Ebay is full of damm scammers

[Guest]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Oh I see, sorry I misunderstood you

No problem. 

 

You have to phrase things correctly as a seller & buy things appropriately as a buyer. 

 

I don’t offer refunds, but I’m also not forcing you to do anything. 

 

Any mechanical items are no problem to sell. Every electronic I sell, I don’t offer any buyer protection. If the shipping company leaves it in the rain or drops it, I’m not paying for that. If the buyer breaks it as soon as they get it, I can’t prove I didn’t sell a faulty product. 

[aisle9]

19 minutes ago, fpo said:

Every electronic I sell, I don’t offer any buyer protection. If the shipping company leaves it in the rain or drops it, I’m not paying for that. If the buyer breaks it as soon as they get it, I can’t prove I didn’t sell a faulty product. 

You do a lot of tough talk, but some of the basic factual errors in your posts (like sellers leaving negative feedback or not taking returns on damaged items) make me question the level of your experience with eBay, and if you should be dispensing bad advice to others.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

You do a lot of tough talk, but some of the basic factual errors in your posts (like sellers leaving negative feedback or not taking returns on damaged items) make me question the level of your experience with eBay, and if you should be dispensing bad advice to others.

I sold stuff with my relative since the early/mid 2000s and then I started selling on my own account mid 2010s on and off. 

 

No problems. 

 

Edit:

99% of sales are 

-buy. 

-pay. 

-ship 

-no further communication. 

 

The 1% of bitchy people just want to complain & haggle a deal. The answer is no. No negotiation. Pay or go away. This isn’t Facebook marketplace. 

[Tristerin]

Welcome to any and all interactions where money is being exchanged.  This isn't just relegated to Ebay.

 

 

[Teddy07]

4 hours ago, Benji said:

Sorry to break this to you, but eBay and the people on there are usually a pile of garbage. People on there are basically trying to rip you off.

Quite mean.

I also disagree because I only have positive experiences. I sold ~20 used PC parts and bought ~30 items and all went well.

[Shammikit]

Judging by the complaints of sellers I have seen I think ebay is mostly into the buyers side when it comes to refunds. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I've done some eBay dealings both ends, purely amateur, and only faced minor problems as a buyer - especially because eBay stepped in in the worst cases (or the threat of eBay stepping in deterred bad sellers from entrenching). Of course, I also did my part and never tried to pass my own mistakes to others (like buying something that later found would not work for me - I just flipped it back through eBay).

 

3 hours ago, aisle9 said:

All asking for pictures or video will do is piss your buyer off

So much this... I wouldn't send a brick to anyone, but I can imagine my reaction if, the few times I got a defective item, as annoyed as I already was, the seller would tell me "film a video while holding a piece of hand-written paper with your username and..." I would immediately reply "oh, sure, feel free to give those instructions to eBay Buyer's Protection where this is heading right now"...

I did send pictures on my own some times, like when I received a poorly shipped AIO that broke and leaked in transport. I did so immediately upon receiving it, the seller made no fuss about it, and they got exactly what they sent (but better packaged ).

 

My biggest argument was with a seller who sold (title and description) a 4-stick RAM kit, yet shipped only two, and then tried to argue that "there were only 2 sticks in the pictures" (another eBay rule: you are entitled to what's described, nothing more and nothing else. And even then there was no way to tell if different pictures showed different sticks or the same). He eventually accepted the return, though - and again, he got everything he shipped back and unharmed.

 

5 hours ago, Xvaster said:

Now I even got a crazy buyer that is demanding a refund of the item even after that he got the item because "he didn't see that there were shippement costs"

I got the opposite situation at one point: a seller posted an item with free shipping, and after the auction ended and I paid for the item he wrote to me saying that he forgot to put the shipping costs, could I please transfer an additional amount (standard DHL fee). I replied that he sold with "free shipping", and I paid everything required within eBay, and then he said "yes, that's the mistake: shipping isn't free!" As if everyone else doing free shipping was actually getting magic $0 transportation, rather than shipping cost being included in the price... Needless to say, I refused to make any payment outside eBay monitoring, and he shipped it alright (it was an SSD - not that shipping was expensive, nor anywhere near the value of the item).

 

What I always avoided where those sellers (usually overseas) selling expensive items at $10 plus $150 shipping. Never tested it, but beyond the obvious attempt at deceiving people to click on their posting, I always suspected they were trying to elude refunds at least partially that way.

