Ebay scammers/price pushers

[Angerz]

I help sell laptops and other electronic parts on ebay for someone who has almost 12k feedback rating and high volume selling and average person selling are night and day.

As a gold (or whatever the 2nd highest rating is) powerseller, we get a lot of protection. Whenever we get dummy bids that win our auction, we are able to recover all the fees now (used to kinda get screwed on this, but that cost really was just passed on to the other customers).

We only take paypal or money orders. Paypal is looking to screw everyone, the key is to make sure they have as little ability to screw you as possible. As a seller this means a tracking number mostly. It protects you from bullshit "I never got it claims".

Second, you have to be willing to concede. It sucks when you are right, but if someone opens a complaint, just say "return it, and you can have your money back". Paypal wont release the funds until the complainer files a tracking number and it shows you received the package. You can still get screwed, but you are dealing mostly anonymously with your client and with a company that wants your money.

Buying I've never had a problem. I've not recieved my package once and I filed my complaint and had my money back 10 days later.

Basically, eBay looks to screw the little guy all it can. It protects sellers like me. It really sucks, but there is no real viable alternative for a big auction site. Selling on Amazon sucks big nuts, and thats the only thing thats even close for moving product.

edit: Also, as far as I know, money orders kind suck for buyer protection. In fact, paypal is pretty terrible as far as buyer protection goes, but everything else seems terrible-er

[Jabberwhacky]

Originally Posted by 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.

Isn't that what reserve prices are for?

[Kaio]

Originally Posted by 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.

Did you get delivery confirmation to paypal? Or order a label through them? Just curious, i've had probably over 150 transactions through paypal and luckily haven't run into a problem yet.

I'm usually ridiculously careful of who I buy from and make sure there is delivery confirmation/tracking numbers for anything i ship.

[Lonin]

Ebay just became a victim of its own success. Sure, it's still super popular (because it's really the only option), but I think a lot of people are totally disenfranchised with Ebay, and this thread proves it.

Case in point:

My mom has been buying and selling, about 50-50, for probably 6 years now and has over 1000 feedback. She never really had many problems until she sold some near-$1000 audio equipment. She had 3 pieces, all basically the same, all packaged exactly the same, and sent to three different buyers. Two arrived totally fine, but the third buyer opened a dispute claiming she shipped the item broken and/or it broke during shipping. He claimed the packaging was bad and he took pictures which showed massive amounts of damage. Now, it's entirely possible that it was damaged in shipping, but seems unlikely given the other 2 pieces were fine, and they were all packaged the same way, and packaged very well. Of course, since she never really had problems before she was naive and didn't know the technical rules of certain things (that go against common sense). There was no insurance on the item, despite it being costly, even though she offered, the guy declined. Ebay's retarded policy is that it's the sellers responsibility to insure the item, even if the buyer declines. So after a long and drawn out dispute process the guy gets his refund. Now part of the resolution was the guy had to send the item back, but Ebay/Paypal just dropped it at this point basically saying it wasn't their problem anymore and left that up to my mom, and guess what, he stopped responding to e-mail and never sent it back. Went to the police and they didn't do anything either, so she got fucked over and the guy got a free (probably totally fine condition) $1000 piece of audio equipment. Ever since that, my mom does much more of her selling and buying through Craigslist.

Ebay offers a lot of buyer protection, but no seller protection essentially. Fuck, all you'd have to do is buy a junked up expensive item, say a plasma TV, for cheap. Find some poor sob selling a new/used one of the same brand and model and who doesn't require insurance on the item, open a complaint saying it was broken in shipping, send back the fucked up one, and he's stuck footing the bill. Unless they changed their policies, or the guy took pictures of the serial number or something, you get a brand new TV for the price of a damaged, non-working one.

As for Craigslist, I think it's really far better than Ebay at this point unless you are looking for something rare. You can generally find better prices, and the chances that you get fucked over are slim to none since you can see/test the item in person. I know some people don't like the chance of getting raped or something, but I'd guess the chances are pretty low. I've dealt with probably over 200 people through Craigslist, and while there are some weirdos, nothing bad has ever happened. Knock on wood.

[Aegdaien]

Originally Posted by Kaio

Did you get delivery confirmation to paypal? Or order a label through them? Just curious, i've had probably over 150 transactions through paypal and luckily haven't run into a problem yet.

I'm usually ridiculously careful of who I buy from and make sure there is delivery confirmation/tracking numbers for anything i ship.

Yeah, I used tracking numbers/delivery confirmations. The buyer didn't claim that he never got the product, he claimed that it was broken to begin with. Ultimately I received the 'broken' cards back (He bought 2 6600GTs I used to run in SLI - leet, yes I know). One card worked fine. The other card looked like someone took a pliers to it as there were about 3 capacitors ripped right off the card. Now this obviously didn't happen during shipping, and since the cards went straight from my PC back to their original box I'm pretty sure that I didn't manage to do that. But since he filed the claim first, all Paypal had him do was take it to a local computer repair shop after he butchered it to confirm that the card was indeed 'broken'.

Needless to say I talked to about 8 levels of upper management who all told me 'Yeah - He could've done it himself then filed a claim and we would still side with him''. Fuck this thread, it's made me hate Paypal so much again. I almost forgot about this whole bullshit.

[PatrickStar]

Ebay is hit or miss with the crap that goes on there.

