Ebay scammers/price pushers

[Aegdaien]

Originally Posted by Eomer

Never buy? Or never sell? I won't buy anything without using my CC because of the protection it offers, but haven't had any issues. I haven't bought a lot on ebay, but I haven't had a single issue with the dozen or so items I've bought. And most were big ticket items like cameras, skis, motorcyle gear, and so on for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

But yeah, selling shit on ebay seems like a gigantic, massive pain in the ass fraught with problems. Buying though? If I don't get my shit or if it's broken, I call up my CC and have them stop payment. Simple.

Sorry. Never sell on ebay. I've never had a problem purchasing items on ebay since the ebay always favors the buyer.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Aegdaien

Sorry. Never sell on ebay. I've never had a problem purchasing items on ebay since the ebay always favors the buyer.

eBay favors whoever files the first dispute claim, as someone mentioned earlier. There are plenty of areas wherein eBay favors the buyer, and there are areas where it favors the seller. But by and large, you're hosed if you have a dispute filed against you. eBay has a very "guilty until proven innocent" mentality about disputes, and they provide you absolutely no recourse during the dispute to reach them for mediation. You have to wait until the filer has closed the dispute or escalated it before eBay even gets involved. By that time, they won't even bother reading both sides of the story most of the time; they'll just hand down a strike/refund against whichever side was unlucky enough to be the target of the dispute.

This is the single scariest thing about buying OR selling on eBay. There is no recourse against frivolous, hasty, or fraudulent claims made against you. There is no way to "dispute the dispute" while it's in progress.

From personal experience, I've had a much easier time being the buyer than the seller. I've bought and sold close to 100 items on eBay over the years, which obviously isn't very many, but still gives me a decent sample size to work with. I'd say that 90 of those auctions were things I bought, and 10 were things I sold. Of the 90 purchases, I had problems with maybe 5 items. Of the 10 things I sold, I had problems with about 4 or 5.

[Aegdaien]

Yeah I guess that's a better way of putting it. I had the same experience with a Paypal dispute. Since the guy who bought the item opened the dispute it was weighted in his favor from the get go. Really I'm more against Paypal than anything but since ebay owns them, I'm sure they have the same shady practices and poor support.

[Hachima]

Originally Posted by Jysin-DW

You guys make me worry about my transaction now. This is the first I have ever sold anything, but I do have the $405 in my bank account. Hmmm...

Doesn't matter if your money is in the bank. They will apply a negative balance to your PayPal account then send collections agencies after you.

They did that to me when someone tried to rip me off. I was firm with my position and I told the collections agencies that if PayPal has issues with someones credit card being stolen that is their problem and PayPal can investigate it and seek damages on their own and it was not my responsibility. I never heard from them since and have nothing against me on my credit report. My paypal account was locked though so I just had to make a new one.

[Arbitrary]

Money orders really are your friend.

From a US bank only.

Think of eBay like prison. You are going to get fucked a few times before you figure out how things work.

[makist]

Ok, since you guys still don't seem to believe me...

Originally Posted by EBAY

Hello...I'm Evan Liang with eBay's Buyer Experience team. My team and I focus on improving the experience members have when they place a bid or make a purchase. As Philipp mentioned, we're making a few important changes to the bid history page that we think will improve the overall bidding experience. You will begin to see these changes next week.

Making winning easier – bid right from the bid history page
We know from talking to Community members that many people spend a lot of time monitoring competitive auctions from the bid history page. Knowing how important this page is to bidders, my team has enhanced the user interface so you can now place a bid directly on the bid history page.

For our competitive bidders who use the bid history often, we think this change will simplify your experience and help you win that "must have" item.

Enhancing SMI -- adding transparency for items over $200
Last January, Rob Chesnut introduced an important Trust & Safety initiative called Safeguarding Member IDs (SMI). This project protects eBay's bidders on high-end items from fake Second Chance Offers and other malicious email. (Read Rob's announcement from January 8, 2007 for more details.)

While SMI has been very effective in protecting our marketplace from fraud, we also realize that it reduced transparency on the site, and, for some bidders, took away some of the magic of that makes eBay so unique.

