eBay: do not recommend, waste of time

Well, I’ve just had my first experience with eBay of being kicked in the teeth for being honest. I’ve been a member for six years, and until last week, I maintained a perfect 100% reputation basically by being me in all my dealings. Here’s a hint – it’s simply not worth it as eBay will not back you up when the going gets tough.

A woman wins one of my four auctions last week. She bid several times on a table setting, comes to my place, asks to measure the table in a lame effort to prove that the table is smaller than I said in the listing, and says she doesn’t want it as it’s too narrow and she likes to spread out. She then leaves.

Sorry lady, on eBay, like all auction houses, if you bid on it and you win it, you own it. So I leave her negative feedback for abandoning the sale:

Refused item even though exactly as described and as per photos. Not recommended

She then leaves negative feedback for me, but in her case, she lied:

item failed to meet description. do not recommend, waste of time

This is a laugh as:

0) the description is accurate (8 seat table with 6 chairs). The table can seat eight if you must, but six is about right.
a) the description of the condition is accurate (as new, with minor dints from regular use)
b) there’s photos of the item including a photo of the only chair which has (cleanable) marks
c) there’s accurate measurements in the questions area five days before the auction ended for all to read

I complain to eBay. They suggest asking her to withdraw the feedback. I do so, even though I know she wont. She didn’t. I complain again to eBay. They tell me that due to US law, they can’t remove even slanderous postings. Sorry fellas, Gutnick proved that Victoria, Australia defamation law trumps US defamation law. All the way to the High Court. eBay have a responsibility to deter and remove slanderous postings when they occur, and not hide behind some lame interpretation of US law which simply doesn’t apply here.

So what’s eBay’s final offer? Ask the liar who didn’t pay for her winnings to mutually withdraw the negative feedback. I’m loathed to do this as a poor rating is a good warning to other sellers / buyers that all is not well with that person. But I want my 100% back for exactly the same reason, and I’m buggered if I’m going to pay some shiny arse lawyer $20k or more to get a clean eBay account again through winning a defamation case.

Six years of being “me” down the drain.

So if you want to be treated nice at eBay – shit all over the other sellers. There’s nothing that eBay will do to you. At all. eBay is not the good guy’s friend. do not recommend, waste of time.

Comments

9 responses to “eBay: do not recommend, waste of time”

  1. philbywaters Avatar
    philbywaters

    EBay shut my Account down for 12 months because I owe £20 on another account Go figure. I supplement my income with eBay. EBay you win I have given up. I’m now building a web site. Waste of time and thought

  2. S.T. Avatar
    S.T.

    philbywaters, you are a liar and a thief… e-bay shut down your account because you were ripping off honest customers, left right and centre. I should know because I was one of them – 40 pounds total for a set of DVDs that didn’t show up and a pack of promises and lies every time I e-mailed you. Rot in hell.

  3. John Avatar
    John

    Ebay is a complete waste of time.. There stores do not even work..
    You will get an item for 200.00 and it will not even sell for 100.00…
    Trust me I know opened up ebay store put a bunch of stuff on there and Crap happend except a bunch of
    FEES…
    If you are thinking about it dont waste your time and your money…
    PAY PAL EVEN IS WORSE !
    If you mail an item and the customer gets it but says there was nothing in the package ! lol
    paypal refunds there money the buyer keeps the product and you get ROBBED !

  4. Mich Avatar
    Mich

    E-bay is a complete waste of time. A joke to trade from, poor visitor numbers, and a business thats going down the pan QUICKLY

  5. barin Avatar
    barin

    .. ebay is not a good place to run a business .. they constantly change their rules and now have a ridiculos “Best Match” search default where they won’t disclose the rules they use for the algorythm which creates the best match ranking .. very shadey and totally untrustworthy .. many sellers who were running successful businesses there a few years back are stuck with thousands of dollars worth of inventory and no way to offload it through ebay as ebay seem intent on sabotaging their efforts to make their item visible to users searching for the item on the ebay website .. ebay obviously doesn’t care as make so much money from listing fees and repeat listing fees that the money it makes from final value fees defeats the purpose as obviously they would then loose revenue from the constant relistibng fees of the items that don’t sell .. therefore I believe that ebay deliberately stuff things up for sellers in the hope that they spend more money relisting .. yes ebay is a waste of time selling unless you are able to buy items for $1 each that sell for about $30 otherwise is a total and utter waste of time .. am looking forward to the day that company fails as they routinely monopolise the marketplace by buying out and then disrupting compet9ing businesses .. they are pack of wolves and deserve to loose their stranglehold over the worlds internet auction marketplace .. in short I believe that ebay management are thieves and toilet scum at best ..

  6. abbie Avatar
    abbie

    I agree. I sold some stuff on ebay and one item was a dress and i stated on my auction, not that anyone looked. that i would post 3 working days after cleared funds recieved. So thats what i did cos to be honest i wait till the money is physically in my hand before i can post them, as im not made of money and thats how it is. The post office does not accept i owe yous so i have to wait. To cut a long story short this guy who paid the second class rate and not offered to do special delivery or anything,demanded a refund even though the dress was worth 100 and got for 16, but because it turned up late. so to stop paypal robbing me i removed all bank cards and changed address to return to N/A so lets hope this stops the cheap bastard trying to pull a fast one, its rude how they just trust someone say they never got it etc or late when they did. i personally shall never use ebay again, and it is 100% waste of time.

  7. Andrew Wallace Avatar

    eBay is a complete joke now, 8 years and no problems, now in the last 3 months 9 of the 10 items I have bought have been fake (4Gb SD card painted up like a 32Gb one), 6 razor blades delived instead of 8, seller sold an item I drove an hour to collect etc. Tonight sold a mobile phone, what a FUC*ING joke, bidders from Russia galore, listing clearly states, International buyers – work out your own postage and gives the parcel company sites, weights and dimension, all they had to do was put in destination country. Some arse buys the phone and then decides oh, I want internatioal postage for free!!! I’ve had enough, phone sold for £330, eBay fee £38 and paypal have still to take their cut!

  8. John Avatar
    John

    ebay Is definitely not worth selling on , you spend all the time and the trouble of photographing listing and checking how its going , offering something good, only to get some retard giving you abuse and hassle about posting to places abroad like Canada and they cant afford the postage , then they give you negative feedback,

    then , you cant reply with negative feedback ! ONLY GOOD FEEDBACK ! yeah !
    so the moral is ,
    NEVER SELL ON EBAY !!

  9. Edd Avatar
    Edd

    Ebay has defo changed, even for small one off sellers, like myself. People not reading the listings, collection only, and then they bid and expect you to run around after them. Your account limited if your performance drops-got three low score ratings on postage-I actually was out of pocket when I worked it all out-folk want stuff for nothing. Ebay give you a list of delivery times but you are penalized by buyers if the item doesn’t get there the next day! You cannot win. Paypal is also a load of tosh, got scammed by somebody taking out a 12 xbox subscription-just because we bought one the year before they refused to refund. We tried talking to them and to get the company, out East somwhere to provide us with the contact email address-nothing-went back to Paypal and still nothing.

    All these companies want is your fees.

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