I've had enough of Selling on eBay... and I want to vent in public

eBay, quite simply, has become one of the worst companies and services that I have dealt with. I am just fed-up with them and all the nonsense that goes with it.

- The service as a whole is worse
- The buying community is worse
- The eBay company is nothing short of a greedy, arrogant, paranoid mess

Buyers
I've never had any problems selling on it, have always managed to work out the very occasional issue that has cropped up; that is until they changed the rules at the end of 2013. Since then I've had instance after instance of lying, thieving, manipulative and very calculating buyers getting away with whatever they want and in some cases getting away with out and out theft.

I have a very simple, short set of terms on all my listings. I've even taken to putting in massive text "You must read and accept these before bidding". It covers things like you cannot come to my house to collect things under any circumstances, I can only ship on days x, y, z in the week of purchase due to other commitments and will only do so after funds have cleared, I no longer sell abroad due to lies and theft, I only ship with proof of dispatch and proof of delivery and I will not accept offers, close listings early, sell off-line etc.

So if I list anything (keep in mind it is usually computer equipment) I always list for £0.99 auction, I don't bother with BIN. I then left the market decide.

Within 5 minutes the scamming, profiteering professional buyers start spamming me with 'boo hoo' sob stories about how they have a sick daughter who is desperate for a {whatever} but they're really poor and so would I take £60 for a £300 item. So they a) take the mick and just assume I'm an idiot b) lie c) never bother to read anything about the item they are trying to extort out of me because they are automatically looking for saps d) never read the very short terms that I put in massive letters at the bottom. So I have to waste more of my time responding to the wave of these people. If you do not respond, you get negative points.

You then get several of the nes who message you telling you that they can drive down on Saturday and pick it up - NO, read the T&C's fool. Then you get the ones who WIN the auction and inform you that they'll be over on Saturday to pick it up. Of course they file against you half the time and lie - eBay always refunds them. Naturally these people are highly likely to be trying to get you to hand over the device in person with no POS/POD so that they can immediately file a non-delivery complaint and wind up with their money back plus the device.


I can actually bet quite accurately now based upon the name of the winner and their shipping address the ones who will try things like these - I am at pains to say it, but there is a very obvious pattern.

I had a few things of high value that I wanted to sell towards the end of last year, so I decided I'd wait until the first week of the New Year when people had xmas money available to help to maximise revenue. It worked nicely, lots of bids and a great sale price. The only problem was that both the buyers hit the m.o. for trouble. One of them tried the come and collect trick and then went completely silent. The other one started immediately making demands (e.g. they expected a copy of Microsoft Office amongst other things or they'd complain). I pointed out that it clearly says in the listing what is included and in the terms that it states very clearly that if something is not in the listing IT IS NOT INCLUDED. I don't think that is actually something you should need to spell out to people, but eBay is now so bad that I've felt it necessary for a couple of years -- and they still do not heed it. So this guy then gave up trying it on and tried to get me to cancel his bid my end (this if you do not know adds negative points against the seller). I refused, telling him to cancel it his side, after which he tried to make out that he had accidentally bid on the item (6 times) before he finally went silent too. So a couple of weeks went by to go through the hoops on non-payment and I could finally relist.

Anyway, once they finally went in comparison to the first set and the less optimal min-January sale time I lost nearly £300.


At least I didn't have to ship them this time! alf of the problem is that the it is no longer an auction site, it is a uneconomical online store that no longer offers any real discounts compared to anyone else. In the UK that means people on the site think everyone selling on the site is a large retailer. This means that they all think they can use it as a buy, try and send back site. It is AMAZING how many people leave it until day 30 of 30 to file a "not as described" complaint. Just amazing. 30 days of not noticing that it was wrong? Gosh, what poor eyesight people must have!

The number of times I've had people file "item not as described" since 2014 and then lie to eBay because basically they decided to change their mind. So they file a complaint, make something up and get away with it. If they actually approached me and said look, I've changed my mind, I'm always reasonable about it. I refund the full item cost, just not their shipping costs. But no, they know that if they do that they have to pay something, so they lie and file a complaint against the seller so that I have to pay their shipping. This of course means that I get an account black mark and usually find that they damage (intentionally or otherwise) the item, reduce the resale value or steal something from item (if you get it back at all). It has happened to me countless times.

