I sold some stuff on eBay for the first time. When I received the bill, I signed up for it to be paid automatically via my PayPal account. Life's great, eh?
Not so fast. A month later, eBay hits me with late fees and puts my eBay account on hold. Turns out, they didn't debit PayPal automatically as I'd asked them to. Instead, I was supposed to divine that auto-pay works only for invoices received after auto-pay is set up.
You might say that is predictable. In fact, that is how my bank works. When I sign up for e-bills or auto-pay, my bank warns that it might not kick in right away and that I should pay manually for the next billing cycle.
So here is my defense:
eBay and PayPal are part of the same company. Someone should be able to figure this out.
Not convinced? Fine, either was I. So when I first signed up for auto-pay, I asked eBay customer service when my account would be debited. They said it would happen in 5 or 10 days. They mentioned nothing about it *not* happening in the first billing cycle. Obviously, I was asking about that because people who had been using the service for more than a month wouldn't be asking the question!
Still not convinced? Fine, you're a skeptic. So am I. So when I didn't notice a debit (shortly before the payment was due--30 days after the invoice was sent), I again contacted customer support at eBay. Should I pay manually, I asked? No, they said, that would just result in a double payment and confuse everyone.
Okay, so I'm a lunatic raging against the machine, right? No, nothing of the sort. I calmly contacted customer service, asked them to remove the late fee and reinstate my account. Everyone makes mistakes, and they were entitled to a second chance.
Instead, they gave me the runaround through 10 emails, refusing to credit (drum roll please....) 8 cents! They insisted that because I wouldn't accept blame for their systems' limitations that I somehow did not understand them. The coup de grace (sp?) was their customer service rep (ironically named "Grace") chastising me to make sure I wouldn't let this happen again in the future.
So to summarize, eBay customer service sucks even worse than their software.
Can anyone recommend a better auction site with a liquid market in BrixWear T-shirts?
Bruce A. Epstein
is the author of Director in a Nutshell and Lingo in a
Nutshell, the coauthor of Dreamweaver in a Nutshell and the editor of
ActionScript: The Definitive Guide.
Give me your eBay horror stories. You must be logged in to the O'Reilly Network to post a comment.
Showing messages 1 through 100 of 100.
We now have the power!
2009-06-11 12:41:51
jgrissom21
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I'm beginning to read more and more posts about people upset with ebay. I have some good news for you.
With the help of some national radio publicity, some people started an auction site and they are going after the people who have been wronged by ebay. It appears they are gaining ground!
This site is getting national attention so hurry and get your items on there now. Their <u>first 25,000 listings are FREE</u> and final value fees are as much as 80% cheaper than ebay's and much easier to understand!! Also you can bring your feedback with you!
Read about their Anti-Sniping feature which is very beneficial to Sellers and also buyers. They have lots of other cool features as well. Just go to w ww . JaGetit . com (take out the spaces)
http://JaGetIt.com
Look out ebay! Here comes someone who cares about the customer!!!
Here is what I am doing to get back at ebay!
2008-03-27 10:23:59
askmewhyebaysucks
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Check out my site and email me at graphichut@gmail.com if you agree with me. www.AskMeWhyEbaySucks.com Ebay may not care but it is a great way to stick it to them in my own way. Let me know if anyone would like better images of the van. I will drive it 20,000 miles this summer around the country.
Ebay suspended me for shill bidding recently. Wrong! But can you talk to someone at ebay about their mistake? Nope. They only do internet responses. These jackasses keep raising fees, incorrectly suspend a powersellers account, and then won't even talk with you about it. The responses I did get over the internet didn't even address my questions!! I spent the 14 day suspension building my own website. Ebay will never get another penny from me! Someone better enter this market on a serious level and make ebay the AOL of online auctions.
Re: I totally agree with you!
2007-10-11 18:17:03
Kathryne_win
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<< Everyone should really be carefull on e-bay because all they are interested in is collecting fees and giving little or no protection against real fraud. >>
Amen to that! I couldn't agree with you more on your post! Of course mine is piddly compared to some of the horror stories I've read here. My experience had to do with a seller who posted a very deceptive link. In part it was my fault too, because I went by blind faith, in believing that the link was what it described and I hastily placed a last minute bid on the item. The heartbreak came after the auction was closed and when I scrolled down to read the rest of the description and found that what the seller had auctioned off, had already been used and the container only had half of the contents in it. There is a catch too, in that the seller's feedback policy is written in such a way that you get feedback only after you've given the seller yours, after you've received the item through the mail. Ebay keeps tearing down my "me" webpage, because I've expressed my feelings on the sordid matter. They've done diddly to correct the seller, as the seller is still selling. The seller got very ugly when I called her on it. There have been other unhappy customers as well. I realize that there are some super sellers at ebay, but the bad ones are the ones who give ebay a bad rap I've created my own webpage, telling of my experience. Is there something wrong in me doing this? I've gone ahead an asked ebay to close my account, because why should I keep buying things from ebay, when they can't give the underdog any support? Thanx to the originator of this blog for creating this outlet!
As a 7 year power seller with over 15,000 feedback postive and less than 1%negative rating they consistently screw with my account. competitors screw with your account and the minority of idiots that are buyers with two teeth in their heads screw with your feedback rating when they dont pay and ebay the gods of online highway fraud dont give a rats ass. I had too many negatives in three months per ratio to sales (sales are slow from tax time into summer) so they screwed with my account and now I cant list anything new. F them. It is time to find other ways. The fees rape you with no KY. I am tired of grabbing my ankles. and as for the flunky trust and saftey gotta love the dumb assed names. I have dealt with Duran, as class A a hole, ariel, moby, get a load of the bogus names they have to use so no one takes them out for being such a holes. run dont walk .
Ebay offered one of their one-day "special" where you pay 15 cents for a listing. I listed a jersey for sale assuming they would honour the 15 cent deal. They sent me a bill for $18.10 plus an extra reserve fee. No problem, I paid the reserve fee since I did use it but they insisted on the $18.10 extra. What happened to the 15 cents I was supposed to be charged??? I am no longer an Ebay user. I refuse to pay the $18.10. After several e-mails to their customer service, nothing was resolved so I will not shop/sell on e-bay any longer. They can kiss my butt!!!
They have suspended me yet again for breech of copyright. I have been selling my Ebook for more than 4 years on ebay, I have sold about 500 and I OWN THE COPYRIGHT but some thick idiot at ebay, and there are a lot to choose from, has decided that I have breeched my own copyright. If there is a God, Please give me strength.
Having been signed up with ebay for about 5 years and having 1,100+ feedbacks i think I know what I am doing but they want me to verify my identity and to take their tutorial. Someone, Please come up with an alternative to ebay.
How do they suck? Let me count the ways...
2006-07-21 08:56:19
karenL999
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Man, oh man. There is just no shortage of Feebay horror stories.
I have been suspended from their discussion boards for seven days. I got an email with NO reason for suspension, they won't answer my requests for a review, BUT (I love this!)...I'm still welcome to buy and sell on their site because that makes them money! ROFL, uh, no.
I still list sparingly on there, just to draw traffic elsewhere (my own place and my favorite alternative auction site: www.onlineauction.com--$8 a month unlimited listings!)
why does ebay suspend peaple that have done no wrong?they suspended me on a FPA notice saying that i was endangering public safety, all i put on there were diamond rings, how can that possibly be endangering public safety, they have said that i am suspended indefinetly, the rings i listed were not copies & they were certainly not stolen, & they did not infringe copywright legislation, they were in fact made by me, my own product, when i asked them to explain there actions, they sent me a whole lot of emails just saying i infringed the rules HOW, i could get no sensible answer from them, they hide behind this wall of nonsence, i think ebay sucks becouse they think they can do what they like & no one has any right to question them, its a big brother attitude taken to its limits & beyond, i really wish there were other auction site's to compete with them & take thier customers, having said all that can anybody suggest alternative site's. shaggy465
I totally agree with you!
2006-07-06 23:23:46
rynestonge
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Ebay does suck! I listed a item for sale on e-bay and I have only been on there for 3 months. I did not know that my son could not buy a item from me and now ebay has suspended both our accounts and accused us of shill bidding.
My son was the high bidder and I did not know this policy.
I have spent over 10,000.00 on ebay and there tactics suck!
Yet when I try to sell a computer on ebay I keep getting false bids from bidders in Nigeria and then they send these "spoof" e-mails that look like they are from pay pal.
Ebay is run by Hitler himself and when you try to contact them they hide behind e-mail and will not provide you with a live person to talk too.
Everyone should really be carefull on e-bay because all they are interested in is collecting fees and giving little or no protection against real fraud.
I will never again deal with e-bay and alot of sellers are really upset with this situation.
Farewell E-bay and is there another site that is more prone to being honest and not ripping off the american public?
I have turned this matter over to my lawyer for review and I will post what he finds.
Ryne
Nice kick-off article from Bruce Epstein, everyone!
I was defrauded on eBay but couldn't see how many others got caught like me because eBay will not search one seller's completed sales. How many sales are still pending, then? Can't tell because eBay removed them (makes sense, they're all frauds). Boy, let's see the flood of negative feedback. Can't. There's plenty of outrage at http://ebayscammer.notlong.com but eBay froze the feedback forum after 9 negatives. C''mon guys, how many other users were deprived of their privilege to post negative feedback?
eBay hides its fraud from the people who need to know it most: their users and potential future victims.
Using proprietary methods which would endanger national security if disclosed I tracked down everyone victimized by auction_price_for_you and posted a list to the Web.
http://ebayvictims.notlong.com lists 294 transactions worth over $130,000. Every sale is a hot link -- satisfy yourself that every sale was posted by user "auction_price_for_you" before eBay takes them off their servers. Treat yourself to a complete snapshot of a single eBay fraud event.
Let's talk detection and prevention.
Explain this to me again. A guy who had 23 sales in May, 11 in April suddenly does 294 transactions in less than 2 weeks? Suddenly he finds over $100,000 in capital to purchase merchandise? These are the stats for the transactions I have publicly listed. They are completed sales of fictitious items listed up to 10 at a time in multi-item, Buy-It-Now sales. The totals listed are higher still than my figures for sales completed.
Since any credit card company could detect the anomalous usage pattern, eBay could also. But eBay has chosen not to similarly supervise its own site traffic. Get it while it lasts, folks, it's easy. Let your victims use PayPal. Then you get your hundred grand and eBay compensates your victims. A billion dollars in annual profits (on 2005 annual revenues of 4.5 billion) can handle 10,000 "transaction loss" incidents like this. Compensation rates hover around 0.3% -- of what? transactions, revenues or profits? No matter, no concern with the human costs, with the community. Compensating fraud victims is a rounding error.
Let's talk about community and the community-based Website Pierre Omidyar created.
Every user listed on http://ebayvictims.notlong.com is a hot link. Could you click on a few for me and tell them about the fraud victims' support page? I can't, because eBay freezes their CONTACT USER service at 10 messages/day. OK, I'll settle for 80 chars to announce the Website to other victims when I leave feedback on Mom's TV that never came. Oh crap, that's frozen too, isn't it?
eBay is a Web 1.0 company in a Web 2.0 world. Someone break the news to Pierre. http://www.omidyar.net/whatshot/
These things are horrible!
2006-07-01 18:56:59
goflish.com
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I am so sorry you guys are having so many problems with ebay. I have used them many times, without any problems ,and I have actually started my own auction site.
Without trying to sound like I am spamming, because I promise you that is not my intentions here, but some of you have been asking if anyone knows of any alternatives to Ebay. I am working very hard to get this auction site off the ground, and I would gladly invite any of you to join with us at goflish.com and if you send me an email and let me know you saw this post I will give you a preferred seller account for life. This means all fees will be reduced by 100%. You can setup your own auction store with unlimited items to list in it, and goflish has most features that ebay has, and even a few that ebay doesn't have.
Don't get me wrong goflish is still new, and needs more sellers, however If you guys join with us and start listing, I have the financing to get the traffic we need. I am not the kind that beleives you get rich over night, but with hard work and dedication success can come to us all. With the help of everyone could make this the auction site you have always dreamed of.
Also, my name is Drew Turnbow, and I live in Springdale Arkansas. Please feel free to send me your emails and introduce yourself.
If I have offended anyone with this post, or if the owners of this site feel like I have violated any of their rules, I will totally understand if you delete this post.
I am sorry for the troubles you have had with Ebay, and I wish you all the best of luck with whatever it is you decide to do.
However you spell it, they both suck. I have been with paypal for over two years. For the first time, I purchased items from ebay through paypal. Guess what? i got charged twice for the same items, plus I am 70 dollars in the hole for nsf charges in my bank, plus another 30 dollars plus in my paypal account because of the mistake they made. I am in Canada, so, do the math on the conversian. I got pi$$ed so, I tried to close my paypal account. No can do. Im in the minus, and its not allowed. I swear, I will change bank accounts long before paypal or ebay get my money twice. They are no better than the scammers that try to sell us items via Nigeria or Cameroon. Just sucks these swindlers look so pretty while we give away our precious personal information.
Here is the number for human customer service
2006-06-23 10:02:41
kingma
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For those of you that have not been able to talk to a person, here is the customer service number in California:
***1-408-376-7425*** Please note that if you select option 2 for customer service you will be disconnected after being told to click the live link on their website. So here is the trick, dial 3 for the operator and then ask the operator to transfer you to customer service. You will then be transferred to the General Support hotline. Expect to wait up to 45 minutes.