 

[Andreas Lilja]

Bring back buyer feedback. Only positive is ridiculous.

[Lii]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

What I always avoided where those sellers (usually overseas) selling expensive items at $10 plus $150 shipping. Never tested it, but beyond the obvious attempt at deceiving people to click on their posting, I always suspected they were trying to elude refunds at least partially that way.

You don't elude Refunds in that way

There are several reasons why a seller might do so like:

Make the advertising more appealing and attract more clicks

Paying less fee to ebay/paypal

Coverup other extra costs

The price might even be so pricey, especially if the item has a big value, and the shippement is insured, this will increase the shippement costs but at least the seller does have a Backup in case of any damaged or item lost/not delivered and other things like that

And also heavy or big stuff that goes oversea is pricey to ship

 

[dizmo]

Welcome to working with the public. If you're not willing to deal with issues like that I really suggest you look into something else.

I'm surprised they bother to go that route anyway. If I have issues with an item I send a message, and if the seller seems unresponsive, I immediately open a claim.

No point in holding up the process.

 

I'll also say this: If you're not willing to abide by eBay's policies, don't use it. Period.

You'll either be voting with your business, or you'll be saving yourself the headache of dealing with fees that you deem unfair.

 

Did the individual mean duty fees?

 

@aisle9 While I agree with most of what you said, there are two points I don't agree with at all:

1. You won't always win just because the buyer uses a freight forwarder. I use one, and I've never had a problem when I've filed claims.
2. Some sellers charge astronomically more than what it costs to ship. For example I had someone tell me it would cost $150 to ship a PC, even though I provided him a FedEx and UPS quote, both under $50. That's simply madness.

4 hours ago, Benji said:

Sorry to break this to you, but eBay and the people on there are usually a pile of garbage. People on there are basically trying to rip you off.

Not true at all, if you buy from established people.

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

The thing is, things tend to break, sometimes in the mail. You're only required to:

a) See pictures of the thing in order to file a dispute

b) If it didn't arrive, or arrived damaged, then it's your fault if you didn't send it insured.

 

Hence

- Anytime you sell something on eBay, use your own photos, that you took THAT DAY and watermark them with your seller id accross the center. Scammers will often steal photos to sell garbage using other sellers photos.

- List the terms in your post. For most pre-owned things, "sale is final" is not unreasonable. If the item is destroyed in shipping, the buyer has to file a claim with the shipping company.

 

Anyone who complains about shipping costs, is an idiot and will lose their dispute since shipping costs, assuming you used eBay's shipping tools are on the listing and accurate. If you fudged the shipping costs in order to inflate the costs, then that is a disputable thing, and in most cases the seller loses if their stated shipping cost is inflated higher than the listing fee cost. eg if it cost you $2 to list and sell the item and $2 to ship the item and you charged the seller $4 to ship it, then you will certainly lose that dispute.

I'm not sure how it works in the UK, but it's not the buyers responsibility to deal with any shipping claim, it's the seller. They're the one making the "agreement" with the shipping company, they're the ones that should be applying insurance if necessary, and they're the ones that have the shipping receipt needed to start a claim. 

2 hours ago, AlwaysWong said:

Ebay will trust the buyer if the seller has no video proof, and it is a bs fact here for honest sellers. This is why you always want to do a video proof of the item before packaging, after packing, and dropping off, so if the buyer wants to scam you, he/she can't when you have a video proof show the item is working as you describe in the selling page.

To be fair, that's the same with virtually every retailer; why would eBay be any different?

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

No eBay thread is complete without a PSA against the global shipping program.

 

I mean. Sure. He had an unfortunate incident. But saying that's the norm is like saying FedEx and UPS will always drop and damage your items.

Not the case at all.

I've gotten tons of stuff through GSP, no issue.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, dizmo said:

 

I'm not sure how it works in the UK, but it's not the buyers responsibility to deal with any shipping claim, it's the seller. They're the one making the "agreement" with the shipping company, they're the ones that should be applying insurance if necessary, and they're the ones that have the shipping receipt needed to start a claim. 

