buyers to game you. The listing will sit until someone actually pays you.
With some items you might not know how much they're worth, but it's easy enough to determine the going price of a used iPhone.
This weekend I bid for an item, then 1 hour later decided that I wanted to pay the 10% extra for buy it now, discovered to my dismay that the buy it now option was gone, thought that the seller had manually removed it, got annoyed and retracted my bid, then saw the buy it now button come back (!) and then managed to buy it now.
I have no idea why they'd make the behavior like this...
If you know that Buy It Now disappears as soon as someone bids, then you're more likely to Buy It Now because if you don't Buy It Now, you can't buy it later; you can only bid on it later, and then you might not get it. So if you want it, eBay wants you to Buy It Now.
Buy It Now.
Overall I’ve found my e-bay experience to be very positive. I’ve only had one person who I suspected of scamming me, when they claimed they didn’t receive the item I posted. The vast majority of users are just normal people looking to pick up a bargain. It helps that some of my items are pick up only and that I am not selling electronics.
Every few years an article like this pops up and I get concerned and start looking at other places to sell my products. What I inevitably find is that no other auction site has the users base that e-bay does, so my items inevitably don’t sell, or the price is significantly lower than what I would get on e-bay. It’s possible to build a better experience than e-bay, but up until now nobody has managed to do it.
Finally, I think what the writer of the article was looking for was an ‘unpaid item dispute’. He needed to open once against the original bidder, and if they didn’t don’t pay within a certain time limit, and then I believe e-bay will refund the fees. E-bay also records unpaid item disputes against buyers and will limit what they can do. [3]
[1] - http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp
[2] - http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/
[3] - http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html
And I was able to submit unpaid item disputes successfully for the majority of the oustanding fees or I'd have been on the hook for closer to $70. However, there was a final $2 that they refused to refund because certain selling fees are un-refundable for some reason, and that's what I got stuck with in the end.
The OP goes to the extreme length saying to never sell on eBay, which is a crap response considering what he got back. eBay is a reasonable place to sell products to legitimate customers. Bad experiences exist everywhere, but it is not the overwhelming culture the OP makes it out to be. The generalization of his "bad" experience is not reasonable, so I'd like to know his rationale for doing that.
There's a lot of people echoing my experience here. So if there's a lot of people selling on eBay and getting nothing out of it but losing small amounts of money each time, I'm cool if that's something I prevent.
I gave you a chance to explain your rationale and you failed as all I'm getting is the feeling of someone who has a silver spoon in their mouth. It is a marketplace, you used their resource, someone didn't pay, you said you used one of their protections, it worked, but you needed to get an unrefundable $2 back, so you went to CS who did not want to refund it. There are more people who had a worse experience than this such as losing their item, fees, and not getting any support. If anything you got the closer to ideal case of this and you are complaining about it. That's crap.
I no longer have anything to contribute to this as I am wasting my time here.
Good heavens on some scale every injustice is petty. You imply that the OP's problem is petty compared to more serious eBay dispute - but what stops someone from descrying the pettiness of those thousand-dollar disputes, because someone got screwed on a mortgage, worth tens or hundreds of thousands? What's to stop someone attacking you for bring up an injustice that just involves money when women are being systematically raped and murdered in sub Saharan Africa?
You need to get off your high horse and stop attacking someone for expressing disgust over a small amount of money.
I would add an important fact, one which I've never heard expressed but which I have not seen an exception to: the net sum of petty injustice in this world is far, far greater than the great injustices done in this world. The reason? Because people like you shut down those who would spend the time to fight it. Meanwhile, eBay takes $2 here, $2 there and laughs all the way to the bank with millions.
But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and let me ignore how entitled and demanding your "Explain" was, and actually explain.
It's not that the transaction was a failure that upsets me, nor is it the actual end cost to me. It was the abysmal entire experience, from start to finish. There are plenty of reputable companies that - when faced with a customer who has had a bad experience are happy to refund them their money and apologize for the inconvenience. eBay doesn't do that, and makes it as difficult as possible to actually contact them to resolve it.
Now, this is entirely speculation based on what I've learned from the comments here and on my blog and via Google, but odds are very very good I would never have gotten that money back anyway. And odds are very very good I would have been on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes in queue.
But ultimately in the end, the fact that I had to pay any money to them after having such a terrible experience, just to get them to stop bombarding my inbox with "SWEAR TO GOD, WE WILL SEND YOU TO COLLECTIONS (also don't reply to this email we won't read it)" is a complete failure of customer service. That's what's unacceptable, not the % of the fees I got back.
With the listing on e-bay I got two enquiries, both of which were legit. One of the interested parties ended up buying.
Your experience would also be bad the first few times selling at a flea market or a street corner. Only with a fair bit of experience can you get your profit margin above zero.
That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing label for you, plus deduct shipping charges from your payout. Scammers are mildly annoying, but they waste very little of your time and don't cost you any money.
I've sold a few iPhones and an iPad on Amazon and it has been great. I'll never sell items anywhere else if I can possibly help it.
Edit: in addition to the iPhones/iPad, I've sold a few games and other electronics on Amazon. Out of maybe 10 sales, two were "bought" by scammers. Amazon sends me an email saying that someone purchased my item, but they may be a fraudulent account. Do not send anything until Amazon confirms that they are valid. It's such an easy, friendly process.
Guess I'll check that out.
Thanks!
I reached the point where I wrote a little (Shoes) Ruby app that uses a barcode reader and a headless browser to automate the selling :-)
My only complaint is the fees, but I accept that as the price I pay for making it so easy and painless and such a convenience to sell nearly anything.
What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?