! everyone loves cake!

! everyone loves cake!

JohnGaunt wrote:Hey, that's up to you.    I doubt that this topic will end well, since opinions on everything run strong here.  

Yeah, my opinion is that as long as the shipping and handling costs are clearly up front, it is the buyer's responsibility to bid according to the combined cost of the item plus the S&H.  Sometimes, I have seen S&H charges that appeared a bit high and requested lower S&H charges for a slower shipping service.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Fortunately, in the UK eBay is very clear about what is acceptable and what is not, and they concur with PayPal policy also. So, so far as UK buyers and sellers are concerned, we are fully protected in all eventualities in our dealings with all eBay customers, so long as we follow eBay and PayPal policy.

All form of shipping without a tracking number is not permitted by PayPal, and should not be offered to a buyer. The seller assumes all responsibility for delivering and tracking an item to it's destination, and obtaining proof that it has been delivered, and should past these costs on the the buyer.

After you have paid for an item, you have no right to dispute postage costs with the seller through either eBay or PayPal. The buyer agrees to the postage cost at the time he accepts the terms of the sale and pays for the item(s). Thanks to pressure from UK consumer groups, eBay now provide a very tight ship over here, and even compensate buyers for the conduct of unreasonable sellers. You can't get a better service than that, can you?

! everyone loves cake!

! everyone loves cake!

Pipswich wrote:Wow!

You don't like ebay so you are perfectly content advocating violating the shipping terms and stealing their fees.  I don't like their fees, but I do think I have to either pay them, break the law or do business elsewhere.  I choose the high road.  

You keep insisting that Ebay's rules are the law.  They are not.  Violating Ebay's rules is not a violation of the law in any way shape or form. If someone sent you an empty box with just packing peanuts, it doesn't necessarily constitute mail fraud either.  It could be  simple mistake by the seller.  Only if the seller would decline to send you the item after being notified of the issue would even come close to even delving into mail fraud.  

Pipswich wrote:As a buyer, my contract with the seller is subject to ebays listing rules.  Violating those rules for profit is mail fraud.

Again, no its not.  

Pipswich wrote:They must sell according to the ebay rules...or chose to violate them for gain.  There are more than a few laws broken every time someone does it... and just because they get away with it most of the time doesn't mean they are not breaking them.

Again, no its not.  Local, state or federal law enforcement do not care one bit if you violate Ebay's terms, only Ebay does.  The only possible trouble you can get for violating "Ebay's terms of sale" is through Ebay.  No one in history has ever been prosecuted by any government agency for charging too high S&H.   The only time law enforcement gets involved(if ever at all) would be when a seller is not shipping items out after being paid for them and in most circumstances it would have to be to a large number of people.  We used to sit and here and watch a seller use multiple handles for several years, rip lots of people off and despite notifying the police by several people several different times, nothing was ever done.  Do a forum search here of the word "jonb" to see what I am talking about.

There have been a few circumstances where you see a story on the news of someone being prosecuted for large scale Ebay fraud, but I am willing to bet quite a bit that it happens less than 5% of the time that fraud(even on a larger scale) actually occurs.

Pipswich wrote:Sure, I guess they are one's I am leaving.  If anyone asks what I think of the transaction I will happily tell them.  Otherwise, my single feedback won't impact them unless a lot of customers feel the same.  Good riddance to the sellers who get riddled with low stars, they are a nuisance.

How much it impacts them has nothing to do with it. The point is that you are taking great pride in giving out these low ratings without even bothering to let the seller know.  That's one of the reasons why Ebay's feedback system is a giant freaking joke now.  Sellers are getting dinged and they have no idea why, so its left up to them to figure out why they got dinged.  Even if they make an honest mistake, they are getting shafted and not being told why.

Pipswich wrote:As to no recourse for buyers.  There was none for those honest people who used a single account as intended for buying and selling.

Again, getting negged as a buyer has no affect on your buying. The only time getting negged hurts is for sellers. That's the point.  Now sellers have no idea what they could be dealing with ahead of time. The whole, "trying to re-instill trust for buyers by creating a more positive buying experience" is just another corporate line of BS to try and sell the change which is just really yet another excuse to pork their sellers.