 

When I worked for eBay, it really depended on what it was being shipped by. If you did USPS, Canada Post, or Royal Mail, the bare minimum was registered post (basically "sign to accept" ), if the seller and buyer couldn't agree to at least that, then the buyer is almost certain to lose the item in the post (to porch pirates) and the seller is going to get negative feedback about it. If the buyer pays for the insured option then they are the ones that have to actually make the claim, but it can vary a bit depending on the courier. Some sellers actually use intermediaries (eg they don't live in a city that UPS, Fedex, DHL, etc actually pick up from)  Likewise, when I bought something from the US once and paid for FedEX, it was delivered by Canada Post because Fedex didn't deliver to that city, the other time they required me to drive an hour to pick it up.

 

Anyway, the point was you should always pay for insurance, and if it's not worth paying for insurance, then it's not worth raising a dispute over, because the seller will only win the dispute if they produce a receipt showing registered/insured with the tracking number, and the buyer will usually only win by default if that isn't done. The entire shipping calculator came into play because people were rolling their ebay fees into the shipping price, when these costs are very clearly posted publicly by the shipping companies, so they weren't fooling anyone. 

 

Heck when I worked in that department, one of easiest reasons to take anything down was "fee avoidance", of which inflated shipping costs, "mail me money in the post" and "western union" were instant-kill to the listings. Keyword spam and copyright infringement are also notoriously easy to take listings down because people think they're being sneaky when really they're dancing around with their pants down.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

9 hours ago, Xvaster said:

The price might even be so pricey, especially if the item has a big value, and the shippement is insured, this will increase the shippement costs but at least the seller does have a Backup in case of any damaged or item lost/not delivered and other things like that

And also heavy or big stuff that goes oversea is pricey to ship

 

Oh no, it was none of those, but rather the previous ones you mentioned - essentially, selling for $10 + $140 shipping the same item that others sold for $120 + 10$ shipping or $150 + free shipping. If it was an issue with expensive shipping they could never sell it for the same price+shipping total as everyone else.

[David1207]

Scammers are the reason, I always prefer Amazon rather than any other ecommerce.

[sub68]

I bought a camera strap brand new from ebay

for 9 bucks and the seller had a good reputation

the strap came in the oem packaging

but I don't really trust ebay

I don't even trust amazon for cameras

[Lii]

3 hours ago, David1207 said:

Scammers are the reason, I always prefer Amazon rather than any other ecommerce.

Amazon is even worse for sellers

 

[Lii]

21 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Cut/

Last question, I'm Sorry

 

Without using an ebay scrapper, is there any way to block whorever seller is selling the same product as yours and whorever account is coming out from that machine?

[wall03]

1 hour ago, sub68 said:

I don't even trust amazon for cameras

yep B&H is better

[aisle9]

20 hours ago, dizmo said:

I'll also say this: If you're not willing to abide by eBay's policies, don't use it. Period.

^This guy. He gets it.

 

There are perfectly good alternatives out there, at least in the US, for both local sales and long-distance sales. As I mentioned early on, I hardly ever touch eBay anymore as a seller. But OfferUp? Well, that's a different story.

 

20 hours ago, dizmo said:

While I agree with most of what you said, there are two points I don't agree with at all:

1. You won't always win just because the buyer uses a freight forwarder. I use one, and I've never had a problem when I've filed claims.
2. Some sellers charge astronomically more than what it costs to ship. For example I had someone tell me it would cost $150 to ship a PC, even though I provided him a FedEx and UPS quote, both under $50. That's simply madness.

 

1. Interesting. I've only heard of one situation where someone lost a freight forwarder claim, and that's because the CSR they talked to was an idiot. Putting it diplomatically, of course. That said, eBay actually likes its buyers and wants them all to live, and they will frequently refund buyers out of their own pocket if they can't wring it out of the seller by any means necessary. Any possibility that's what happened?

 

2. Those sellers are why eBay now places the final value fee on shipping, too. Chinese sellers (sorry for racially stereotyping, but it's true) started to sell items for $0.99 with a $149.01 shipping cost to avoid the final value fee. It's less common now for two reasons: one, it doesn't do anything for fees, and two, it doesn't do anything for listing placement now that price and shipping are factored into search order.

 

The current trick for Chinese sellers (again, it's true) is to list 2012 MacBook Pros as $0.99 to $499.95. The picture, of course, is of the MacBook, so you go into the listing and look, then see that the $0.99 "MacBook Pro" is actually just a spare screw for the bottom cover. Just one screw. That's it. But if you're the seller, who cares? You've got an extra view on the item, and once in a great while someone will just pay $500 for the MacBook because it's the first listing they saw.