Couple this with my observation that buyers have stopped leaving feedback - unless it's negative. So you never know if they are going to pounce on you after 30 days.


eBay Customer Services
eBay customer services only have two instructions: protect our profit. Make problems go away.

If a buyer files a complaint, they do NOT:
- ask for evidence of the complaint of the buyer
- ask for the seller to provide counter evidence to whatever the buyer tells them
- they don't even ask the seller for their side of the story

They close the complaint within 20-50 minutes, side of course with the buyer and issue the buyer with a FULL REFUND including postage costs. 60% of the time the buyer never bothers to contact you first, so the first you hear of a problem is the notification from PayPal advising of the refund.

Now the fact of the matter is that since I first got stung by a lying buyer, I take photo's and video of the item itself, the item being packed and the shipping parcel before posting. I evidence the condition, that it works fine and make sure that this matches the description. It does not matter one iota that you can prove the buyer is lying. You get black marked and they get a full refund. If you want to get the black mark taken off your account it can take days and lots of time on the phone to Indonesian (high rate) call centres to try and get it revoked. If you push hard enough and force them to look at YouTube videos proving that the buyer is lying you can usually do this (assuming you have 2 hours and don't care about your phone bill). However eBay will not reverse their decision because they already refunded the lying buyer for their postage and the item. So you, the seller have to pay for the lie even in the face of having made an obvious wrong call. Why don't they escrow the funds for 24 hours in case the seller challenges?

The entire customer services process is one sided, buyer centric and has no validation or escrow. If you want to lie, you will get away with it. eBay don't even check to ensure that the buyer shipped the item back - sometimes they don't because they decided to keep it and there is nothing that you can do at this point because they already ruled for the buyer. If eBay asks, then the buyer will just tell them that they shipped it without proof of dispatch and either it got lost or the seller is lying. So they get to keep it.


So one of the high value re-list items that I sold at a £300 loss compared to when I originally listed them got put on block. This means that the funds got held by PayPal at eBay's request. So I cannot withdraw it. eBay however sent me the invoice for selling the item and as usual (you have no choice) automatically tried to take the funds. Now as they've locked the transaction I have to wait 21 days (apparently) because there is no way in hell the buyer will leave feedback to automatically release it (they only usually leave negative feedback remember). So guess what, eBay have locked the funds but they aren't going to wait for the transaction to sort itself out before charging me for it are they? No, they want their money come hell or high water. So they decided to help themselves to it directly from my bank account.
Nice. I have to wait 21 days before I see anything, plus I get charges for the bank account transfer despite the fact that they caused the lock in the first place. PayPal in the mean time get a nice boost to their balance sheet for the best part of a month.


So could they have done much more to incur my wrath recently? Of course!

I don't usually bother looking at the invoices they send, but for some reason this morning I did because I was dealing with relatively round figures. Yet the bill didn't remotely add up!
To cut a long story short, I just discovered that for the last year eBay have been taking 10% of the shipping fee. Now you can rightly argue that they probably did bury this in a terms and conditions update that I missed and you can rightly point out that I should have been watching the invoices to have seen this sooner. All true. However I am a seller who ships at cost and I also sell low value items. So looking back this actually means that I've been shipping everything at a LOSS for the last year and in a several < £5 sale value items I've actually made a LOSS on the entire sale as a result.
What the Hell?!?!

I never clicked "I accept" on a new set of terms and conditions. I'm absolutely livid!

They try and force you to give cheaper and cheaper shipping and in many cases demand that you ship an item at £x over standard post -- prices that the post office can NEVER honour, not even anywhere close to, especially if you follow through and wrap things securely such that you are lying buyer protected. Luckily their mandated shipping does not cover courier or premium services so I've always got around it.

