Ebay - shudder!

It's not safe out there! After being flamed in capital letters containing biblical reference and casting aspersions upon my upbringing by one seller a couple of years ago who didn't like my repeated requests for them to remove a non-payment dispute (for an item which had not only been paid, but shipped) and then left me negative... I swore I'd never venture back. But of course I did. Purchased something the first week of Feb which still hasn't arrived. Seller doesn't respond to emails. Finally I opened a dispute. I'm not one to leave nasty feedback, so I ventured onto the forums and asked whether this would be an acceptable situation to do so. Wow. There are some really hostile sellers on there who despise buyers, considering them the lowest form of one-cell existence, only put on the planet to test them and make their lives miserable. I found myself almost apologizing for maligning that poor seller, who, according to general opinion, could have suffered a life-threatening illness, a family emergency... or even, might not know how to refresh his browser. Many possibilities, the only certainty is that I am evil incarnate for complaining.

In reply to Lesley:

These days, the bidder has all the power. Seller cant even leave neutral feedback. As a result, the power sellers like me bust A to make sure the item is out the door asap & as cheap as possible.

There is also a 5 star rating for sellers as well. It ties in direct to the ebay fees. 5 stars gets you 20% off your fees, start lagging in shipping time, shipping amount, item description & the discount suffers.

If its been over a month with no contact then I'd assume the worst- Neg feedback his arse & move on. 30 days is more than enough time to send one simple email (unless your dead).

Kendall

And I have hundreds of transactions, and can't think of a single bad experience.

Maybe the first guy was right

Yup, sellers can't even leave a negative for a deadbeat bidder anymore.

I'm fighting with some idiot in Australia over shipping right now. He seems to think that I have the power to dictate to the post office what the shipping charges should be.

I told him that he needs to contact the Postmaster General, not me.

That's what you get for founding a country on thieves and pirates.

Plus, he's a teacher bidding on the item for the school. I think I'll contact his employer about this.

Shawn

P.S. 99.999999% of the time I have absolutely no trouble with eBay, every now and then you get a d-bag.

Hmmmm and I've never had a transaction go right.

(knocks on wood) So far all my transactions have been good- except one. Turns out some kid got into his dad's account and bid on a motorcycle I was selling. eBay just wiped the whole damn thing and I had to start all over again.

Most of mine have been really pleasant experiences. I'll bend over backwards to accommodate if there's a problem and he's willing to fix it. Ebay's policies are ridiculous, alienating good sellers is ensuring that eventually there will be nothing left but scam artists and mass sellers. Feedback should be equal, I agree and it's causing a lot of hostility on the part of sellers. If this guy comes through and answers my emails, I'm willing to overlook even piss poor service as long as the situation is eventually rectified. However, there is no way I'm leaving good feedback for someone if ebay has to go after him to get me a refund.

Yeah, I agree, that is worse than a joke. Decent people will get fed up with the BS.

I wasn't ever going to go back, but it really is a great way to find good stuff worldwide. And I have had many, many good transactions. Maybe, just maybe, if enough customers protest they will make some changes.

I have had a pretty good run on eBay, the early years had some amazing deals, now they are few and far between due to shear numbers of users.

I had one buyer complain about a 96 9C1 Caprice I sold on there, the car had 240K on it, had body damage along one side from being side swiped and it had been used up as a cop car then a cab. It was all photoed and documented, he won, came to pick it up, all smiles and drove it home.

Then he decided the damage was more than I stated, demanded a partial refund and commenced a tirade of phone calls.

What do you want for $950.

Just a side note, emails from some sellers get filtered into the spam folder. Just something to check.

Not eBay's fault but I once sold an engine and ran into a problem. I live in SC and the winning bidder was in Washington state. My listing clearly stated the winning bidder was responsible for actual shipping charges, they would be expected to pay the shipping line directly and if that wasn't acceptable then please do not bid.

So after the auction was done I built a no-E36 M3 crate (included in the cost of the auction), got a truck line quote of ~$400 (engines are heavy and it's a long way to Washington!) and since it was going to a non commercial address there was a $60 surcharge. Pretty standard in the trucking business. The guy FLIPPED, he said I was gouging him.This was after I supplied him with the truck line quote number so he could see it for himself. That threatened to get ugly, I finally had to threaten to report him as a deadbeat bidder. He finally paid me and I shipped the engine collect.

He sent me a last Email saying I should split the cost of the shipping with him, he ran two lines of dollar signs above and below the body of the message. Yeah, like that's really going to get me to pay your shipping costs.