Pipswich wrote:If you were selling a hundred items a week, you couldn't afford to leave a negative when someone stole $20 from you.  As we know the feedback system defaulted to absolute silliness.  Yes, there were games going on.  One of the only three negatives I got was when I decided to sell part of my cast iron collection last fall and an irritated dealer who didn't want collectors bidding on a higher quality collection than his inventory zinged me trying to scare potential customers.  That stuff was commonplace in some categories of collectibles.

And that kind of stuff is running rampant now with the new feedback system. Now competitors can neg you with no recourse what-so-ever, since the only feedback for buyers is positive.  It doesn't matter how big of an asshole a buyer is, he either gets positive or nothing.

Pipswich wrote:As to who someone should trust?  My problems have been typical... low feedback sellers who are recent or powersellers.  If you want an honest seller, find someone who actually does use one account for buying and selling and doesn't keep account hopping to dodge their shady dealings and bad feedback.  If those of us who are doing business fairly keep racking up positive feedback then eventually the morons who account hop will find it difficult to sell.

There is no one size fits all quick and generall solution to the feedback & fraud problems, despite Ebay's attempts to find one and that's one of the reasons I can't stand it anymore.

If they were really serious about  protecting people they would set up much more stringent requirements for buyers and sellers up to and including forcing people to register their full names and SSN#. You get account or two and register through the site using that info. If you get booted, you are done permanently, there would be no coming back. They don't want to have to do that though, because they really don't care.   They have been running the facade for years that they care, but anyone who actually sees and understands what they are doing realizes they don't. The fact is that they know that they benefit from how loosely the site is run from a registering perspective. So not only are they not having to spend the money to actually put those real safeguards in place to protect both buyers and sellers, but they are also reaping huge profits in fraudulent transactions through their fees.  Whether those transactions are rip-off from not delivering product or selling fakes they still get their fees regardless.  Despite their claims, its in their own best interests to not really give a shit what goes on as they are still getting paid no matter what.    They keep just wanting to make minor site tweaks and say "see, we care" meanwhile what they are doing is just continuing to push the real problem to the side. They don't care about anything but their bottom line and its obvious.

Only when it really starts to cost them in the form of multiple class-action lawsuits or large scale government intervention is their any real hope of seeing significant change for the benefit of its users and not a day sooner, no matter how made psuedo-chages they make claiming that they care.

Pipswich wrote:I don't respect the suggestion that anyone who doesn't like ebay's policies should simply violate the terms of the contract for personal gain.  I am not saying that I like how ebay handles business.  I am simply saying that when I do business through them, I intend to do it as per the terms of the contract.  We clearly don't see eye to eye on that matter.

I don't rip anyone off regardless of my distaste for Ebay's BS policies that are meant to absolutely maximize their benefit at my expense. I do it because its the right thing to do, not because of some feeling of obligation to Ebay.  They do nothing for me or really anyone for that matter except take money. They don't even have a freaking customer support call center for the general population. They do allow for some "phone support" for their power sellers, but believe me, when you call them its a complete and utter waste of time. Their job there is to simply tell you to send in your request or problem through the site.  If you are having trouble doing that they try to help you navigate to the right area to do so.  Other than that its nothing. There is no real phone support for issues. It's a multi-billion dollar company and they do not have a freaking call center. It's beyond ridiculous.

Pipswich wrote:And as for the one of the only one's who ever left negative for a buyer.  Go figure, the retaliation feedbacks for nonpaying customers was how I got the "other" two negatives on my account.  I did just stop leaving negatives for years and withheld feedback until I received it like most sellers.  I greatly prefer the current system that allows me to actually provide an honest assessment.

In going on 10 years, I have received negs from a total of 3 different people.



The first was an error by the seller because he thought that I didn't pay even though I did.



Another one was from an Italian buyer who deadbeated me on 5 auctions and not only did he stiff me, but he also tried to wait until the 90 day period was just about up to neg me.  I was fortunate enough to have been able to leave negs for him as well, but it didn't save me from his, even though he didn't pay.  



The third time happened last summer from yet another buyer who also deadbeated me on an auction.  I negged her first for not paying to which she retaliated and then proceeded to send me 30+ emails in a 12 hours span demanding I remove the neg. Needless to say, I never agreed to the retraction and to this day, I view that neg proudly.