 

20 hours ago, dizmo said:

I've gotten tons of stuff through GSP, no issue.

GSP is basically as good as the handler you get. From what I've heard and seen, most of the time things go very smoothly. If you're the unlucky sort, you'll get a handler who used to work for FedEx and hasn't quite broken themselves of the "drop kick all packages prior to delivery" expectation that comes with their old uniform. I wouldn't hesitate to buy something using GSP, and would probably go that route over a freight forwarder if it came down to it.

[AlwaysWong]

Scammers are everywhere. Same with hackers on video game.

 

I got scammed today on Offerup, kind of. The buyer and me agreed to meet this place at 11AM EST today. I arrived 8 minutes early. I messaged the buyer many times through Offerup and no responded. I waited for another 30 minutes til 11:30AM, no show up or response to my message through Offerup. Luckily, I got another buyer ready to buy my item and manage to sell it.

[dizmo]

On 8/13/2020 at 11:27 AM, aisle9 said:

There are perfectly good alternatives out there, at least in the US, for both local sales and long-distance sales. As I mentioned early on, I hardly ever touch eBay anymore as a seller. But OfferUp? Well, that's a different story.

 

1. Interesting. I've only heard of one situation where someone lost a freight forwarder claim, and that's because the CSR they talked to was an idiot. Putting it diplomatically, of course. That said, eBay actually likes its buyers and wants them all to live, and they will frequently refund buyers out of their own pocket. Any possibility that's what happened?

 

2. Those sellers are why eBay now places the final value fee on shipping, too. Chinese sellers (sorry for racially stereotyping, but it's true) started to sell items for $0.99 with a $149.01 shipping cost to avoid the final value fee. It's less common now for two reasons: one, it doesn't do anything for fees, and two, it doesn't do anything for listing placement now that price and shipping are factored into search order.

 

The current trick for Chinese sellers (again, it's true) is to list 2012 MacBook Pros as $0.99 to $499.95. The picture, of course, is of the MacBook, so you go into the listing and look, then see that the $0.99 "MacBook Pro" is actually just a spare screw for the bottom cover. Just one screw. That's it. But if you're the seller, who cares? You've got an extra view on the item, and once in a great while someone will just pay $500 for the MacBook because it's the first listing they saw.

 

GSP is basically as good as the handler you get. From what I've heard and seen, most of the time things go very smoothly. If you're the unlucky sort, you'll get a handler who used to work for FedEx and hasn't quite broken themselves of the "drop kick all packages prior to delivery" expectation that comes with the uniform. I wouldn't hesitate to buy something using GSP, and would probably go that route over a freight forwarder if it came down to it.

Yeah, I usually buy on eBay and sell locally. eBay just gives you a much, much broader audience, and often you can get more for the item at a faster rate than you would trying to sell it locally.

 

1. Doubtful, I'd imagine they'd put some kind of limit on it if that's the case. I'd imagine it also depends which one you go with and how they're set up; the one I use I just use my name and the address, there's no added suffix like STE or #.

2. Kind of. China subsidizes shipping for it's sellers, so that also plays a large part in it. They charge that, get it back from the government, repeat.

 

Haha, yeah I hate coming across auctions like that. At the same time, I'd never buy something like that from China, so...it's less of an issue for me. I mostly see it now when I look at cell phones from the US and the new ones are more than retail, but they'll start off considerably lower for "C" grade ones

 

....are you referring to @handymanshandle

GSP has it's pros and cons. You always pay the duty, as they calculate it and charge it for you, however if you ship regular mail you'll often be able to avoid it.

They do generally have a more fair price for shipping though, especially when it comes to PCs.

[dizmo]

20 hours ago, AlwaysWong said:

Scammers are everywhere. Same with hackers on video game.

 

I got scammed today on Offerup, kind of. The buyer and me agreed to meet this place at 11AM EST today. I arrived 8 minutes early. I messaged the buyer many times through Offerup and no responded. I waited for another 30 minutes til 11:30AM, no show up or response to my message through Offerup. Luckily, I got another buyer ready to buy my item and manage to sell it.

That's not really a scam, that's just a shitty person.

[PlayStation 2]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

....are you referring to @handymanshandle

Damn that ain't funny :^( lmfao

[Evolution.]

This thread has been useful for me also thank you everybody