I have been having problems with ebay from shilling to just recently trademark violation...what I think is happening is the people who are also selling Zetacap (mine are extra bottles) are upset because no one wants to pay for their high cost so they email Ebay and ebay removes my merchandise even though there is no picture listed or nothing from the makers of Zetacap....I have sent 4 emails and have tried to find an email address on the internet and nothing......I HATE EBAY THEY SUCK REAL BAD
First I am not a business seller but buy a few things and sometimes sell some them that are not what I wanted or would not suit my needs. I get a notice that my account is suspended for 7 days for shilling (never heard of it before now). They won't tell me what has prompted this but their records show this happened. What happened they won't tell me. I looked up their defination of shilling and find it is against the rules to bid on you own item. Well ok I can live with that but what did I do? I am surmising but think that one of my kids bid on an item they thought I would like for fathers day and turns out it was something I had listed. They don't know my e-bay name. That is personal and I don't share anything like that with them. That is the only thing I can think of but they won't give me specifics. They won't send me a copy of my account statement. I begin distrusting companies when they won't answer my questions and wonder if they are misusing my financial information!!!
To top it off I forwarded the e-mail (which turned out to be real) to their Spoof dept. spoof@ebay.com and get the canned response that it is a bogus e-mail and what to do when you get one. Why don't they go after the people who send out the spoofs and prosecute them instead of this bull. Try to talk to someone!!! Ain't happening.
SUSPEND MY ACCOUNT ON EBAYER COMPLAIN USING THERE PICTURE WITHOUT TRADEMARKE REGISTRATION
2006-06-10 21:43:54
chowchow
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THIS COMPANY JUST LISTENNING TO ALL EBAYER WITHOUT ANY FACTS???? ,THEY JUST SUSPEND YOUR ACCOUNT WITHOUT ANY FACT IF THERE PICTURE ARE REGISTERED WITH U.S. TRADEMARK OFFICE, THERE IS NO SUCH THING THAT EBAY SELLER THAT CAN REGISTERED A PICTURE THAT THEY WILL SPEND $20,000 TO $30,000 TO REGISTERED PER PICTURE. THEY JUST DON'T WANT ANY TROUBLE OR RESPONSIBILITIES ON THERE COMPANY THEY JUST WANTED TO COLLECT AND COLLECT COMMISSION ONLY. AND IF YOU COMPLAIN YOUR WILL JUST TO CHOOSE ON PREFORMATTED QUESTIONS AND ANSWER THAT YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE. ALL IS ONE SIDED TO THERE EBAY COMPANY. THEY JUST LISTEN TO ALL COMPLAIN WITH INVESTIGATING JUST LIKE THE "SAFE HARBOR" IS ALSO A SUCK WORST THAN "IRS" IF THEY ACCUSED AND SUSPEND YOUR ACCOUNT "ASAP". HOPE THOSE PEOPLE WHO READ THIS WILL THINK AGAIN TO BUY AND SELL ON THIS COMPANY.I DON'T IF THE EBAY STOCK HOLDER AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF EBAY COMPANY KNOWS WHAT HAPPENING TO THOSE WORKING INSIDE THAT WORST THAN EBAY OWNERS.
Ebay is on the way out.
2006-06-08 13:20:52
thecockneytrader
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I have had 2 loads of stuff listed under my name because of Ebays lack of security. They keep saying they will send in the bailiffs if I dont pay £30, I actually owe the £11 so I emailed them and told them when they stop charging me for stuff I did not list I will pay them.
I have now been saying for about 4 months that ebay are rubbish and sales and hits are not what they were, Is this the beginning of the end for ebay??? Read on, there is hope!!
They phoned me, Yes you read it right, THEY PHONED ME!!
They wanted their money so I said sort out my account and I will pay.
I then said to the nice Lady who phoned me that ebay was going rotten, I said I was not getting the hits or the sales that I was getting and she said, "YES I KNOW, WE ARE TRYING TO DO SOMTHING ABOUT IT" I replied "That I am shure that was not in the script and surely she should not have said it"
It really confirms that eBay are in trouble. I have finished with them, even with 92% positive feedback, Power seller and a total of 1,089 feedbacks.
If anyone knows a viable auction site please let me know.
ebay does suck
2006-06-02 07:21:37
kietster
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I recently found this website, http://www.toolow.com. It does reverse auction claiming to be less suck than ebay.
I would love to know if there are any other alternative to ebay today.
Visit www.boycottebaymotors.com and see how ebay's policies don't protect users. They are a breeding ground for fraud.
Have finally quit ebay after 6 years
2006-06-01 02:16:19
ebaysucker
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See my ebay 'about me' page http://members.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=thissitetrulysucks
Have finally had enough of ebay's one-sided contract terms, which I am convinced are unlawful in the UK.
ebay suspension of my account
2006-05-30 10:59:25
thundrbird420
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I do not know why but ebay suspended my account because they say that me and another member were participating in shilling. I had to read up on what it was just so I knew what it was I was being acuzed of. That is what brought me here, so I figured I would share my horror story. I have been selling and buying on ebay for over 8 years with no problems. I just listed over 40 items and have 20 more already sold and now they suspend it all. And to make it worse they still want me to pay for the listing fees of items that are no longer listed because they suspended my account. I can not receive payment for items already sold. And I have been waiting for the money for 4 days now. And the icing on the cake is I am afraid that anyone who is dealing with me or has dealt with me may have a problem with there account because they have dealt with me. Ebay has been great and I have made lots of money and would stil be doing so but they decided to pick on me. I have read documented cases where people get a warning for first offense and 30 day suspension for repeat offenses, this is my first and only offense because I don't even know what I did but they skipped the warning and went straight to the suspension. I am a 28 year old college student raising my 9 month old daughter and ebay was my source of income now I am stuck high and dry. I pay my fees on time I abide by all rules and regulations of what you can sale or list for sale or how you can list items for sale and now this. I understand that this is a business and ebay is doing its best to thwart liars and cheaters but I think they need to do more research before they pull a name out of a hat and decide to run them though the ringer. I understnd that this is a growing problem with people artifically inflatng prices to gain more money (shilling) but I never have nor would I never do such a thing I am a honest seller with 100% feedback on over 200 items. There is documented cases of people shilling a customer for thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars and getting a warning. This is a one time thing and I do not knwow how it happened but I get suspended right away. I have tried to resolve this issue but the endless e-mail cycle with ebay is more than I can handle. I am just going to try to collect my money for items already sold and shut down my account. There are many other online auctions in the world and if a few people at a time get fed up with ebay and there stupidity we can make them the smallest auction group and all the others the biggest. I think everyone should boycot ebay and sign up with a new smaller group and together we can all make a differnce.
Well after being a seller for 7 years and selling over 3000 items on ebay. I decided to buy merchancise off ebay. I have been ripped off by one seller who used another ebayers id. In which ebay could not have cared less. And the jerk was allowed to continue selling for a month after several complaints. And he is still a active seller. There is a local business man who was a victim of a 1.5 million dollar ebay seller scam. He had purchased a fork lift from the ebay
scammer. As did a number of other unsuspecting bidders. It took the man over 2 years to collect his loss(no legal expenses were compensated for. Also,he had padded his feedback with sales of post cards and other small items. Ebay PayPal Safe Harbor my ass !!
I was, until last week, a seven (7) year 100% positive feedback person that really like to work with EBAY. Then it happened....
I put up an auction for a laptop power cord/converter. It was a disciplined auction, well thought through, well written and above all clear. It stated (in bold caps) U.S. Buyers only and NO PAYPAL.
That auction was purchased by a person that then claimed that he couldnt pay me because he was Mexican. He also claimed that he would have to use PAYPAL. His profile used a Texas address allowing him to bid.
He then hits me with my first Negative Feedback.
His complaint, NO PAYPAL.
Ok, ok, bad luck.
1. I tried to call EBAY, NO MORE PHONES. Just endless email links.
2. I filed a NO PAY against the guy. EBAY agreed (how could they not?. A profile change? Not likely!
3. I filed a request to retract the Negative Feedback. Nope, EBAY was not going to retract it.
4. Then Ebay billed me. They credit the SALES FEE, but there would be no refund for the LISTING FEE. Ok, ok, fine.
I relist....
The same guys then buys ALL my auctions using "Buy It Now" (the immediate purchase plan), He leaves me Negative Feedback on every auction and, yep, you guessed it...NO PAY so he cant pay me.
I go through all the email thrashing with EBAY.
1. Nope, no Negative Feedback retractions possible. Seems that even though EBAY says in writing No Retalitory Negative Feedbacks where there is no intention to complete the transaction, well this one isn't that kind of transaction. What kind is it> Its the "teach you a lesson for not accepting PAYPAL kind!"
2. Nope, EBAY wount suspend this guys account.
3. Nope, No Listing Fee credits for me!!!
All my auctions ruined.
And then the bill comes....Well, I won't be sending EBAY any checks for a while......and I bet I'll be the one getting all the pressure
True story that even I cant believe happened.
EBAY is hiding behind endless deadend emails and the worst possible customer service.
Hi, I read the posting with a lot of interest and have been very surprised at how inefficient eBay is for its size as a corporation. I am doing a thesis on eBay and as an ebayer and researcher, have hit a stone wall as far as contacting anyone within the company is concerned. Does anyone have contact with REAL people in ebay?
Also, I would be really grateful if anyone would do my survey on eBay security. There are 20 questions mostly yes and no, and should take 5 minutes - anonymous of course, too. This is for my thesis, by the way. Many thanks to anyone who takes the survey http://express.perseus.com/perseus/surveys/1734848031/7d9ca6e.htm
IsaB
Commit to 200
2006-05-17 04:42:15
chicago1893
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We have all pretty much come to the same conclusions about what is going on on Ebay and PayPal. We are the true Americans, because we have taken the time to find out what these people are about and have decided that we don't want them to do business the way they want to do it in our society. MAKE YOUR DISSATISFACTION COUNT.
Make a comittment to boycott these companies and to encourage 200 others to do the same. Tell others that there is a HUGE possibility that they will get ripped off...you'll be amazed at the result. They will stay away in bunches.
They Will Not Supply Phone Number To Talk To A Real Person
2006-05-11 18:40:33
climbingivy
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No one should do business with a corporation that will not supply a toll free phone number.Buyers beware!I was ripped off big time and lost a lot of money from a seller that had over 20,000 positive feedbacks.
Getting it off my chest!!
2006-05-10 00:57:22
fedupebayer
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Sorry didnt mean to reply to the previous guys post!
Wow! I didnt realise that typing in Ebay Sucks in google would have gotten me such a huge amount of stuff!! Im a seller, no sorry, I was a seller, on ebay! Was having a great time, making a fairly reasonable amount of money! Nothing to retire on, but enough to help my husband and I to dig ourselves out of the debt heap we put ourselves into! Anyway, due to a fellow seller, selling exactly the same thing, lieing to the ebay powers that be, I have had my account suspended for 30 days! 30 DAYS!! The thing that bugs me is they take her word for it! She says I 'stole' her ebay image that is used to sell the product! BIG LIE! But instead of ebay, asking me about it, they just suspend me! I have tried to email them on 3 different occasions and so far have heard NOTHING!! I tried talking to them on Live Help twice. All nice and friendly to begin with until they figure out it will actually take some effort to sort out my problem, which is when I am duly sent to the 'Trust and Safety' department! Funny thing is, at the start of the Live Help I am asked to take a survey at the end, and funnily enough, when they cant or dont help me, I dont get to take the survey!! And the "Trust and Safety' department is a joke. There is no trust!! This other ebay seller has lied through her teeth and instead of looking into it, I, who tries to do the right thing and just get on with things gets suspended and she is probably laughing about it all the way to the bank!! Grrrrrr..... makes me so angry!! Thanks for listening to the rantings of a frustrated former (even with the probs hope to be re-instated) Ebayer!!
Ebay does really suck
2006-05-09 07:50:43
cmunds
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(sorry i am new to posting)
I only bought one thihng off of ebay...the seller and i have emailed back and forth and their were no problems on anyones sides.
However, ebay has suppened my acoount. I am still in the process of cancelling my ebay acount, if i can't be on it i don't want my information on there. So does anyone have any suggestions on how to take my name off? I have been refered to safe harbor so much it is not even funny. And safe harbor (if it is really them) wants me to send them a copy of my driver lic. , credit card statements, and C.C. #---how am i to know it is real? Oh, cause they say it is. They also say don't give anyone your information, and that they would never ask for it again.... Really!?!?!?!? Who knows, i just wnat it off there, and that is the aggravating part....NOBODY there actually takes telephone calls...RIGHT. They are just affraid to actually talk to me.
Well, any help from you guys on this would be great...
Thank you,
cmunds
i totally agree on the ebay sucking thing
2006-05-09 07:42:58
cmunds
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After getting scammed by a seller I used EBAYS "system" for resolution. Including speaking to Live Help. All their people must be coached the same way, "Oh I can understand your frustration..." I heard this same line from 5 different customer reps. They in the end leave it up to YOU to get restitution. I became a banshee and contacted Police the Bank and anyone else involved and we are now aggressively going after the perp. My suggestion. Do not deal with PayPal or EBAY. Boycott them just like you do Gas Stations that overcharge or any retail business that takes its customers for granted. I for one will tell 200 people of my poor experience with this company.
Come join our community for auctions!
2006-05-02 11:22:18
McBidz.com
[Reply | View]
We invite you to join our just launched community for auctions, classified advertising, and marketplace. Currently our grass roots effort at McBizRevolution.com is banding our community together for the launching of McBidz.com where the community all have one free year of posting. After the initial year the community will set the prices and regulations. Come join us and get involved in our discussion boards.
Thanks,
Charles McCracken
Busi2you@yahoo.com
Come join our community for auctions!
2006-05-02 11:22:13
McBidz.com
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We invite you to join our just launched community for auctions, classified advertising, and marketplace. Currently our grass roots effort at McBizRevolution.com is banding our community together for the launching of McBidz.com where the community all have one free year of posting. After the initial year the community will set the prices and regulations. Come join us and get involved in our discussion boards.
Thanks,
Charles McCracken
Busi2you@yahoo.com
my experience
2006-05-01 14:44:43
Pumping-Purple
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I had a chat with ebay's lackies in India. What a shower they were! I didn't manage to copy the entire text of the conversation and they didn't email it to me as they promised they would.