As promised, my Buyer Experience group has teamed up with Trust & Safety and the Community over the past few months to look at ways to make the bid history more transparent without jeopardizing the safety that SMI has added. I'm pleased to let you know that this week, we'll be making the following adjustments to the User IDs displayed on bid history for items over $200:

Actual Feedback Score is back – We will be bringing back the bidder’s actual feedback score next to each member's respective User ID.

New User ID Masking - We are replacing the current aliases (Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and Bidder 3) with a masked ID that consists of two random characters from the member's User ID – for example a***b.

For any given member, this masked ID will be consistent across all auctions over $200 for which they place bids. At the end of a listing, the winning bidder's User ID will be displayed on both the item and bid history page. Please note: Sellers will still be able to view the actual User IDs for bidders on their listings through the Bid History page.
Also, please understand that to protect our Community, eBay reserves the right to change this masking algorithm in the future, but will only do so if absolutely necessary and with advance notice. We expect to add more enhancements in the future, although our intent is to move cautiously so we can ensure we’re preserving safety.

Fact is, there really is no good alternative to Ebay... You can join the fuck Ebay bandwagon, but where will you sell your shit then?

[Lenas]

Craigslist?

[Millie]

Originally Posted by makist

Ok, since you guys still don't seem to believe me...

Fact is, there really is no good alternative to Ebay... You can join the fuck Ebay bandwagon, but where will you sell your shit then?

I don't think it's that people don't believe you re: the username masking. That isn't really the issue. The issue is that there were a lot of suspicious bids in a row coming from users with 0 feedback or 0-10 feedback. To me, that would be a red flag. It doesn't necessarily mean foul play is at hand, but it arouses my suspicions.

As for your second point, unfortunately, I agree. eBay sucks, but it's really the best way to buy and sell stuff. I'd try selling something on Craigslist, but I worry about getting kidnapped and chopped into pieces by an ax murderer while trying to sell my old laptop.

[Goliath]

Lol Millie, I'm always afraid that when somebody comes ot pick something up from my house that they bring a gun and make me just give it to them... Pretty irrational thought as they'd just rob me then, but it's still always there lol. Don't feel bad about being afraid they will chop you into pieces if you met somewhere, I rarely meet anyone from craigslist, fuck that, our world is fucked up.

[Millie]

I bought some art prints off of Craigslist once, and the guy selling the prints refused to let me come to his house or meet him anywhere else like that. He instructed me to park my car at a certain street corner, get out, and wait for him. The whole thing felt really shady, like some cheesy Hollywood director's interpretation of a drug deal. He ended up being a nice enough guy (small, squirrely, very shy, etc.), but when I tried joking about how his meetup instructions freaked me out, he just stared blankly at me.

At any rate, I remain a tiny bit creeped out by Craigslist. I'm sure it's 99.9% harmless, but still, there's always that lingering suspicion in the back of your mind that you are going to be the next "cautionary tale."

[Bottle]

I've pretty much nothing but good experiences so I'm lucky I suppose. I've heard horrible things about Paypal but it seems to be from people that live in the U.S. as I've never had issues with them.

I think the * thing on bidders seems to occur when the auction reaches a certain dollar amount. (Email scam protection?)

[Millie]

I think Paypal is perfectly fine up until anyone files a claim against you. That's when you can throw everything you thought you knew about Paypal out the window, and Paypal becomes Satan incarnate. Same thing with eBay. You can go 10 years on eBay and never have a problem -- but the second you have your first probldem, you'll hate everything eBay is and everything it's ever stood for.

That's the funny thing about eBay and Paypal. They're almost flawless when operating normally. But their dispute resolution system is abhorrent and lopsided. Just pray you never get scammed or piss someone off on eBay, because they have the power to make your life a living hell if they file a claim against you.

[Nark]

I got fucked once selling 100kpp.

The dude sent me the money over paypal. I later logged in and gave him his 100k. Then the next day i'm at school and me and my buddy log into paypal and we see the payment is retracted.........anyways, that was my only time ever getting screwed over online with money.

[Pontiusont]

Ive never had any problems buying. I just stick with users who have a high rating. It use to bother me seeing a user bidding 10 times in a row on an item, but it makes sense. If the item is worth around $1000, I don't think they would be too pleased seeing it sell for only $200.

[Eomer]

Calgary man loses $20K after eBay sale hijacked

Nice, they don't even return phone calls from law enforcement officers.