Yet it is clear that if you do the honourable thing and always try and ship at cost (Postage + Packing + Transport) - I even advertise the shipping weight of items so that my buyers can check this if they want to - eBay decides that they are going to cash in on you and take 10% of it forcing you to permanently ship at a loss.
It's bad enough that buyers don't understand that boxes and bubble wrap cost money and whinge that the royal mail website says it's £4.80 and I'm charging £5.40 but to discover that it's now impossible to make anything other than a loss on shipping it the final straw.

eBay blatantly has no interest in auctions any more, they have no interest in honesty or integrity and like their buyers want to see all sellers become commercial entities who can be exploited under the consumer rights act. They are greedy, arrogant and are encouraging hoards of disreputable people to thrive and profiteer from their service.


They can go and burn.

Hmmm, so if I read between the lines you are saying that you are disappointed in eBay?

I've given up 100% on auctions. I haven't sold anything in an auction in over a couple of years. I set my price and if it doesn't sell, then I either relist it or give it away, and sometimes throw it in the trash.

And the incestual relationship between eBay and PayPal has never much made me happy. Fees for this, fees for that, the rob and steal from you, and afterwards never even ask if it was good.

The shipping fee was their way of capitalizing on those who offered free shipping. Another rip-off.

But if you don't use eBay, what other option is there? Craigslist?

Craigslist is a North American thing. So the honest answer is, I don't know.

I agree 100%, C:Amie. My last eBay sale was a netbook. The first sale, the winner never paid or contacted me, despite my repeated attempts to contact him/her. The second sale, the same bidder won again and did the same thing! The third time, the buyer contacted me after receiving it complaining that the battery wouldn't hold a charge. It wasn't a new battery by any means, but I knew darn well it held a charge and I told him so. What really torqued me was him telling me straight out that he was upset because now he couldn't make as much as he wanted to from re-selling it! Really?? I couldn't believe he had the gall first to tell me that he planned to re-sell it for profit (do whatever you want with it, but why tell me?), and second to blame me for his loss of anticipated profit. I told him this, and the next thing I heard was from eBay. I explained it to them, but to no avail; I finally agreed to refund a portion of the sale price in order to avoid the negative feedback. I made next to nothing from the sale.

That's the last time I sold on eBay. I have used another site - swappa.com. They're mostly US-based, but they do more work in managing transactions and verifying both sellers and buyers. They sell only phones and tablets, so they're limited in that way, too. I bought my Surface RT through swappa and was pretty satisfied. I paid a little more than I might have on eBay, but I felt better about the whole process.

eBay is okay for me..... but note it's an "okay".

I make some dollars off eBay selling PDAs and such and most of the times, the buyers are good in my experience.

But what makes it "okay" for me is that some buyers give me an offer for Best Offer and I say yes to the offer, but you never hear from them afterwards.
Some buyers Buy It Now but never pay and go away with that.

Also, the double fee, eBay charges and PayPal charges are a real profit taker...

Edited by stingraze 2016-02-05 8:09 AM

Yes, I just found out too that Ebay takes it's profit from the shipping fee as well. And that is a problem, as I state a max international shipping fee...

I have no problems with non-paying or so, as the only thing I sell on Ebay are 200LX's , and I give a sixty day guarantee on those...
I take 'not as described' as a certain possibility, since the postal services are risky to say the least. Even very well packaged items may arrive in less than salabrious condition. But I mail that recipients should not accept torn packages anyway.

I lost three packages in 10 years (refunded by the carrier...) plus had to replace some four LX's that arrived non-working after having been in the mail. All four needed repair, and had been tested extensively before sending - and yes - no scams with replaced parts . So where is your weakest link? Ebay, postal services, or the buyer? I have had a few non-paying buyers. After that I set my acceptance rules - no strikes the last half year, positove feedback (still may be scammed of course), and always a 'signed for, insured shipping' - recipient paid.

Lesson: cash only on pick-up, signed for on postal expensive items otherwise. And then still you lose some...

Michel

I stopped shipping internationally - although it does not stop them bidding and then forcing the issue, then when they don't like my quoted shipping price they cancel - more wasted time. I did this because a) The post office never charges what the royal mail website says and I found I always made a loss on shipping b) the increasingly high problem with buyer scams and attitudes make it far more expensive when eBay force you to pay the lying buyer off and c) the last straw there was when I had one buyer who had me ship a £0.99 item out to Estonia at £25 expense, only for it to not arrive. He started complaining at me and so I pointed him to the tracking ID which in Estonian now said "item rejected at destination". The item came back to me 4 weeks later snail-mail style. Apparently it was my fault that the address he had in PayPal wasn't his address and the people at the address rejected the item. Apparently I was responsible for not checking with him first and I should pay to send it back (another £25 on a £0.99 sale price).