My problem? I set up ebay and paypal then found when somebody tried to pay me via paypal that paypal then wanted me to pay them in order to upgrade to a business account. No thanks. Money flows toward me, not toward PayPal.
So, I tried then to remove the scourge of paypal from all my other listings. As this seemed not to be possible, I had a chat with the lackies in India. During that conversation, they proved to be offensive, accused me of saying things I had not and started threatening me.
Obviously Ebay does not inspire confidence with offensive, rude, ignorant staff. My wife's dead keen on ebay. Personally, I'm returning to my initial opinion which was that they're not up to much.
my experience
2006-05-01 14:43:53
Pumping-Purple
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I had a chat with ebay's lackies in India. What a shower they were! I didn't manage to copy the entire text of the conversation and they didn't email it to me as they promised they would.
My problem? I set up ebay and paypal then found when somebody tried to pay me via paypal that paypal then wanted me to pay them in order to upgrade to a business account. No thanks. Money flows toward me, not toward PayPal.
So, I tried then to remove the scourge of paypal from all my other listings. As this seemed not to be possible, I had a chat with the lackies in India. During that conversation, they proved to be offensive, accused me of saying things I had not and started threatening me.
Obviously Ebay does not inspire confidence with offensive, rude, ignorant staff. My wife's dead keen on ebay. Personally, I'm returning to my initial opinion which was that they're not up to much.
In November of 2005 I listed some x-box games on ebay. The auctions clearly stated when the product would ship, as I was out of town and didn’t expect the shipment until I returned. Many of the customers went ahead and paid for the games. When paypal seen all of the increased activity on my account, they put a freeze on it. I never took any of the funds from the account. All money that was paid into the paypal account stayed there. When I logged on to paypal they requested additional information about me etc. I provided that information. They then sent me an email requesting the tracking information on all of the purchases. I called paypal and explained that I didn’t have tracking. They hadn’t shipped. The customer service rep advised me to refund the payments and that would clear up the hold on my account. I did just that. I gave a refund to everyone that had paid. Paypal then notified me that because I gave the refund, it indicated to them that I didn’t have the product & sold something that I didn’t have. They advised that they would not restore my account, even though mind you I have had that account for nearly 6 years! Meanwhile once paypal put the hold on my account, ebay limited my account. Ebay stated that the limit would remain until I could clear things up with paypal. Paypal says that they will not restore my account, that I violated their policy because in their eyes I sold something that I did not have. They stated that they will keep the money that I did have in there for 6 months. Then, they will mail me a check and close the account. I contacted ebay and explained that this was a catch 22. I did NOTHING wrong & yet I was being punished in a large way. I use ebay to liquidate a ton of stuff from my retail stores. I don’t make much, if any $$ on the sales but it is necessary for cash flow. When this happened I was an ebay powerseller. I was going to close my ebay account because it was no longer good to me. Ebay responded and said that maybe there was a way to clear it up by providing them additional information about the Xboxes. I provided them with everything. The name and number of the company that sold me the games. A copy of the bank transfer for $18,000 to purchase the games. Etc. None of this seems to have mattered. The worse thing is, when ebay limited my account, they also limited the account of my mother, my daughter and my aunt. All who use ebay to make money. How is this fair? None of us have gotten any good answers from ebay. Because of the stress and struggles to get the account back, I resorted to opening another account for my business. Like I said, I liquidate a ton of stuff on ebay and I need the cash flow to survive. Ebay then suspended my store account, my account, my mom’s account, my daughters account, and a shoe account that my cousin had for her business? And, to top things off, a customer of mine purchased over $5000 worth of old merchandise from me. He called last week to say that his account was suspended because it was associated with my account? Ebay explains nothing. I have sent several request to ebay. Appealing the suspension and asking how to get reinstated. I get nothing in response. In march they denied my appeal and said that I was suspended indefinitely. What exactly does that mean? Am I locked out of ebay forever? Can I not sell merchandise to someone and they choose to sell on ebay? Because I probably sold $50,000 or more on there last year and I really need the account to operate my business. I am so frustrated. I am not a con. I have been selling on ebay since 1989. I have never ripped anyone off. I normally don’t even sell electronics, only shoes and clothes. This x-box nightmare was a one time shot. I wanted to make some extra Christmas money. So I guess that my question to you is. Can you help? What are my choices? What about my family members that have been punished as well? Isn’t this a violation of privacy? PLEASE HELP.
Jennie Barker
So, the latest in my eBay saga ...
2006-04-21 16:00:49
lilmstx
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Where we last left off, was where I told eBay to stick it. Unfortunately, it seems that they have decided to stick it to me. On the good side, once i'm ticked off, i don't allow that quite often ;o).
On April 6th, they deducted $61.93 from my bank account for fees which they say I owe (um, yeah, right). Since I have not been able to connect with anyone live to dipute this, and the online customer service is a JOKE, i disputed it through my bank. (Oh, i should mention here that obviously they received my bank information such as account and routing number from paypal). My bank credited the amount back, and THEN, on April 19th they deducted the same amount through my bank card. I disputed it again (immediately) and today, I received an e-mail which says:
Hello
We are writing to alert you that your monthly eBay seller fees have not been paid because both your bank and credit/debit card declined eBay's
attempt to automatically deduct the amount due. As stated in the eBay Direct Pay Agreement, eBay may have assessed a Returned Item Fee to
your account. If this fee has been assessed, it will appear on your next invoice.
Please contact your bank to determine the cause of the decline.
If you would like to place new direct debit information on file, please follow these steps:
1.Go to the eBay Home page.
2.Click My eBay at the top of the page, and sign in with your eBay
User ID and password.
3.Click the "Seller Account" link (beneath My Account in the left
navigation menu).
4.Follow the instructions for placing or updating your payment method.
Regards,
eBay, Inc.
THEY ALSO INCLUDED A NUMBER: 888-749-3229!!!
Anyway I sent them an e-mail saying something to the effect of: "No, this is not a mistake. In fact, eBay owes me credits which have not been applied. If a 'live' person could ever be reached, or if your customer service were not made up of people with silly putty for brains (apparently all the smart scammers work in the accounting department), this would have been resolved, but that is obviously not so." Then upon seeing that THAT e-mail arrived with no problems or no 'canned' response, I sent them another: "WOW! I SEE THIS e-mail got through, unlike e-mails from customers NEEDING information. This is why the growing list if eBay detractors grows and grows."
Finally, this is just a reminder that:
EBAY S U C K S ROYALLY
use craigslist.com!!!
use backpage.com!!!
use anything BUT eBay!
Eventually, eBay WILL screw you!
EBAY IS TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD
2006-04-15 08:58:58
EBAY_IS_THE_ANTICHRIST
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eBay/Feebay is trying to take over the world, they already think they own the world in my opinion. You can't fight them, they have become SOOOO big no one will challenge them, they have so much $$$$$ now they could care less about the small people who were there when they 1st started, back then they would almost kiss your A$$ to get you to sell ANYTHING, now they can pick and choose...
I have been a member for almost 10 years, and have seen eBay become the greediest non caring bunch of greedy ba$$stards in the world.
They hold your fees for over 14 days from non paying bidders (Who are probably bidders made up by eBay) and collect interest on ALL that money, and when you finally get a refund they have already collected sooo much interest from the millions this happens to, there should be a law against this, in fact I'm sure there is, but everyone is afraid to take on eBay, and eBay knows that....
As for me eBay/paypal or any other entity owned by eBay will NEVER get another penny from me.
If I ever hit the BIG lottery I am going to start a site called Freebay and run eBay out of business, and send them back to their knees begging like they did when they first started...
My advise leave eBay now because eventually they will screw you if they have not already, and try to get everyone you know to leave eBay, show EBAY who is the boss, and who REALLY pays them...
EBAY SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
eBay allows sellers to sell items they don't even have in stock!!
2006-04-12 12:49:14
Vortex33
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I’m really frustrated that eBay allows sellers to offer items as “Buy It Now” when the seller doesn’t even have the item in stock. I just recently had a problem with eBay seller dressed2the9s after doing a BIN and paying immediately. I kept emailing them asking about my item (with no response back) and it took them 11 days just to tell me it wasn’t in stock. They offered a refund which I accepted but after another week of asking about the refund I finally got a response that the item had shipped.
I did everything I could. I paid on time. I kept in contact with the seller. And I still got slammed by eBay because the seller eventually did ship. I should have just filed a Non-Performing Seller and Item Not Received.
eBay only sides with the PowerSeller. The responsible buyer is screwed either way. And now I am stuck with a retaliatory negative feedback because I told the truth in my feedback to the seller.
Ebay does suck, I agree with all of your stories, and completely understand. I was a little upset with Ebay, as they are so strict in everyway. While creating a new account, even just to BUY, you must have a credit card. I don't think this is very fair in the first place, because have little credit history, I cannot get one. Although, eventually I did use the ID VERIFY system (which they charge you $5 for), and I had listed some items on ebay that are just taking up space in my home!
Soon enough, Ebay suspended me because I had one letter misspelled in my account information, and I contacted them several times about this. In order to get my account reinstated, I would have to either fax or mail several forms of identification - same with Paypal, whom I cannot stand either. My parents first introduced me to Paypal and Ebay about 8 years ago now. They had used Paypal to buy and sell until my mother's account had gotten hacked into by some hackers. This happened not only once, but twice! My mother contacted Paypal through E-mail and telephone and slowly got nowhere! I had made an account with Paypal for my previous Ebay seller account, and I got paid for one item, an excersise machine "BODY BY JAKE". My husband had purchased this off of the informercial for $280. I sold it for $265, still b rand new in the box....
Anyway, I checked my Paypal account when I saw that the buyer had payed for it to verify the funds were in my account, and I saw that I now had a LIMITED account?!?!? This means I cannot receive nor send money, and all of my information and bank account was "locked into the paypal system". Customer service called me, some woman, I do not remember her name, and she was asking me all of these questions about the excersise system....I was a little suprised at how rude and obnoxious she was, asking me the website i bought it off of, the time, date, and much more!!! I eventually hung up on her, and again, the only way I can reinstate my account was to fax over 2 utility bills with my name and address, a valid photo id, and a few other forms of ID. I was a little angry at this point ---- People on Ebay always contact me and ask over and over again why I do not accept Paypal, and I tell them I cannot stand it, and tell them the hackers who stole over $500 from my mother's account - of course they all say this is hard to believe, yada yada yada ----
Anyways, they proceed to tell ebay I am now a "suspicious" seller on the 2nd account I had made, they just automatically suspend me right then and there. I think it's absoluetly pathetic and ridiculous how Ebay and paypal work--- when you get money stolen out of your account, and accused falsely, without even investigating, they just ban you right away! So I have had it, and will never use either company again!!!
another disgruntled ebay user, of course :)
2006-03-18 17:15:55
cdoasis
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Hi everyone, another Feebay hater here, what else is new amirite?
After reading all these other complaints I felt that I had to post mine. It might not be as serious as everyone else's but it's still pretty annoying.
Well, I've been an ebayer since '01, feedback of 36, 100%.Funny thing is, I've never had a problem with fraudulent buyers or sellers, just feebay themselves. Fraudsters, I say.
My first problem was a few years back. I'll admit it, I was a victim of phishing. I submitted my username and password to one of those fake emails. I guess I didn't know any better, or rather I wasn't thinking at the time. Soon enough, the hacker changed my account's email address and password, right when I was surfing ebay. I was really bummed out. Then I noticed he listed all these cell phones or something for sale, charging my credit card. I reported it all to ebay of course; they sent me an email saying that it didn't look like I was the one who did that (how would they know?) so they banned the account.
It took me forever to get my account back. Every time I emailed them about it, they insisted I send them a copy of my driver's license and this and that, to prove ownership of the account. Umm, I didn't have to prove it in the first place so why now? It seemed like they just wanted to collect information so I never sent it to them. Finally I got through to a sensible employee on live chat who simply unbanned my account for me. Wasn't so hard, was it? Except, ohhh, now you just don't have a copy of my life's information.
I vowed to never use ebay again but eventually I needed money and had to sell some things. =P
Well now it's all started up again, this time I'm using my checking account instead of a credit card. So I had about $20 in seller fees (I was kind of annoyed it added up to THAT much), and ebay automatically withdrew it out of my account. That kind of bothered me that they just automatically took it out of my account, but whatever. I had the money in my account, and I kept getting all these emails from them saying I had insufficient funds. I contacted my bank about it, and it's definitely not them. I don't know what feebay is up to, but it sure didn't smell right. So they added this $15 charge for having insufficient funds. Umm.. why? I emailed them about it and they pretty much said "that's how our bank works" so I flat out said that I refused to pay that extra $15. I never got an email back after that.
So I emailed them again about it, trying to be nicer, but I still got the same canned response. Recently, they went ahead and charged my bank account AGAIN. This time I didn't have the money in my account, yet it went through. How does that work? I just can't believe it. So now my bank account is like -$20 or something (that's negative $20), and yet feebay still wants $15 from me because they claimed insufficient funds a few months ago, but although I don't have the funds now they go ahead and subtract money anyway. Crazy!!
Second post
2006-03-16 01:30:42
lilmstx
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Once I got all that off my chest, I actually read some of the other posts, and I must say I'm glad I found this site. Everyone has extremely correct topics (at least the few I read)! I wanted to say: "oooh! Ohhh! that's RIGHT" (maybe I did say it) to the guy who wrote about the retaliatory feedback. EBAY DOES NOT CARE. They will only remove negative feedback for maybe one or two very stringent reasons, and then only if they want to (they have final decision power even over a stipulated policy!!!). So, one of thier main "pluses" to make buyers feel comfortable, is actually NOT, because many users will not leave negative feedback, knowing that 99% of the time it will result in negative feedback being left for them. I also agree with the post about fees. It is crazy! and finally I really did not KNOW about craiglist or booogins ... I must check it out. Thanks all :o).
Where do i begin? Do I have enuff space for a book? Okay, I'll start with: "ebay Sucks royal a....