Paypal? I'd like to punch it in the nuts. The moral of this thread is fuck Paypal and fuck it with a rusty pitchfork.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Lonin

Ebay offers a lot of buyer protection, but no seller protection essentially. Fuck, all you'd have to do is buy a junked up expensive item, say a plasma TV, for cheap. Find some poor sob selling a new/used one of the same brand and model and who doesn't require insurance on the item, open a complaint saying it was broken in shipping, send back the fucked up one, and he's stuck footing the bill. Unless they changed their policies, or the guy took pictures of the serial number or something, you get a brand new TV for the price of a damaged, non-working one.

Eh... That seems extremely risky, because of the serial numbers and all that. The second anyone catches you or calls you out on it, you could go to jail for fraud.

[runcade]

Originally Posted by 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.

The exact same thing happened to me with Paypal and 1 million platinum on EQ1. I was younger and trusting for some reason but what really pissed me off was how Paypal dealt with it. The scammer got my platinum then did a credit card chargeback which paypal told me they would fight and that I would surely win. They jerked my chain for 4 months telling me they were fighting it. Then I call in and am told that I lost the claim 3 months previously and now owe 500 dollars.

Someone said it already in this thread. Paypal and Ebay are great until you get a claim filed against you fraudulently.

[Aulirophile]

PayPalSucks.com is where you will learn about the PayPal Class Action Lawsuit, Abuse, Fraud & evil behind the PayPal system!

Paypal is fucking evil. Hard to blame them, the scams add so much overhead they have to steal from legitimate customers to cover the costs, but still fucked up.

eBay is about as bad. Just hope you're one of the 90% that never has to deal with this shit.

[Foradream]

Originally Posted by Lonin

Ebay just became a victim of its own success. Sure, it's still super popular (because it's really the only option), but I think a lot of people are totally disenfranchised with Ebay, and this thread proves it.

Case in point:

My mom has been buying and selling, about 50-50, for probably 6 years now and has over 1000 feedback. She never really had many problems until she sold some near-$1000 audio equipment. She had 3 pieces, all basically the same, all packaged exactly the same, and sent to three different buyers. Two arrived totally fine, but the third buyer opened a dispute claiming she shipped the item broken and/or it broke during shipping. He claimed the packaging was bad and he took pictures which showed massive amounts of damage. Now, it's entirely possible that it was damaged in shipping, but seems unlikely given the other 2 pieces were fine, and they were all packaged the same way, and packaged very well. Of course, since she never really had problems before she was naive and didn't know the technical rules of certain things (that go against common sense). There was no insurance on the item, despite it being costly, even though she offered, the guy declined. Ebay's retarded policy is that it's the sellers responsibility to insure the item, even if the buyer declines. So after a long and drawn out dispute process the guy gets his refund. Now part of the resolution was the guy had to send the item back, but Ebay/Paypal just dropped it at this point basically saying it wasn't their problem anymore and left that up to my mom, and guess what, he stopped responding to e-mail and never sent it back. Went to the police and they didn't do anything either, so she got fucked over and the guy got a free (probably totally fine condition) $1000 piece of audio equipment. Ever since that, my mom does much more of her selling and buying through Craigslist.

Ebay offers a lot of buyer protection, but no seller protection essentially. Fuck, all you'd have to do is buy a junked up expensive item, say a plasma TV, for cheap. Find some poor sob selling a new/used one of the same brand and model and who doesn't require insurance on the item, open a complaint saying it was broken in shipping, send back the fucked up one, and he's stuck footing the bill. Unless they changed their policies, or the guy took pictures of the serial number or something, you get a brand new TV for the price of a damaged, non-working one.

As for Craigslist, I think it's really far better than Ebay at this point unless you are looking for something rare. You can generally find better prices, and the chances that you get fucked over are slim to none since you can see/test the item in person. I know some people don't like the chance of getting raped or something, but I'd guess the chances are pretty low. I've dealt with probably over 200 people through Craigslist, and while there are some weirdos, nothing bad has ever happened. Knock on wood.

No offense, but it was probably packed like shit. 99% of the time I get things from ebay they are wrapped in newspaper with minimal padding. I'm amazed I get so few broken items. And sure enough, whenever I do get a broken item the seller will swear up and down that it was packaged perfectly and I must have broken it myself somehow.

P.S.: What does anyone have to gain by purposely breaking an item and getting a portion of the original money they spent? People aren't that malicious, especially if they don't know you..

[findar]

his point was the audio equipment was never returned.

[Arbitrary]

It's a shame she had to learn to insure on a 1000 dollar item. I had a friend get burned on something in the 50 dollar range so I insure anything that trips my spider sense.

It is extremely satisfying to tell someone to just use the insurance when they claim a package came damaged. To get the money they have to turn in the item so usually they either

A. Disappear (good)
B. Demand that you claim it instead of them. Which you should never do.

[Lonin]

Ya, when she told me what happened, I was pissed at her as well at first, because this was something she should have thought of. On the other hand though, she had 4 years or so of Ebay experience at the time and never had a major issue before, and Ebay's insurance policy goes totally against common sense.

As for the packaging, ya, it could've been damaged in shipping, but I saw the packaging and it was about as good as it gets IMO. She had enough buying and selling experience at the time to know how to package items well. Either way, she didn't even get the "damaged" item back and Ebay/Paypal left her out in the cold.

P.S. Anyone wanna buy some Zunes?