In addition to that I have received neutral feedback from 2 people.  The first was from a guy who left it in error, I believe. He left a positive comment and must have inadvertently hit neutral instead of positive.  I never spoke to him afterward, so I do not know for sure.



Then, just recently I had another Italian buyer(someone from this site I might add) who left me five neutrals.  Why did I get five neutrals? Because I didn't lie on the customs forms for him and he had to pay a customs tax. Of course, because of Ebay's quality "no feedback except positive feedback for buyers", I had to rely on leaving follow up comments to my initial feedback to try and warn other sellers. I am not at all thinking that its going to work.  



http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=bclarkie&ref=home



My DSRs are also excellent:



http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... d=bclarkie



4.9, 4.8, 4.9 and 4.6.  I typically charge about a $1.00 handling fee and on several occasions without prompting, I have actually refunded buyers who I overcharged for S&H by more than a couple of dollars. More times than not I actually charge less for S&H then I quote in my auctions, because it is my experience that it is always best to set the buyers expectations for a higher fee and then I can reduce/refund them when necessary.  Despite that, my DSR for shipping is still only considered "okay" by Ebay's standards.  



The fact is that Ebay doesn't really want sellers to charge anything at all for shipping as they don't get any auction fees from it.  They still get their cut when they get paid through Paypal(which of course is now all forced as well ), but that's still really not enough for them either, they want a piece of everything.  



The best part is that they created the DSRs as a means to jack up their fees with justification, so they can say that if you meet certain criteria you are a "good seller" and can avoid a vast majority of the fee increase.  What they don't tell you though is that they set almost unattainable goals in the first place to get the discount and they also set it so that even though a buyer giving a seller 4 stars is supposed to be "good", they don't bother to tell the buyers that its "not quite good enough" as the seller needs to reach at least a 4.6 in all categories to get the proposed discount. Its like going to school and having a student get all B's and fail for the year. It's all simply Ebay's way of screwing a vast majority of their sellers with a large fee increase under the guise of "avoiding it"  through the horse crap DSR ratings.  Again, its all a joke and just another instance of Ebay pissing in your face and telling you its raining.

Anyone who looks at 2008's stock price and earnings for Ebay and then compares them to Amazon should know right away who is doing their job and who is not.  Add to that the record number of people joining the ranks of Amazon sellers and the sheer number of complaints by longtime Ebay sellers and it is pretty obvious that everything about Ebay has become a joke.

Kingofpain89 wrote:Anyone who looks at 2008's stock price and earnings for Ebay and then compares them to Amazon should know right away who is doing their job and who is not.  Add to that the record number of people joining the ranks of Amazon sellers and the sheer number of complaints by longtime Ebay sellers and it is pretty obvious that everything about Ebay has become a joke.

None-the-less, if you want to make money selling products in the second hand RPG market, your only viable option is eBay. Until Amazon can offer a credible auction experience, and match the prices you can get for your product on eBay, they will not bring in any serious buyers or sellers.

Currently their auction site is a joke. Why the hell would anyone list an item that is only likely to get maybe one or two hits? eBay have the monopoly and are doing just fine at holding onto it. Amazon have been trying pathetically for almost a decade to compete and the best they can do is simply pathetic. They insist on flogging the same dead carcass on the basis that they get some people buying books from their main site. So, their core business is successful? Stick to what you know and learn from years of failure and wasted effort.

Maybe if a big time player were to enter the market, with serious clout (Google mayhaps?) there may be a chance, but until then, eBay has it, and occassionally some newbie tries to sell stuff at a loss on Amazon. Good for the buyer who has the time to trawl Amazon for idiots, but at the same time, you'd do just as well at car boot sales and second hand book stores.

As regards fees, why not maximize your near monopoly? Apple does with it's iPhones and iPods. You have a service invery high demand and no competitors in the market place. So you can set your own price, knowing full well that those that leave will either return with their tails between their legs, or cut off their noses to spite their face.

And I would be willing to bet that if a contender did enter the market, and begin to offer a level of credible competition, they would be bought up and absorbed into eBay at the drop of a hat. Either that or squished like a bug.