2006-03-16 01:18:04
lilmstx
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Hmmm. Couldn't finish the sentence. Guess it is just as well. Anyway, I’m going to give you major reasons why eBay sucks royal, um, royally. I was more of a buyer than a seller, but sold things occasionally on ebay. Well, on two of my auctions, two different sellers (I guess who had same items, who knows …) contacted my bidders and said that my items were fake. Well, one of the buyers no longer wanted the item she had won, so I jumped through hoops to file a complaint against the person who had “interfered in the sale”, reached a myriad of totally ‘slow’ (yes, mentally) representative who kept referring me back to the’e-mail us’ link, which told me I could not do anything without the message headers, which of course I did not have. All I had were the e-mails which were forwarded to me by the people who received them. Well, frustratingly ridiculous as that seems, it getg better. The next night I receive and e-mail from ebay saying my account was suspended because I have (had) two different screen-names. DUH! They specifically TOLD me to open a new name (a long time before seller interference issue) because I did not remember my password to my old account and they could not verify it was me(??!??). Then, to add insult to injury, my new item which was selling: ReD Hot suede fashion boots” was canceled and I was advised that I would not be eligible to receive my fees back. Which brings me to the greatest reason as to why ebay sucks (!!!!) I would up paying $30 one month and $60 the next, to sell a total of maybe 5 items. THEY made more off of their hidden “final value fee” than I did! So, reasoning stands that I would dispute the hidden and extra charges, but that only brings us back to (you got it) getting a hold of a rep that doesn’t have silly putty for a brain … and thinking, just maybe, hoping a tiny bit, that you will be able to prove ebay wrong, through ebay – ungh yeah, fat chance.
I paid for an item at end of auction through Paypal + 1st class recorded delivery, It arrived after about 8 days and it did not work. I requested a refund but this was ignored so I threatened negative feedback, He retalated, What for? Selling me a crap item, receiving immediate payment, and very late delivery. I did everything honestly, He screwed me. I asked ebay to remove the feedback and for my buyer protection. Result, They did not reply to my request for protection, They wont remove his unjustified feedback. Ebay sucks!!!
Paypal buyer protection is totally worthless. First they charge a $25 processing to process your claim. Then, if the scammer doesn't have funds or mails you a brick instead of your item, Paypal sides with the seller. If you buy on ebay, ALWAYS use a credit card so that you get chargeback protection. NEVER TRANSFER TO PAYPAL FROM A BANK ACCOUNT. Bank account transfers to paypal are no safer than cash or Western Union. I got ripped off for $16 as a buyer. As a seller I only sell stuff on ebay that other sites prohibit, and I think I'll dump those too.
My first and only transaction was an item that 'Did NOT Sell' but ebay is charging me for it anyway. Has this happened to anyone else out there? Do they have a phone number? Or can one actually talk to a person there? Because their email communication sucks too! Do I need to contact my lawyer?
EBAY RIPS PEOPLE OFF
2006-01-25 21:14:34
precise14010
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Every time I turn around Ebay raises there fees. Ebay is not for sellers. It is designed for buyers only. Think about this for a sec. EVERYONE that visits Ebay is looking for a deal. So the sellers practically have to give stuff away to get people to buy. I have had more than one seller account with Ebay selling Electronics and let me tell you people want something for nothing. So Ebay charges 2.00 to set a reserve price. As soon as you select this feature the insertion fee automatically goes up to 4.00 even if the starting price is .99..Then you choose a buy it now another .25 cents. So now you are paying for insertion , Buy it Now and reserve price fees.. Ok you are selling your item at only 10.00 above your cost because most sellers on Ebay try to sell volume to make the cash but at the same time have to set reserve prices so you dont lose your ass. Ok so we have the listing fees and you are making 10.00 profit per item, Ebay then takes a final value fee after your item sells. Then you accept PayPal an Ebay owned company (PayPal was sued and they lost)and have to pay the PayPal fees on top of that. So see even if you do sell in volume one you add it up it is not really worth the headache. You will be lucky to walk away with a dollar. It is cheaper to have a website hosted. I have talked with merchandisers that sell on Ebay and have been told that Ebay has made it difficult for some of the bigger sellers too. I have contacted Ebay about this and they jsut blow it off. Half the time they will not even return Emails. So people say well why dont you charge more...I have been in business for years dont you think I thought of that...I look up items on Ebay that I am selling and have to compete with the other guy...It is a no win situation. I have decided to let the items i am selling end and I am no longer selling with Ebay. I am going to open my own site. MUCH CHEAPER....Buyers on Ebay will always be the ones who make out. Somebody need to Open another Ebay type compnay and Bury Ebay and the sorry ass people that work there who never care to answer emails..Or send you the same email over and over again with useless information. Man I feel better.
a better place
2006-01-13 12:07:33
lancebob
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I was selling autographs on eBay, previously bought of eBay, for a cheap price. Then other companies said my autographs were fakes. So I left eBay and now i go to www.ebid.net
NO FEES!!!!!!!!
Ok that HTML didnt really work out to well, Anyways you asked what else you could use besides ebay and the answer is www.overstock.com then click on auctions, Or visit our overstock auctions and the url listed below (just copy the line below in your browser), Sorry about the html above it was suppose to work.
ebay sucks! big time
2006-01-04 20:45:49
sapkid
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I have been selling on ebay under 2 different names for a long time, in fact, i was one of the first sellers to sign up on ebay years ago. We have over 1100 positive feedbacks on sapkid and we had over 20,000 under our old name. The problem is simple, i started requiring that every buyer pay insurance on all shipped items-good idea right? Wrong! about 10 days ago a buyer purchased 2 items from me and then 2 days later started e-mailing saying they had not gotten their items and wanted a refund after 2 days. Well, i wrote back explaining that i ship all items after a 2-3 day handling time(which is clearly stated in my ebay policies) and the buyers package should arrive shortly. Anyway, 7 days goes by and now the buyer is writing 2-5 times a day stating that he wants a full refund. So, to keep the buyer happy, i offer a full refund, and tell the buyer our policy is to do our insurance paperwork(i use a private insurer) and then transfer money into our paypal account and then pay the buyer. All this is explained clearly in our policies. So i do not hear anything for a whole day, then on the 8 th day, while i am transferring the money into our paypal account, the buyer writes and threatens me and my family and then states that he wants a refund now. Again, trying to make this jerk happy, i give a full refund through paypal, but since he did not want to wait for the money to arrive in the account, now it is an e-check. So then the buyer writes and says i better release the funds. I try to explain how paypal works and still he harrasses me more 10 more e-mails in 3 hours. So, finally giving up, i made the mistake of contacting paypal and ebay, and they tell me that they let the buyer post negative feedback and also freeze my paypal account until i prove i paid him. What? i just did a refund through paypal 8 hours earlier? so then ebay tells me they do not care what happens to antique and collectible dealers-only the mall and super sellers?I have been paying an average of 300.00 to 700.00 a month in listing fees and last month i broke even. So is this an isolated case with a bad buyer? i wish i could say yes. I have had in the last 6 months, 22 buyers who claimed not to receive their merchandise. Funny thing though, when i remind them the usps delivery confirmation shows they received it earlier, they suddenly write back and son of a gun, they just found it in the mailbox right after they wrote, hah! So anyway, sorry for the length but i felt it was important for other ebay sellers to hear what can happen to them. I am always hearing about "poor ebay buyers" who get ripped off-i wanted someone to know a lot of us honest seller get ripped off too. Oh and by the way, paypal still has my account frozen-until i prove i refunded- and when i try they say they do not need the proof.
I have 1,000+ positive feedbacks on Ebay but this counts for nothing with them. Although 1,000+ people say I am a great honest ebay dont seem to agree. I have been suspended 3 times in the last 3 weeks, Lost £100s and they say sorry it was our fault or we made a mistake.
Their help system only helps them, They will never pick up the phone and they bleat on about their wonder buyer and seller protection, There is none, It is impossible for an auction site to protect customers so why do they claim that do. The best p[rotection I heard of recently was when a buyer who had been screwed by a seller who sold me stolen gear,The buyer went to the seller and belted him and gave him one for me. That is what I call buyer protection.
Ebays staff should be simpathised with because they are of such low intelligence and sadly lacking education.
I listed some Blood Glucose testing strips, Ebay pulled them saying they were prohibited because they were prescription drugs. The have an ebay classification number and they are available from any chemist without prescription and they are not drugs. Stupid or what??
Happy new year to you all.
I have a negative balance in my ebay account and I have been trying to get a refund from ebay for the past few months
ebay keeps telling me to contact the credit card company and dispute the charge
this is not a dispute over a charge, it is a negative balance in my ebay account - each month I get my ebay statement and it shows I have a negative balance in my account (aka ebay owes me money)
ebay continues to tell me that there is nothing they can do about it and that I have to contact the credit card issuing bank and dispute the charge
but how does a bank issue a refund to a credit card account that is closed and no longer active, and when this is not a dispute over a purchase charge - this is a refund for some screw up on ebays part and they owe me a refund!!!
Ebay's the Evil Empire
2005-12-09 20:29:16
treeclaw
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After 6 years and over 50k worth of transaction as a buyer I can say without a shred of doubt that Ebay is the Evil Empire. Their scheme is cleverly formulated to maximize their profit at the expense of the buyers and sellers. When problems arise Ebay assumes no responsibility: Pitting the sellers vs. buyers and vice versa. Their feedback system is critically flawed to intimidate buyers from telling the truth. Do not enrich Ebay at your own expense. When everything is all tallied up you saved nothing in expense or money.
YES they SUCK
2005-12-07 16:18:11
aseqe
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After 8 years of them making money on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I reported a racist listing and a person selling copyrighted iems and the F@@@ers suspended me!!!!!!!!! I will be damned if I give them anymore of my money....Heck I can have a garage sale and make more money than giving Ebay all their outrageious fees...Does anyone know of another good auction site on the net? I am so upset because when I complained to ebay I got a message that I was in violation of shilling????? I helped a friend open an account to buy and sell and they put a bid on one of my items and ebay suspended me...Well the heck with them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyone had the same experience?
New auction site for disgruntled eBay members
2005-12-04 22:08:18
BarginBids
[Reply | View]
We recently opened the door to an online auction service: www.BarginBids.com. I am a former "FeeBay" member and was tired of the nickel and diming. With the help of a GREAT developer, we designed BarginBids. We offer $25.00 in seller credit when you open an account. And $10.00 for EVERY referral. After that, listing fee's start at just $0.10 and go to 2.00 (for anything over $5,000.00). We offer feedback importer (it's an option) from FeeBay, Overstock, Yahoo, UBid and more. There are several more "options" coming in the near future. (One that we are working on is a seller assistance program.) There is also a classified section to post want ads. If you want to keep the money in YOUR pocket, check us out. We do have a staff that is driven by customer service. (A fact that we pride ourselves on.) This site was developed by auctioners for auctioners. Come check out our site and register.
Together, YOUR input and our customer service can make buying and selling a fun thing again.
-www.BarginBids.com
They Pretty Much SHut Down Everything
2005-12-02 18:36:39
nitrouzaddict
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Yeah, I have had the same problem. I was a powerseller with a great feedback rating, but I have both eBay and Paypal to blame. A customer complained about not receiving an item (in which I had proof) so Paypal limited my account and froze my funds which I used to buy parts with. I know dropshipping is against the rules, but I did it for quite sometime and it saves alot of money. Anyways, once my funds were frozen, I couldn't order parts, etc,. This resulted in around 20 or so negative feedbacks which led eBay to suspend my account. Since then, I figured I would just start a new eBay name from scratch and start selling again. Everytime I have tried to start selling again, they always close down my new name. I am an honest seller, and I think it's crazy the honest sellers are the ones who get screwed.
PEOPLE LIVE IN FEAR OF FEEDBACK
2005-11-30 10:24:37
Red_Hum
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The first thing I purchased on eBay was absolutely
A piece of S*%$. I am interested in Energy conservation
so I like to acquire Solar or Alternate energy conservation
materials, books and info. There was a E-book with just such info the feed back for this person was POSITIVE FEEDBACK 99.1% so I placed a bid. I took 3 times at only $ 3.50 plus 3.95 shipping handling total $7.45. This Item has sold for as low as .99 to more than 10.00 I don’t know what the highest bid was? and 3 to 5 items auctioned at a time. I only wanted to get it over and get my Feedback since I am new,I was told how important this is to have GOOD FEEDBACK.
After I won the bid and also 3 other bidders I paid with Paypal within hours of the notification. I thought when you paid being the buyer you would Get FEEDBACK saying How prompt I paid. Not the case here I RECEIVED FEED BACK only after I left him POSITIVE FEEDBACK approx 5 days later, I inquired with the seller about his procedure he said
They wait to see if all is well with item after delivery
To leave FEEDBACK. CRAP! CRAP! A LOAD OF CRAP!! I believe
People LIVE IN FEAR of a NEGATIVE FEEDBACK and will not
Post the Truth. This Item I bid on is downloaded info from the web and maybe free e-book info put on a CD. This CD rom
did not even have a Label just not even a Magic Marker lable. The Sad Thing is I left Positive FEEDBACK.
THE POINT IS THE FEEDBACK RATING DOES NOT MEAN YOUR
GETTING A VIABLE PRODUCT. I BELIEVE SELLING INFORMATION
IS LUCRATIVE PEOPLE CAN SELL CRAP. IF A SELLER WONT LEAVE FEEDBACK FIRST AFTER PROMPT PAYMENT THEN SOMETHING MUST BE UP AM I WRONG?
Why eBay Sucks (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7079) by Bruce A. Epstein -- eBay customer service does a disservice to customers
ANYONE WHO IS HAVING PROBLEMS WITH EBAY SHOULD TRY YAHOO AUCTIONS. ITS FREE TO SELL ITEMS AND THEY ARE GROWING VERY RAPIDLY. I THINK ANYONE WHO WANTS TO SELL AND BUY SHOULD CHECK IT OUT. GO TO AUCTION.YAHOO.COM!!