My experience with people who bid on $0.99 or £0.99 people are that those people are pretty greedy. (Yes, I admit I bid on listing starting at $0.99 or £0.99 occasionally)

I mean no offense to the bidders but $0.99 is the starting point.... Think about what you can buy in the real world with $0.99 or £0.99!

It also is the case that whenever I start that low, I usually lose money! lol!

Edited by stingraze 2016-02-05 10:05 AM

Uhm, yes, I always ask to confirm the Paypal address by email (after a UK buyer had to drive 60 miles to pick up his package - at least he took the responsibility on himself ).

At least the Dutch POSTNL allows: pre-printed pre-paid international shipping forms, including the customs form, at the stated price. Order on-line, pay on-line, print, glue to the package and have it scanned in at the nearest post desk. No surprises there. (Unless the Ukraïnian postman can not find the legal and correct address. Second time sending to the same address solved the problem (added the address in Cyrillic as well...).

I always start on Ebay with a fair asking price. And I bid fair - my first bid on an item is about half of what I expect to spend max. This has several advantages: for me: Scares off 'low increment bidders' - they usually give up after three minimum overbids , for the seller: If someone else really wants it, they have to pay a fair price for the item to overbid me. Levels the playing field.

I refuse to baby sit people. If you're moronic enough to checkout with the wrong address (it confirms it), accept that you made a mistake. If you didn't read the listing when you know full well that you are agreeing to a contract of sale, be grown up enough to accept the loss of the shipping. I'm not a career eBay seller, but some people are and you are meddling with their livelihood with your lie.

I'm usually just having a clear out, I collect a lot of odds and ends over the course of a year and sometimes it is nice to clear all of that out. More often than not I just want shot of it, so 99p and no listing fee works well. I don't mind not profiting, but I do mind paying for someone else to clear up my storage spaces which apparently I have been for over a year.

Edit: Wow one of my buyers actually left positive feedback. That's unusual.

I haven't bought or sold from ebay in very long time, for the exact various reasons you guys list list as a seller & sellers that lie about the condition, etc of their products.

If i sell something its usually on craigslist, but i have thought about trying amazon in the past.... anyone gone that route before?

Edited by thcrw739 2016-02-07 5:03 PM

Yes, I sell on Amazon.co.jp . I once sold about $2000 per month or so on Amazon.co.jp, it was keeping me busy.

The customers are 95% of the time nice, but there are some customers that are just complainers, which I hate. But any business has that aspect I guess.

If you want some customer interaction, eBay is good, if you don't want customer interaction and just ship (or get it fulfilled by Amazon) Amazon is good.

Edited by stingraze 2016-02-08 1:10 AM

My experience on eBay is pretty similar.

As a buyer: absolutely great. I pay quickly and sellers ship well-packed products, as described. I couldn't be happier with the experience.

As a seller: absolutely awful. Buyers renege or make outrageous demands after the sale. I've stopped selling on eBay because of that. This was to be expected after eBay did away with the seller's ability to leave real feedback about buyers. They knew what they were doing, and it was all about encouraging transactions at the expense of the sellers' rights.

Well, the other side of that was the reality that some sellers essentially reciprocated feedback, so if you gave negative feedback, even if warranted, they retaliated by giving negative feedback to you. That discouraged honest feedback about bad experiences with sellers. Maybe the way they handled it wasn't ideal, but something had to be done.

Yeah. I remember that. You're completely right ... and sellers used to wait until you provided feedback before they provided theirs, so getting retaliated against for honest feedback was a legitimate concern. But the current system isn't any better. Not that I know how to fix it. I just don't like it how it is now either, and I'm sure they could see what the outcome would be.

That being said, 95% of the time, I'm a buyer, so I benefit, but it's still not right.