Jensenman wrote: Not eBay's fault but I once sold an engine and ran into a problem. I live in SC and the winning bidder was in Washington state. My listing clearly stated the winning bidder was responsible for actual shipping charges, they would be expected to pay the shipping line directly and if that wasn't acceptable then please do not bid. So after the auction was done I built a no-E36 M3 crate (included in the cost of the auction), got a truck line quote of ~$400 (engines are heavy and it's a long way to Washington!) and since it was going to a non commercial address there was a $60 surcharge. Pretty standard in the trucking business. The guy FLIPPED, he said I was gouging him.This was after I supplied him with the truck line quote number so he could see it for himself. That threatened to get ugly, I finally had to threaten to report him as a deadbeat bidder. He finally paid me and I shipped the engine collect. He sent me a last Email saying I should split the cost of the shipping with him, he ran two lines of dollar signs above and below the body of the message. Yeah, like that's really going to get me to pay your shipping costs.

read what you sign, what a jerkweasel.

I've had some pretty good interactions on Ebay. I bought both of my cars off ebay! The 944 ended up being a heap, but i was young and dumb and it did start my love affair with cars. So I can't be to mad. The Golf was a screaming deal, and I couldn't be happier with it. However I've found ebay is getting less and less like an auction. To many buy it now, and reserves. Bah!

I have had mostly good transactions, but the person on the other end has a lot to do with it. I was wrong about the status of a cell phone I sold, and when the buyer informed me rather an assuming that I tried to scam him and posting negative, I was able to issue a refund quickly and straighten it out. Most people assume guilty these days. I bought something and the the shipping address got mixed up. No big deal, I was willing to pay for the re-shipment and more handling fees...no harm done right? But the seller just stopped responding and got all pissy and canceled the transaction. No need for hostility dude, and you earned yourself a negative rating and no money. What was the point?

Yeah, I was shocked by the hostility on their forums. Not a healthy place to go, some of those people are reallllly weird.

I've purchased three vehicles through eBay motors, and dozens of other items through regular ebay. I've only ever had one negative experience, but that was over a $25 item, so I'm fine with it.

I used to do quite a lot of selling on ebay and I'm currently trying to offload a few vehicles and other assorted items pre-move.

The experience is a decidedly mixed bag. A lot of transactions go really smooth, but there seem to be more and more bidders who think that everybody is out to rip them off; they can't read the auction description and then go on about fault that were clearly described.

OTOH there are too many people (at least in the UK) who think that because you describe the faults a vehicle has, you're selling a heap that is far worse than the description. Which is why I seem to get lower prices than other people, simply because I seem to be too honest .

If there was another market place that had an audience this large I'd consider switching but there doesn't seem to be one.

The main reason I think sellers hate bidders is that you can shop from the safety and convenience of your own home while E36 M3faced drunk. There is a certain percentage of people when sober... no longer think the gold-plated left handed hammer was a brilliant idea.

I suspect this is how all transactions involving an MGB or Fiat begin.

I've bought about 30 items off of ebay. I only got ripped off once when I bought a set of vw recaro seats for $12. I paid $12 and 90 shipping and the guy never sent them. The thing that pissed me off was that I had asked to go pick them up in person after the auction ended and he insisted that I pay for shipping (20 minutes away). I can understand he was annoyed that his seats only sold for $12, but the fact that he got me to pay shipping charges for something he was never intending to ship made me mad. Paypal was able to get $21 back for me, but the rest was gone.

I had a guy selling a turbocharger with a Buy It Now at $400.00 and bidding opened for $1.00

He had a real bad listing and when I won it for a buck he claimed "I lost the item"

Then he got pissed when I left a negative feedback.

As far as I'm concerned, eBay Motors is ripe for the picking. If someone can come up with a working automotive auction website that treats it's sellers fairly and has the exposure that eBay has, eBay motors will be in for some trouble.

Shawn

A dispute is not a negative feedback. Nothing wrong with opening a dispute of the situation warrants it.

Avoiding ebay forums of all types makes your life a more pleasant experience.

I use ebay quite a bit when I'm selling things. Never a bad experience that I can recall. There was a time I had purchased an item and it shipped to my old address on file with Paypal, which was my parents' address, so no big deal. Another time, I had something shipped from Hong Kong that took longer than was stated, but it was shipped on time (per the post mark when I got the item). I had figured 3 weeks was reasonable shipping time for something halfway around the globe. After week 4, I started to worry. Week 5, it got to my door step. Left good feedback for the seller, because they held up their end of the bargain. It wasn't their fault that my package ended up on the fail boat.

So far, so good for me. Worst thing that has happened was a little over charging on shipping once. Now you are making me nervous.

I have never trusted E-Bay. Never. I go into each bid expecting to get ripped off. But I never have. Guess it works.

I've had over 130 transactions in 8 years, so I guess one or two baddies isn't too bad.