I USED TO SELL MY SPORTS CARDS ON BECKETT ,THEY DID AWAY WITH THERE AUCTION, SO I DID WHAT ANYBODY ELSE WOULD DO,I WENT TO ESCAM!! SO I HAD BOUGHT A AUTOGRAPHED BASEBALL FROM A SELLER MANIACK 111,THIS BALL WAS SIGNED BY THE LATE GREAT TED WILLIAMS!! I PAID $239.00 FOR THIS BALL WHEN I RECIVED IT THE PSA/DNA SAID THE BALL WAS A FAKE AUTOGRAPH,THE AUTOGRAPH WAS WHAT THEY CALL A CLUBHOUSE AUTOGRAPH,WITCH MEANS A BAT BOY SIGNED THE BALL ,OK SO I GOT BURNT EVEN WITH ESCAMS AUTOGRAPH POLICY (AND THE PSA DNA SAYS ITS NOT A REAL AUTOGRAPH I STILL CAN NOT GET MY MONEY BACK)and this guy still selling i opend clamis agianst him and nothing happed i hear the samething were looking at your claim closely,escam nickle and dimes you to F"in death!!on everything you try to sell so how come they do not pay somebody to look at autograph merch!!can anybody tell me where i can go to sell my sports cards with out a hassle ? thank you vsixracer@aol.com
Is there a Class Action
2005-11-06 20:24:29
ScrewedbyebayVictim
[Reply | View]
suit being filed yet? Ebay's headquarter's not that far away from me, about 1 hour away. Is there anyone who'd like to form a group of people and protest in one of their meetings?
Id love to get our stories onto any news groups.
Let's all write to newsgroups and hope they'll get our stories on air, most of us can't afford lawyers but our stories being told they (newsgroups) might do something to help
NEW AUCTION SITE FOR BIKERS
2005-10-25 06:21:13
FeeBayUser
[Reply | View]
Like so many others, my partner John and I are former ebay sellers who have had enough.
In April John started a new auction site called XSNITRO.COM
In August I met him in Sturgis SD and decided to join forces with him. I became a partner and we are promoting our site.
We specialize in motorcyles and vehicles, parts and accesories. We have a special deal for disgruntled ebay sellers. Please email me at patti@xsnitro.com for more details.
Basically the offer is:
Our standard offer to new sellers is no listing fees for 3 months but because you are a disgruntled ebay seller, we will also waive the Final Value Fee for 30 days.
Your eBay feedback rating can be displayed next to your xsnitro username and is updated automatically. (This is optional, some people don't want ebay even mentioned in their presence)
Sign up today and receive ONE MONTH TOTALLY FREE!
That's right, No Listing Fees AND No Final Value Fees.
You also get FREE LISTING ENHANCEMENTS:
4 FREE PHOTOS
MAIN FEATURED
BOLD TITLE
HIGHLIGHTING
ATTENTION GRABBER ICONS
IMAGE PREVIEW
RESERVE
AUTO RELIST
DUTCH LISTINGS
BUY IT NOW
Our listing fees are an average of 70% less than what tHey charge, Every Day.
After your TOTALLY FREE 30 Day Trial is up, We'll still give you another 60 days of NO LISTING FEES!
XSNITRO's FINAL VALUE FEE IS JUST 2%, straight across the board. No matter how much your item sells for, the FINAL VALUE FEE is 2%. (except for motorized vehicle sales)
Check out our Fee Comparison Charts
To take advantage of this limited time offer, please go to http://www.xsnitro.com and register today. Please select Advertising as the referrer when registering so that we can apply this offer to your account.
Our staff provides fraud watch on all listings and verifies all members to make your selling and buying experience safer!
go to ebay, type bumper sticker in the search, sort by highest first
or click here http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=bumper+sticker
I guess ebay's lowered their standards. Couple months ago they cancelled an auction I had for a vest with a "I survived Shit Creek without a Paddle" patch on it.
Apparently Shit Creek offended them but this (See ebay Item number: 5627082390)
variety is OK?
Just when I thought I was done, eBay managed to bring another fight to my doorstep in the past couple months over a newfangled, misguided policy. Sad. The first three sagas can be seen on www.negative-feedback.com -- with more to come soon. Check it out and please link whenever and wherever you can!
I establish an Ebay account. I move 8 or 9 times during the 10 years I'm in Philadelphia, between med school and my residency and really don't have records of those addresses, as I'd rather forget most of the places I'd lived when there.
I end my account with Juno and want to change my Email. The system asks for my registration address and when I can't provide it (as I have NO idea where I was living when I established the account), I can't change the account to a working email. So, every time I buy something, I have to send off a quick email to the seller to let them know not to hit the 'Reply' button, as the message will go to Juno, bounce back and they'll think I'm a crook. All because the assholes at Ebay won't let me change to a working address.
During the ensuing 4 years, my account is suspended several times when its discovered that the registration email doesn't work. After weeks of bullshit and the admission from the service rep that there is no work-around and its stupid, my account is reactivated.
On 10-3-5, the password is changed on my 6 year old account, without notice to me or explanation. Of course, I can't change the password without.....the registration address. So, the Ebay people cause a problem, make it impossible for me to comply with the system registration bureaucratic crap and not only is the account now inaccessible to me, but the 3 items I was bidding on (and probably won) are inaccessible and not coming my way. All the favorite sellers and category links I'd established are unavailable and will take me months to trace down and re-establish.
The idiots at Ebay had no idea why the password was changed and claim it is my fault for not keeping a record of the address they need. Never mind that no notice of how important this information was is passed to me when I register, or I would have tattooed it to my damn arm!
I do get the last laugh, however. I sold a couple of things on Ebay and also had automatic payment from PayPal set up for the fees. They decided not to take it from PayPal (for reasons I couldn't care less about) and wanted me to put it on a credit card. I told them to follow the instructions given to them and take it from PayPal or drop dead. Now that the account is unavailable, I've deactivated the credit card they have on record and they can now kiss my ass for the approximately 18 dollars I owe them!
Ebay need some competition big time. They have gotten too large, too complacent about fucking their customers and not caring and need to stop getting used to a high stock price. Let's let capitalism work here and have another option to Esuck!
More Ebay Customer suuport Info & number
2005-10-04 07:11:09
Ebaykickedmeoff2
[Reply | View]
Had someone email me this, wanted to pass it along so that you guess can flood them with calls, or letters about what EBay has done to you. I know I will.
President & Chief
eBay Inc.
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
Phone: (408) 376-7412
Fax: (408) 376-6141
Please reply on this thread if you get any correspondence back from them. Thanks, I am faxing a letter today.
jamey
New Auction Site******
2005-10-04 06:48:15
Ebaykickedmeoff2
[Reply | View]
www.Whypayatebay.com
Just saw it on another website about how much ebay sucks to its users, just emailed mr.Cobb, we'll see what they reply back with. hopefully they will be sued enough, some have rumored about EBay moving to China. Anyhow, check out the site, not to big yet but could be the next thing. Looks just like ebay as well.
J
ebay sucks the big one
2005-10-02 16:00:32
2005hooters
[Reply | View]
ok,agin i am another that was shut down on ebay for shill bidding,(what this is crazy)my brother that lived in another state bid on 2 of my items,1 he won and paid for,the secound one he never got because ebay shut me down.ok,ebay is telling me my family member that lives in another state can't bid and buy from me?i am not shur if ebay dose this themselfs, or if someone has to turn you in but if they are doing it themselfs boy they shur are missing alot of true shill biders,like cbd1953 also known as dday2k also known as jd67skeeter also known as ronnieday49,that guy and his brother that lives about 2 houses down from each other are the biggest shill biders there is on ebay.so whats up with ebay i have turned these guys in 2 times now cence i have been shut down,guess what they are still ebay sellers?man the excellent feed back they leav each other.cant belive they would shut me and my brother down on ebay,and leav those kind of people to sell on there.i was only on 2 months and had 67 positive feed backs,my brother less then 1 month and had 10 positive feed backs.never ever did i try to make my buy price higher,and ebay will not respond to emails,nor will they talk to you on the phone.what kind of company runs a business like this and still has customers?also why are they debiting peoples paypal account for 1.00 at a time?what the hell is that for?do they just need that 1.00 every know and then to pay a bill?just think of all the 1.00 they have debited out of everyones account on ebay that has a paypal account,thousands of extra 1.00 in there account?ebay is an unfair company and anyone who contiues to do business with them are nuts,not only are they geting all those fee but also the extra they debit from your account for "no"good resson.go to 99sell.com they give you 101 free listings,and its only 99cents after that.someone needs to creait a site that has customer service because alls ebay has is emails that dont get answered.i would love to sue ebay,so if anyone is doing it please email me at moorelarry273@aol.com,i would love to join that.agin go to 99sell.com,people need to leav ebay without being shut down by them,thats the problem they have so many unkowing people they dont care about who they kick off,but if people would leav ebay or never join then they might deside to change there shitty ways.2005hooters
How Safe Is Your Credit Card On eBay?
2005-09-30 13:46:08
samirjhaveri
[Reply | View]
folks,
Some time back (July 05) I thought of exploring the possibility of doing business on ebay. Cutting a long story short, I ended up making losses in some no reserve auctions. Now I decided to give up and requested removal of my credit card on file on July 14 which was being automatically debited for transactions. I received confirmation on July 19 that my card information was successfully removed.
At that time, I owed ebay $1.68 for transactions for which the buyer never paid. So I followed the procedures to apply for the Final Value Fee Credit. Meanwhile, I happened to login into my ebay account somewhere on the 29th of July and noticed that ebay had charged my credit card for the $1.68 on 25th July!
I immediately contacted them for an explanation. I received a reply on 2nd August apologising me for the inconvenience that their automatic billing has caused me and that it will not happen in future. Their explanation was that they had charged my card before it was successfully removed. I then called up my bank to enquire and they confirmed that it was indeed charged on the 26th July! Even my credit card statement that came in later proves it.
Later follow-ups with them were like banging my head on a wall. Frustrated, I gave up. Although $1.68 is too petty an amount to make claims or sue them, the issue here is that HOW SAFE IS MY CREDIT CARD INFORMATION ON EBAY?
I had taken screen shots of my account which prove all this and was planning to circulate them over the internet, but then I just fizzled out. Who's got the time to pursue such trivial amounts... I'd rather do some productive work!
Having stumbled on this board today, I felt like I should also contribute my experiences. Any suggestions on what I should do about it, or should I drop the matter altogether?
Kind Regards,
Samir Jhaveri
http://dealz.in
Like a giant vacuum cleaner...
2005-09-27 22:41:34
voodochile
[Reply | View]
Yes, it's true, Ebay sucketh greatly.
The other day I decided it was time to fool with ebay some more. I hadn't bid on anything in a month or so. I find out my account has been erased. I didn't request or consent to that. Same thing happened to my Paypal account. What a surprise, eh? Paypal told me that my account could only be wiped out by me...but I sure didn't do it. I even have onea' their Paypal debit cards, for chissakes! Phooey. Hangin's too good...
I want my old original Ebay account back. I spent lotsa money building up my several dozen completed deals. I want that credit and I've said so to Ebay, but after reading the recountings of other folks' poor interaction with Ebay, I imagine I'll never see that account again. Ebay needs to restructure and adjust its policies a bunch.
Ebay cancelled my account says i didnt pay my fees.I paid with paypal.Also they took money out of my account i made 3 atm withdrawels they listed them multiable times.I have contacted them by e mail they are ignoring me.Can anyone help how to solve this.I just want my account back and the 516.00$ they took out returned.Any ideas.
How eBay screwed me...two minutes ago
2005-09-16 17:03:21
sl0927
[Reply | View]
I put an auction up for a single ticket to the Monday 9/19 Giants-Saints game at Giants Stadium. Because the game was supposed to be played in the New Orleans SuperDome, I thought I would get into the spirit of things, and tell members I would donate the proceeds to charity. I even told them I would prove to them that I was on the up and up, by showing them the receipt to the Red Cross.
Lo and behold, MINUTES before the auction ended, I get an e-mail from eBay. Sorry, it is against our policy to allow people to donate their proceeds to Charity, unless they go through us! So, they yank my auction, send a letter to all the bidders telling them that I VIOLATED their policy (without giving a reason, so much for my good name), cancel all the bids, and completely erase my auction from their system so I can't even fix it.
Had they bothered to contact me when the auction first went up, and given me a warning, I would have fixed it. But no, the all-powerful hand of eBay knows best.
I just put the auction back up, but frankly, there's no time left--if I did another three-day auction, it'd be past the day of the game!
So now, I'm basically stuck with a $70-100 ticket that's just going into the trash, when it could be feeding the hungry and homeless.
Thanks eBay. I guess this is what happens when you become a monopoly--customers are no longer humans but dollar signs.
EBAY Nonexistent customer service
2005-09-15 18:50:05
Smokinret49
[Reply | View]
I have been on Ebay since June, 2001 with 1075 positive feedback, 8 negative (most retaliatory and a few loose canons)giving me a score of 99.2%.
The other day I log on to see how my 4 items are doing that I am selling and see a message stating that I am suspended!
There is no explanation but a link of reasons why a person could be suspended.
There were many reasons.
Not a real personal answer.
I was floored. I have 1 strike against me in 4 years (3 strikes and you are out on ebay unless of course you are a powerseller - they can do anything as they fill the pipeline for the ebay empire.)
I have sent a total of 16 messages to ebay from demanding to pleading they tell me why. I was suspended on September 11 and have not heard yet and today is the 15th.
They do state that they will answer your question "IF THEY FEEL IT NECESSARY".
Who am I anyway?
I have only spent thousands of dollars in purchasing and seller fees, listing fees, commissions, etc. in 4 years.
I am not a power seller so they could care less.
I do not, nor did I ever have thousands of items for sale at a time on ebay resulting in thousands of dollars in listing fees and commissions for ebay.
Ebay got too big for their britches.
As usual, now they could give 2 shits about the people that were loyal to them in the leaner days.
What a bunch of bull!!!
I have been a user of ebay since 1999, and have had only minor problems, primarily with non-paying buyers, until this week. Ebay suspended my account on Monday and accused me of shill bidding. I have left them numerous email messages asking the source of this decision, but have yet to receive a response. Of course they don't have a phone number that you can call to talk to customer service to try to get it resolved.
Ebay obviously has a guilty until proven innocent policy. They decided that I was shill bidding in conjuction with an auction for an item that sold for $1400 and on which I bid $99. This makes no sense whatsoever. I have never bid on any of this seller's other auctions, nor has he ever bid on any of mine. I even sold a number of items recently that sold for their opening bid. If I were using shill bidding wouldn't I have had someone put in shill bids to drive up these prices? They clearly don't bother doing any research. If they get a complaint they punish first and ask questions later.
I never worried about it in the past, but they also have a policy of not caring about their customers if they get stiffed by a buyer. Yes, you can get the final value fee back, but they keep the listing fee. It's just tough luck on your part. Not only that, but the vast majority of phsihing messages that I have been receiving have been in conjunction with my (fe)eBay account.
I have bought and sold many thousands of dollars worth of items on eBay over the past 6 years, but now they have lost me as a customer and anyone who I talk to will hear the same thing, "DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH THOSE eBay SCUM."
eBay, ever anxious to up profits, bends over backward to provide data to law enforcement officials
2005-09-14 07:04:55
FeeBayUser
[Reply | View]
eBay claims that 150,000 Internet users earn their livelihood from the site, some having left their old jobs to become buyers or sellers on eBay.
Bloomberg
Big Brother is watching you - and documenting
By Yuval Dror
eBay, ever anxious to up profits, bends over backward to provide data to law enforcement officials
"I don't know another Web site that has a privacy policy as flexible as eBay's," says Joseph Sullivan. A little bit later, Sullivan explains what he means by the term "flexible." Sullivan is director of the "law enforcement and compliance" department at eBay.com, the largest retailer in the world.
Sullivan was speaking to senior representatives of numerous law-enforcement agencies in the United States on the occasion of "Cyber Crime 2003," a conference that was held last week in Connecticut. His lecture was closed to reporters, and for good reason. Haaretz has obtained a recording of the lecture, in which Sullivan tells the audience that eBay is willing to hand over everything it knows about visitors to its Web site that might be of interest to an investigator. All they have to do is ask. "There's no need for a court order," Sullivan said, and related how the company has half a dozen investigators under contract, who scrutinize "suspicious users" and "suspicious behavior." The spirit of cooperation is a function of the patriotism that has surged in the wake of September 11.
eBay is the world's largest auction site. Some 62 million registered users buy and sell a variety of merchandise through the site, which charges commissions for every item sold. Sullivan claims that 150,000 Internet users earn their livelihood from the site, some having left their old jobs to become buyers or sellers on eBay.
The sales method on the site is simple: An individual registers as a user, types in his particulars, and affirms that he accepts the user conditions and the site's privacy policy. Whenever an item is sold, the buyer fills out an evaluation form, telling other users about the treatment he received, whether the merchandise was sent on time, etc. Other eBay users can then avoid buying from sellers who have received poor grades.
Sullivan says eBay has recorded and documented every iota of data that has come through the Web site since it first went online in 1995. Every time someone makes a bid, sells an item, writes about someone else, even when the company cancels a sale for whatever reason - it documents all of the pertinent information.
One would think that preserving privacy of the users, whose moves are so meticulously recorded, would be keenly observed at eBay, whose good name in the Internet community is one of its prime assets. But in the U.S. of the post 9/11 and pre-Gulf War II era, helping the "security forces" is considered a supreme act of patriotism.
Who needs a subpoena?
"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told his listeners. "When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site," he adds. He says he receives about 200 such requests a month, most of them unofficial requests in the form of an email or fax.
The meaning is clear. One fax to eBay from a lawman - police investigator, NSA, FBI or CIA employee, National Park ranger - and eBay sends back the user's full name, email address, home address, mailing address, home telephone number, name of company where seller is employed and user nickname. What's more, eBay will send the history of items he has browsed, feedbacks received, bids he has made, prices he has paid, and even messages sent in the site's various discussion groups.
Attorney Nimrod Kozlovski, author of "The Computer and the Legal Process" (in Hebrew), heard the lecture, and could not believe his ears. "The consent given in the user contract should be seen as `coerced consent,' in the absence of any opportunity to exercise free choice, with no real alternative but to agree. This is most certainly not conscious consent."
Kozlovski is part of the Information Society Project group at Yale Law School, in which he and his colleagues consider the effects of the new media on the structure of society. American law does not authorize searches of a person's home or body, he says, except in exceptional cases such as when the court authorizes a search, or when the individual gives his consent to a search.
"In the case before us, the Web site signs the user to a document that says it can do whatever it wants with his information. The eBay contract signed by the user concedes his or her rights to protection from the government; in essence, as soon as the contract is signed, eBay can invite the government to do whatever it wants with the information, he says.
A brief visit to the company's Web site reveals that the "user contract" that visitors are supposed to read before agreeing to the conditions is 4,023 words long. One paragraph makes reference to the site's "privacy policy." The user has to click on a link and is diverted to another document that is some 3,750 words long. It then takes another 2,390 words to reach the section about which Sullivan told the legal authorities: The user's privacy is solely up to eBay.
"The users are asked to read and agree to the site policy before they can make use of it," eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove told Haaretz. "We provide a link to our privacy policy on every single page of our site, and provide summaries of this policy, all so that users will be familiar with our policy."
We will work for you
Nevertheless, eBay does not make do with simply sharing its data with the legal authorities. Sullivan says the company employs six investigators, all of whom have experience in police investigations. Their job is "to track down suspicious people and suspicious behavior." To that end, they scan for patterns that are atypical - different from "normal patterns." For example, if a person sold baseball tickets for two months and suddenly switches to selling a car, the eBay system will "wave a red flag" and signal the seller as someone behaving unusually. Who asks eBay to do it? No one. eBay volunteers.
eBay goes even further. In his lecture, Sullivan spoke about how he helped investigators locate a user who had been suspected of selling stolen cars through the site. "We tried to buy the car from the thief and in that way incriminate him. But the bad guy was smart. He saw there wasn't a single feedback in the history of the person who was making the purchase. He told us he didn't want to make a deal with us."
Sullivan explained that the incident taught the company a lesson, and that since then it has used pseudo buyers for which it constructs comprehensive simulated histories, including simulated feedbacks, all for the sake of incriminating those suspected of theft. "eBay is not willing to tolerate acts of fraud carried out on its site," explains Pursglove. "We believe that one of the ways to fight fraud is to cooperate with the legal authorities at the various levels.
Sullivan is even more forthcoming. Aware of how hard the police work, he decided to help as much as possible. "Tell us what you want to ask the bad guys. We'll send them a form, signed by us, and ask them your questions. We will send their answers directly to your e-mail." Essentially, by engaging in what seems like impersonation, eBay is exploiting its relationship with customers to pass on information to law enforcement authorities. Why? "We take various steps in order to fight fraud and provide a safe buying environment for our numerous users," says Pursglove.
"In order to prevent misuse of authority, the law ensures that authorized impersonation will only be used with persons suspected of carrying out illegal activity," says Pursglove. But eBay's practice is to impersonate people on a regular basis, for law-enforcement objectives. However, "there need not be a proven connection or well-founded suspicion of a crime having been performed," claims Kozlovski.
In July 2002, eBay bought PayPal, Inc. for $1.45 billion. PayPal, which offers the most popular means of payment on eBay, provides clearing services for the execution of online transactions. It enables Internet users to open accounts on the company site, transferring money from their credit card or bank account. When carrying out a transaction, the seller receives a certificate with which money can be withdrawn from the buyer's account in cash. The system obviates the need to reveal personal financial data.
When Paypal was acquired, the company reported 16 million users, as well as 3 million business accounts and 28,000 new visitors to the site each day. About 60 percent of PayPal's income derives from commissions received from users buying goods on eBay. About 70 percent of eBay buyers use PayPal.
Two years earlier, eBay bought Half.com, a site that specializes in sales of CDs and books. Sullivan explained that these acquisitions help eBay to provide lawmen with a full picture. "Every book or CD comes with a bar code. So we know who bought what. The acquisition of PayPal helps us to locate people more precisely. In the old days, we had to trace IP addresses (unique address given to computers linked to the Internet), to locate the buyer, but now Paypal supplies us with the money trail.
PayPal has about 20 million customers, which means that we have 20 millions files on its users," Sullivan proudly relates. "If you contact me, I will hook you up with the Paypal people. They will help you get the information you're looking for," he tells his listeners. "In order to give you details about credit card transactions, I have to see a court order. I suggest that you get one, if that's what you're looking for." It isn't certain that visitors to the site are aware of the thick hints eBay gives the lawmen.
"By buying PayPal, eBay is merging the information about the goods trail with the money trail," explains Kozlovski. "Thus, in spite of the protective mechanisms of the law against disclosure of details on transactions, eBay is in a position to analyze the full set of data and `advise' investigators when it might be `worthwhile' for them to ask for a subpoena to disclose the details of a financial transaction. Essentially, this bypasses the rules on non-disclosure of details of financial transactions and the confidentiality of the banker-client relationship."
Kozlovski mentions how special investigator Kenneth Starr issued a court order that ordered the bookstore where Monica Lewinsky bought her books to report to him the names of the books she bought. "Then, there was a huge fuss. Now you don't need a special order - eBay does the work for the investigators."
Kozlovski feels that eBay's practice should be seen as part of a worrisome trend in the West to curtail protection of individual rights. In communist regimes, he says, the state would assign watchers to follow every citizen, who would pass incriminating information on to the authorities. Now the state doesn't have to do a thing. People come to it of their own free will. This is also the case for eBay, which exploits its stature in the market to have users accept contracts that strip them of their privacy. Perhaps the regime is different, but the outcome is most assuredly the same.
A million new items a day
eBay has no operations in Israel. But in the U.S., Europe and even the Far East, the name eBay is uttered in the same breath with names like Yahoo, Google and Amazon. The company created an electronic business arena where sellers offer their wares and buyers purchase them. eBay's trick is that both the sellers and the buyers are ordinary citizens. On eBay, you can find people selling used chewing gum (and there are buyers), torn soccer balls, 18th century forks, sunflower seeds and luxury cars (in 2002 alone, some 3,000 cars were sold on the site, at a total of $30 million.)
eBay is one of the few Internet companies that shows huge profits quarter after quarter. The company completed the fourth quarter of 2002 with revenues of $414 million and net profits of $87 million. The company had overall income in 2002 of $1.2 billion, and net profits of $250 million. It is traded on Nasdaq at a company value of $23.4 billion - three times that of Amazon, twice that of Yahoo and eight times that of the Israeli security behemoth, Checkpoint.
At any given moment, eBay is conducting some 12 million auctions, divided into about 18,000 different categories. About two million new items are offered for sale every day, and 62 million registered users scour the site to find them. These users have given eBay the monopoly on online auctions in America. Companies such as Yahoo and Amazon tried to get into the auction market, but were forced to give up. An estimated 150,000 people earn their livelihoods solely from buying and selling items by Internet. The company maintains local sites in Britain, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Singapore and Sweden.
eBay is a monster that churns out money 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - for itself and for its millions of users
Catholics Called on to Boycott eBay & Other Boycotts
2005-09-14 07:03:59
FeeBayUser
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CHECK OUT THIS SITE FOR LINK TO FREE AUCITONS, AND OTHER VERY COOL STUFF, INCLUDING LEGAL FORMS, COSTS $3.00 TO JOIN BUT WAS WORTH IT FOR ME TO GET LEGAL INFO TO SUE EBAY. PLUS A COOL T-SHIRT THAT SAYS "EBAY SUCKS"
Now that I know that it actually was eBay Support who contacted me regarding account verification, I have decided to drop all eBay accounts <paypal as well> on a permanent basis.
I read all entries on this page:
http://rover.cs.northwestern.edu/~surana/blog/past/000130.html
..and realized that there are complaints in abundance about eBay's treatment of their users.
I was surprised to learn that eBay actually wanted me to fax documental evidence of identity, address, day and evening phone numbers and evidence showing ownership of one item I had listed on eBay. ebay didn't even send me a phone number to which I could call and talk to the very person requesting My personal information - only a fax number to which I'd to send My most personal details such as copy of drivers license/passport, documental evidence of current home address and ownership of the item I had currently listed on eBay. In another e-mail eBay didn't even bother to reveal who sent it.
I seriously couldn't believe that a multi-national corporation like eBay had guts to request from their users that they would go through all the trouble of copying and faxing or mailing their personal information to eBay when obviously the account information corresponds to billing and shipping address, and to the verified PayPal account information. The email notification activity requesting from me that I'd send them all my details seemed fraudulent, suspicious, and unbeleivable, especially because eBay themselves states that if there is doubt, it is probably a scam. I had doubts about the meaning of the request which was sent to me, and I simply didn't comply. I didn't send any documents proving that I exist outside eBay's database, and as a result, eBay suspended my account and banned me from ever taking part or creating a new account on eBay. I'm very surprised that I have been treated with such suspicion and neglect even though I had 100% positive feedback from other eBayers.
Obviously, at least according to the above URL, especially the post by "Nancy at january 9, 2004 08:43 PM" , eBay Inc. seems to carry out this sort of activity on a regular basis, and what I have learned from this experience is that eBay care more about collecting eBayers' listing and transaction fees than building trustworthy relationships with honest people. eBay is obviously not looking for "safety and integrity of the eBay community" but only care about your users' credit - thus treating their users in a manner that only can be described as supercilious and shameless.
From now on, I do not want anything to do with eBay. I have lost US$23,10 in insertion fees, listing fees and picture fees, and I have also lost my faith in eBay Inc. The eBay User Agreement and integrity policy unfortunately seems to be used more to secure eBay's possibilities to rip people off than to protect their users. It surely is amazing - in the jaw-dropping sense of the word - to experience a multi-national corporation's lack of both heart and brains. In addition to this, eBay have the guts to claim unpaid listing fees even though eBay terminated my listed item!
Again, it is obvious that eBay wants to know every little detail about my personal information, not only once but at least twice, and that eBay representatives provide no intelligent or trustworthy information about themselves - as if they were members of a secret society or something. How can eBay expect their users to believe an e-mail request such as an "eBay account verification" when eBay lists that kind of activities as "suspicious"?
The lack of trust in the personal contact with eBay reminded me so much of a sequence in which Jerry answers the phone in the Seinfeld episode "The Pick":
JERRY: Uh, sorry, Excuse me one second. Hello?
TEL: Hi, would you be interested in switching over to TMI long distance service.
JERRY: Oh, gee, I can't talk right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll call you later.
TEL: Uh, I'm sorry we're not allowed to do that.
JERRY: Oh, I guess you don't want people calling you at home.
TEL: No.
JERRY: Well now you know how I feel. [Hangs up]
I do not want to push this matter any further. I just don't want any fuzz, I just want out. Please terminate my eBay account (User ID: <ebayusername>) permanently, and this because I do not want any business with eBay again.
I am trying to close my ebay account and of course they make it impoosible so I changed my banking information to
BANK NAME: EBAY SUCKS
I had to give a legit routing number so I did but I made up an account number.
I am taking down all my personal information and
getting the hell off there.
I.T. BOZOS AT EBAY STRIKE AGAIN !!
2005-09-08 20:39:58
powertoolbuyer
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How could they be so incompetent so long? Again and
again they put INhuman factors into arbitrary web page redesign. Is it possible to put LESS info in the lead listing page then they do? I doubt it - check the houston chronicle site for data density - awesome.
Now we have STRIKES. I'm a buyer, so not sure of how sellers trigger these. They appear to have a "auto" option. Rarely, I miss getting a payment out quickly and deserve a friendly please pay reminder. I've gotten a few strikes as a result after thousands of buys.
Clearing STRIKES is a total pain. The data ebay asks for requires navigating 15 pages and WRITING down the details from 4 pages, then into their form WHEN THEY HAVE IT ALL IN THEIR PAYPAL DATABASE (and know it has been paid!!)
I'm telling pre-emptive strike setting sellers (no email first) WE'RE DONE DOING BUSINESS IF YOU AUTO SET STRIKES.
Turkey farms aren't allowed in Santa Clara County except for the IT dept at ebay.
EBAY REALLY SUCKS AND I WISH I HAD THE POWER TO SHUT IT DOWN!
2005-09-04 04:58:48
yellerRC
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Hi I am an ebay power seller. i started 5 months ago under my wifes user name and created my own after i built her feedback up to around 100. (in a matter of 1-2 months) Well in a matter of 2-3 weeks ebay suspended me forever for whatever reason i dont know, but i had my wifes user name to use so i kept on selling. of course i saved all my transactions so i contacted the buyers. boy i am glad i did that! well no i have been selling for around 5 months and have well over 600 feedback and waiting on over 200 more. i became a power seller in 2 months and have averaged to pay ebay well over 2,000 a month. (every month the fees are more but i dont see more profit??) Anyways back to the story I was just giving a little back ground. I have strived to satisfy every customer! No matter what and i have over 99.8% feedback! In the last month ebay has cancelled around 12 of my listings for stupid ass reasons. they cancelled 10 of them at the same time for having my email address so customers can "email me with any ?'s" yes my exact wording too! They waited till the last day when all my buyers buy! It was a buy it now but the customers always wait till last minute so that was my peak selling time and it was on a weekend. I lost out on thousands because of those 10 listings being cancelled! anyways I took the hit and only wrote ebay 1 email telling them they suck and they need to tell people what they did wrong is wrong so they can fix it and still get the sales. well no reply! and the last time they cancelled my auction i finally did a mystery auction that i spent 3 days preparing and around $100 advertising for it. (to get more watchers and hits so i can make it to the ebay pulse the right way with out cheating like 90% of the others do) not to mention the $75 ebay got for listing fees and home page listing. I set a 7 day auction and by day 5 i had over 500 watchers so i made it to the pulse and my $395 reseve was meet. wow i was about to start rolling in the bids and maybe make some money too. (i had already bought the $550 worth of items i was going to include wheather the auction reached 550 or not) well with right under 2 days left i was on the main ebay pulse and was at around 427.00. Ebay then emailed me and said they cancelled my auction. I was stunned! YEEP sure enough it was cancelled! The money I spent and the time i put into it was gone and there is nothing i could do. I double and triple checked to make sure it met every possible rule ebay had and they pulled another one out of there ass. No watch links allowed! WHAT THE F***! They provide a link to watch the item for you and EVERYSINGLE listing on the pulse had one! Why where they not kicked off too?? I of course emailed ebay and got an automated repley which i really hate with a passion. They treatened to suspend my account and do all this other crap to me and i feel like a ebays little B**ch. I bust my ass to sell thousand of dollars worth of stuff to make a few hundred and give up precious time with my family to make ebay and there email reps rich! Beleive it or not i have not had any super bad expeirances with losing money but i mainly sell so that could be why. But for everyone that says that ebay protects the sellers they are WRONG! they dont protect anyone at all! (except there own wallet) Ebay is making over 2,000 a month from me plus what paypal makes and I dont get health insurance, a pay check, dental care, reduced fees, or even a thank you or good job! But i sure as hell get that bill every month! Please do yourself a favor and tell all your friends that ebay SUCKS. Buyers please stop buying or the sellers will keep selling. The sellers follow the buyers no matter where they go! PLEASE if you have not started using ebay DONT DO IT! Once you start trying to make money with it you are stuck untill you get suspended for whatever reason. you are better off selling on the street corner than on ebay! less fees and you get the one on one support every one wants! I will pay the extra money anyday to know i am not giving ebay another penny!
travis
EBay..Are they Above the US Constitution
2005-08-27 17:42:04
ebaybiteme
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Following is my letter to ebay.. as they only let me communicate via e-mail. They are horrible horrible. They think they are above the constitution and the basic laws of the nation. Please read:
Dear Kenji and Ebay Staff,
I had to take a week to “cool down” after reading your response to my appeal on ebay. As you can imagine, I’m extremely upset. I needed to get my head together and send you a letter that would make sense and that came from a place of logic and calm.
For one, the manner in which you “suspend” someone is, well quite frankly unprofessional, unsympathetic and downright rude. There are some who use ebay as a recreation and for fun.Then there are others who use eBay as a main business generator. You see, I spent quite some time and money building up my business that quite honestly, revolves around eBay. I do not have a physical brick and mortar store. I simply go out in the world and spend time purchasing and researching items to sell on eBay. Particularly Antiques and hard to find items. At the time of our suspension we were on our way up and every week was getting better and better. We had reached Platinum level status, had a list of very satisfied and repeat customers and had built a reputation on eBay as being an honest and honorable seller with good product. Our descriptions and photos were on point. Our feedback was over 99%. We were proud and we were doing well. We have large office space with 6 computers, 6 employees and a packing station. The other half of our warehouse is stock full of items we were going to put up on ebay.
Then, one day out of the blue, I get a phone call from someone in your “safe harbor” department telling me I was suspended for “shill bidding” . I was given the names of three accounts that were “associated” with this “accusation”. Then, with a click of a mouse, my world came tumbling down. All the items I had up were pulled down . I was having one of the best sales days I’ve ever had, having had over $4000 in bids coming off that night and it was still the middle of the day.
I immediately looked to find out who these people were and why my account was being associated with violating ebay policy. I found out and immediately contacted your company. The first one, galleryusa, is a legitimate person we purchase from. I stand behind that statement, and still don’t understand why you have accused us of shill bidding with this person. They have a store in Westbury where they have computers and items that they sell both on eBay and in their brick and mortar store. Usually we check out the jewelry we are going to bid on before we bid on it to verify the quality, etc. We regularly take jewelry we purchase from him, down to our business contacts in Maryland to sell, as they love the pieces that we get here (antique and vintage pieces hard to find in everyday stores). We don’t like to purchase directly from him in the brick and mortar store because he usually tries to charge us more than what we would pay for it. So we put our bids in on ebay up to the amount we’re willing to go leaving us a profit margin and if we get it great, if not, oh well.
Then, the other two names, I looked into and discovered that it was two of our employees. Mind you, I have no idea what “evidence” you have against me, but I did immediately upon my findings, write to you an explain, honestly, what had occurred without my knowledge. And that was that these employees were indeed bidding on our items and they shouldn’t have. Had I been aware I would have immediately had them retract the bids and had them fired,or atleast reprimand them in some way. Something. After all, they could ruin my business with their actions.
Now, you speak of “evidence” against me about this, but refuse to tell me what that evidence is or how you came across it, etc. I’m sorry, but I as an American Citizen and you as an American Company are bound by the laws of the United States and the Constitution. I have rights, and one of those rights is to hear the evidence against me either in front of a jury of my piers or a judge. No one can take away my right to Life, Liberty or the Pursuit of Happiness without that. At the same time, there is such a thing as mitigating circumstances. Do I not have the right to be heard. Do I not have a right to make amends somehow.
Ebay says that they are on the “cutting edge” opening up a whole new world of trading and they encourage people to build their business on ebay, to make a living. Ironically I had just recently come from a lecture from Ebay down in DC and they were so gung ho about making your living on eBay. Along the way, I’m sure there have been some road bumps or mistakes Ebay has made that they have adjusted or corrected, being pioneers in this arena. Do not the people who now put that trust in ebay and build their businesses on ebay have the same right to have the same mistakes happen. Has this ever happened before to someone, that an employee of an ebay member, with a large staff, had their ebay members do this without their knowledge? Why wouldn’t ebay want to work with someone like myself, a powerseller who has built their business around eBay, to figure out how we can prevent that from happening. Do I deserve to have my business, that I’ve worked so hard to build and have invested so much money in, shut down because of a rogue employee.
In addition, do I not at the very least deserve to speak to a human being at Ebay, rather than be answered coldly via e-mail that “sorry you’re not going to be reinstated” with crude reference to “evidence in our files”. Once again.. are you above the law of the land.
If this were a hobby for me, perhaps I wouldn’t care. This is not a hobby, this is a livelihood. I rely on this business to pay my mortgage for my house and to support my family Do I not have a right to be heard. Why in god’s green earth would I purposely and knowingly jeopardize something that is so obviously important and vital to my life.
I’m seriously considering taking legal action against eBay for the manner in which a situation like this is handled. Maybe nothing will be or can be done for me, but no one deserves to be treated in the way I have been treated. No one deserves to have their life cut off via e-mail and told about “evidence” against them and never hear what it is or have the right to defend themselves against. EBay may think they are above it all because they currently have no competition, but they are a U.S based company and must follow the laws of the land, especially ones so basic.
I do hope that we can work this out. I do not have “12 months” to wait for this to happen. I do await your response and hope that you do give me the courtesy of a phone call and a conversation. Perhaps there is some way we can work together so that this doesn’t happen to me again or to any other eBayer. We can both learn from this incident.
Sincerely,
Tara
anti nazi nazi's
2005-08-20 04:45:59
edteach
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I have colected german third reich guns and medals for a while, I buy and sell some on eslut, they started a couple of years ago when the jew's bought in to ebay, to stop selling all historical items they did not like, Well most of us colectors are into history, not spreading or resurecting the NSDAP.
then to make things worse they bump some german items and not others. or they will bump my ak 47 sling, yep a sling, canvas sling for a rifle. they just bumped my ppk magazine, as hatful items. so I have never paid ebay a cent. I shut down my cc and they can bill till the cows come home. screw ebay, you just open another account.
More food for thought
2005-08-17 15:11:49
LoadOfBull.com
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In looking at my last post I think I danced completely around something else I wanted to say about checking out sellers on eNazi or any other website for that matter.
Lets forget about computers a moment and suppose your looking for a used car, What’s the very first thing your going to do as the sales person or individual (if your buying from the previous owner) is introducing himself?? Yea your going to listen and look, Your checking him out and trying to ascertain if this guy is honest or about to blow smoke up your ass. If you have a bad gut feeling about the person then it shouldn’t matter how nice the car looks, the prudent person would be nice about it but pass on buying that car.
Any Psychologist worth a grain of salt would find it intriguing to study the idiot that would by a used car from someone he/she didn’t trust!!
So why is it in the cyber world do otherwise prudent people let their guard down? Your in your home or office so you feel safe perhaps. Maybe it’s the illusion of security places like eBay offer. You feel safe none the less, and it’s when you feel safe that your actually the most vulnerable so scam artists and thugs. Expecting a place like eNazi to protect you is like expecting local law enforcement to keep your home from ever being broken into to such a degree you remove the lock from the front door.
Feedback only tells a very small part of the story. I have done business with people with an 80 or 85 percent rating and even met a few in person, And they are nice people who just got into a deal that one way or another went bad. Hey I dare anyone over the age of 25 to stand in front of me and say they never had a transaction of some sort go bad. We are all human (well most of us anyway) and sometimes bad things happen without intention on either part.
Even an “about me” page may not tell you much, It’s going to tell you only what the author wants you to know.
Silly usernames, Frankly I think they are stupid in a business place. I mean really, If you walked into a jewelry store and saw the salesman’s name tag said “BoogerEater12” would you trust his to sell you a real diamond and gold band?? I think not!! So why would you buy anything from someone hiding behind that kind of name on the internet??
My username on eBay is the same name my mother gave me the day I was born!! Why not? What are all the other sellers hiding?? Your not just buying my merchandise but a piece of me as well, and I for one think the buyer has every right to know exactly who he is dealing with. I hide nothing!! I have even given thought to putting a nude picture of myself on my about me page to prove I have nothing to hide, But alas nudity is forbidden in todays world. LoL
For those who have been burned, For what it may be worth you have my sympathy. Even after all my years of hearing these stories I still get a knot in my gut when I hear them. I for one have always tried to be honest with people and treat them with the integrity they deserve, so yea it makes me sick that so many others don’t do the same. It’s an imperfect world we live in so there are no perfect answers. The governments of the world prevent us from hunting down those that would do us harm and beating the living hell out of them, so all we can do is try to live with it the best we can and be cautious about who we deal with in this world.
Ok that’s my 2 cents worth. (and then some perhaps)
BTW
My mother called me Douglas!!
And no I won’t give out my eNazi username in a place like this. LoL
Theres a new online auction.
2005-08-15 18:21:28
Jennpooh
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Hey there I was just reading your beef with ebay and I feel the same way. I just signed up for canadabids.com and they give you $5.00 to start and so far it's ways better then ebay.. Less hassles. So ya thought you would like to know.. Later!
Folks fear not there is a way to be free of Ebay tyranny. (Paypal is an altogether other matter)Yahoo Auctions is now totally free. I'm not e representitive of Yahoo but as I was visiting the portal I noticed that as of June all fees were dropped. That means unlike E-bay Yahoo doesn't charge any listing fees. (Which under the E-bay model can be several dollars depending on added enhancements)dditionally they do not asess any final value fees period. And we know with a top dollar item on Ebay that final value fee can be signifigant. I encourage you folks who are fed up with Ebay to move your auctions over to Yahoo or some other online auction venue. If not exclusively a least post similar items on Yahoo so that Yahoo can gradually grow and offer competition to the mighty behemoth that is E-bay.
My Experience With eBay
2005-08-09 19:35:35
diecastjunkie
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Oh they suck all right, big time! I will start backwards with my nightmare with eBay. Tonight after at least 5 mos. they closed my account officially and warned me that it could not be reopened. Well, I'll be damned, that is what I wanted this winter and in the mean time they had all my sensitive credit data for free! Then there is their take on sellers, they let anybody sell because they get money from sellers. It costs plenty to sell on eBay and then the charges appear on your credit card statements (which you must submit) and they add especially when the item does not sell! They are just like anything in America that gets so big they forget about who they serve but word gets around fast in this country with the Internet! My advice to all, stay away from eBay, they are rip off artists!
I just lost faith in eBay
2005-07-30 12:00:06
tolworthy
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I have over 30 feedbacks (all positive) and I've always said good things about eBay. PayPal is different - I've been burned and I won't go back - but I thought eBay was different. Three weeks ago I ordered an MP3 player from an eBay seller who had 4000 positive feedbacks. The item never came. I just checked eBay and found that the seller "is no longer a member." No "what to do now," no "how to contact them", nothing. Just a brief message that this person no longer exists. The worst part is that eBay won't even provide an email address. They seem to think that because THEY have forgotten this shop, I should forget them too. Like it never happened. I have ost money with eBay and they simply do not care. Not in the slightest. I have learned my lesson.
a sign of the times
2005-07-17 04:51:22
battochir
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I find all this of interest because I have never used eBay, although I have been planning to try it. I've only used craigslist, (www.craigslist.org) and have never been burned. I like talking to the people I deal with rather than having a preset platform, like an auction, decide price. But that's me, I like to haggle. When eBay started, they had all this stuff about 'community building' and 'fair trade'. Almost everyone I have talked that has used eBay has had problems. This is because eBay's earlier community values thing has been replaced with hitting quarterly numbers and meeting analysts' expectations. The web is a different place than when eBay took it's first breath. Evidently eBay's customer service has forgotten that it's the customer's that pay their bills, not their bosses. What's the alternative? I've seen craigslist and that's about it. Right before reading this article, I saw a site called booggins (www.booggins.com), but they have only one thing in their index, although everything has an rss feed. Oh well, back to craigslist. Thanks to everyone for the heads up on eBay.
I was a noobie at ebay, my feedback was 1(positive), then I sold two items ( 2 Microsoft 97 copies), i shipped them out and bought two things on ebay Xbox steering wheel and Keyboard & mouse adapter, anyway I won the items yesterday and today i was ready to pay. For one i made a money order for the other i asked the seller was i able to pay by credit card? I got no response instead, one hour later i was suspended by eBAy, WTF? and for some reason I ccant acces my registered email address for over 30 minutes now,
I went on a online chat and asked them about it, I told them the problem and asked how to fix it?
All they did is told me to go to some "Help" webapages that just confused me even more.
Does anyone know why could the have suspended me ans WILL I BE ABLE TO STILL GET MY ITEMS FROM THE SELLERS?
Could this have happend because i didnt pay me fees, I thought that when you give your credit card number and choose auto pay it will automatically take them off?
I am very confused, could anyone help me?
Thanks
You can protect yourself from Ebay/Paypal fraud
2005-07-01 23:30:04
fedlite
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First of all, ebay/paypal are both scums the internet. As a buyer, the fraud proof way to protect yourself is to pay with a credit card.
Paypal defaults to your bank account so make sure you change your payment option to credit cards and act quick(you barely have any time to type in the comment area before they time you out) or it will revert the source to bank funds.
This is proof that paypal/ebay is fraudulent, they don't allow you to set credit card as a default source of funds. If they really wanted to protect their customers, users would be allowed to set source of funds default.
Lastly, don't post feedback until you've received your item(s). If the item is not as described and you can't live with the flaws, sent it back with tracking(include insurance if valuable), wait for confirmation then dispute the charge with your credit card company within 60 days of the transaction.
Don't abuse this protection mechanism just because you've changed your mind or have buyer's remorse. This is how you take control of ebay and paypal.
I loved ebay... once upon a time! Not anymore! Just a few weeks ago, I discovered that every time I pressed the "pay for all items through Paypal button" and followed through the check-out procedures, none of the transactions were recorded as pending or paid. The result: Every time I clicked "pay all paypal items" pending payments would get paid again. Sellers were getting duplicate payments 3 and 4 times for the same item! These payments were coming directly out of my bank account, so for every $50 I thought I was paying, I was actually paying $250 or more for the same item! anyone with limited funds can understand that after the money is gone, NSF fees appear. Some sellers were pocketing the money and others were not getting money at all. As soon as an honest seller notified me of the problem, I explained the problem to all the sellers and then I tried contacting eBay and Paypal to discover and straighten out the problem. Those of you who have ever had anything out of the ordinary happen on ebay know how pointless this becomes.
So far, I've gotten the run-around. [em]HOWEVER[/em], an ebay rep sent me an email [em]admitting[/em] the problem was technical, but then I got some lame "Ebay 101" instructions that don't even apply to my problem!
Now, on top of all of this, those sellers who did not get paid through paypal - and who live in the land of lollipops and gumdrops and never have crap happen that's beyond their control- have given me strikes. And ebay, ever faithful to the seller, has suspended me!
Now, I don't blame the sellers - I would want my money if I were in their shoes, but ebay admits a problem and STILL suspends my account. I can't even appeal because the unpaid strikes (2 from the same seller) are not resolved! How does a strike get "resolved", you ask? Only the seller can remove the strike, or claim that it has been resolved! So I have no recourse. It's not as if I scam people or skip-pay as a rule:This is my 1st problem! My feedback is great, but none of this matters. Obviously, the honeymoon is over and the love is GONE! I still love the concept of online auctions, but I guess I've become one of the cautious people who doesn't like to do business with her ass blowing in the wind!
We all must realize what Ebay and Paypal are all about. They are all about making money. They could careless about right or wrong. The people that makes them the most money is ALWAYS right, and those that don't are ALWAYS wrong. They advertise fraud protection, but there isn't any. How could they protect anyone without any sort of quality control? When you buy something off Ebay, cross your fingers and pray that you get what you paid for, or get anything at all for that matter. And when you use Paypal to "safely and quickly" pay for your stuff, good luck getting your money back from them after you hit the "Send" button. Yet, Ebay is still growing by leaps and bounds year over year. In the end, we only got ourselves to blame. We support them by using their services. We grow them into the beast they are by subverting to their haphazard rules. While the title of this blurp is "Ebay SUCKS!", it is really about me looking into the mirror, slapping myself into the realization that even though I know what I was getting into, I did it anyway. That one bad experience with Ebay and Paypal finally happened to me, but I wonder if I would ever use their service again!
I recently sold some flea repellent to a buyer in San Francisco. I shipped it the very same day that payment was made. Within the PayPal invoice that was emailed to this person was my cell phone number. This person didn't like the product I was selling and Emailed me Saturday at 10:30pm demanding his/her money back. When I checked my email the following Monday evening, JUST 2 DAYS LATER, this person had send a 2nd email saying that he/she had no choice but to leave NEGATIVE FEEDBACK against me, because I did not get back to him/her right away. It cost me $40.00 to get Fair Trade to handle to situation. The negative was removed, but the UNTRUE comment remains for the world to view. Expecting a person to respond to email on a Sunday is completely UNREASONABLE and leaving NEG. feedback without giving the seller a fair chance to respond is simple UNJUST. I feel that this is a pure MALACE ACT and, possibly, a case of DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER. It is also an IRRESPONSIBLE MISUSE of Ebay's feedback system. I had left this buyer POSITIVE feedback the same day that he/she paid. And this is how I was treated. Ebay does absolutely nothing in terms of safeguarding members from such abuses as this. Further, they charge you a small fortune when you turn to them for help. They literally have no rules for leaving negative feedback. Thus, one can expect many of its members to act childish and irresponsible. Have my sales been affected by this person's negative comment? YOU BET IT HAS! And what good does it do to remove the negative POINT, when the negative COMMENT remains? I used to leave POSITIVE FEEDBACK immediately after the buyer made payment. NO MORE! I have learned my lesson. What do you think about this? Email me at trashmail@dslextreme.com if you agree or disagree.
£91 fraud on my ebay account
2005-06-15 02:57:41
ebaydontcare
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Someone made £91 listings on my account (thats blinking loads of things being listed to sell - not mine!).
So I circled what was not mine, wrote a nice email to ebay, then wrote another, then another, then another...they send me a link to change my password...yea, great....to prevent further fraud on my account. But what do i do about the £91 of stuff someone sold on my account which has nothing to do with me but I was charged for?
...urm.....well ...I have written to trading standards to see what they say but I don't know what to do to get this cash back...I certainly can't afford to just write it off as a bad ebay experience.
My advice stay well away from this uncaring site - we got you money now bog off cos we dont care...don't you just love eBay:-((
Ebay wont respond to emails, who do I contact to get my money back? HELP
I recently tried to make a purchase from e-bay on an item listed from Disney.
I was sent from e-bay page to the Disney site and nothing worked. You may find it interesting that e-bay hides all of Disneys negative feedback and there is quite a lot.
I am a talk show host on the CMR Radio Network.
I could not get any managment person from e-bay to return a call. As a mater of fact they seem to do their best at conceiling their information and phone numbers.
I went on the air and ask folks to call in wiht their e-bay stories and my phone came off the wall.
That was followed by an attorney calling who said he was with e-bay and he was going to file suit!
I told him he had better press his suit cause I was on the air talking direct to all of e-bays stock holders.
This man made threats to me over the phone and I just ignored him and then played him back as well.
E-bay is a great idea and I was glad to see them grow. Their customer service is arrogant and nasty. They do nothing for their customers.
So in short give it time and there will be someone sharper and and more considerate of stock holders and customers.
In another 5 years the new company will be he household word and e-bay will be like Prodigy.
Ted Randall
unhappy with ebay
2005-05-20 12:48:51
larry806
[Reply | View]
I was kicked off ebay without them giving me a chance to defend myself. I did not do anything wrong to my knowledge at that time. I bid on a article, asked the seller if they would take less and they turned me in to ebay as trying to get them to to lower their price. I didn't ask them to lower their price, I ask them if they would take less. I would have paid what they ask had they said no but they got ugly & vulgar and I stopped any email with them. A few days later I got a notice that I had been banned from egay. I do not need that kind of hassle. Larry Mahaffey
I have just discovered the eBay Toolbar carries a Trojan. It entered my computer and I couldn't get rid of it because I didn't know what it was at first, eventually my computer crashed, that is when we discovered the cause. I lost over 3000 photographs because the computer also corrupted my CD's. I am a photographer and so this didn't go over too well. BUT I JUST THOUGHT I WOULD PASS THIS INFORMATION ON AS I REALLY DON'T WANT OTHER PEOPLE GETTING THIS TROJAN FROM THE EBAY TOOLBAR. I'm not sure what I can do about it as far as eBay is concerned. Notify them of course, but will they do anything? Our technician said it brings in a virus of some sort everytime the toolbar is opened, but the Trojan comes in on the initial download!
Ebays is unreasonable
2005-05-16 17:45:56
blueheaven
[Reply | View]
I had someone bidding on my items over and over again...ebay stated I shill bidded though I had not idea who the heck this person was...they just liked my stuff I guess. Ebay booted me based on the premise that someone repeatedly bidded on my items. Ebay has no respect or remorse for sellers!!! (the ones who make ebay the real money...don't cut off the hand that feeds you) BUT, they will support the buyer till the ends of the earth. EBAY SUCKS!
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With the help of some national radio publicity, some people started an auction site and they are going after the people who have been wronged by ebay. It appears they are gaining ground!
This site is getting national attention so hurry and get your items on there now. Their <u>first 25,000 listings are FREE</u> and final value fees are as much as 80% cheaper than ebay's and much easier to understand!! Also you can bring your feedback with you!
Read about their Anti-Sniping feature which is very beneficial to Sellers and also buyers. They have lots of other cool features as well. Just go to w ww . JaGetit . com (take out the spaces)
http://JaGetIt.com
Look out ebay! Here comes someone who cares about the customer!!!