OT: Twatting eBay screwing with things again.

My sympathies to all the decent sellers out there, but speaking as a buyer who has had various issues with some unscrupulous sellers over the years - this is a change for the better! I bought a laptop from an allegedly reputable seller on ebay, it had the wrong OS and memory to advertised, sellers comm's were total crap (7 days to answer an email, never answered the phone or returned calls) but had I left neg, they would have done the same to me even though I had done nothing wrong!!! Wankers. It's about time really, if you are an honest seller then you have nothing to fear. Badger.

It's their ball and they make the rules, anyone who doesn't like it doesn't have to play!

Personally I think it's a change for the better. I buy and sell frequently. The only negative feedback I have ever received came from a malicious seller who found it was easier to leave insulting and negative feedback than sort out the faulty goods he supplied ;(

That's all well and good but if I sell something and then the buyer fannies me around and doesn't pay etc I can't leave negative comments to warn future sellers off. Not the end of the world admittedly but not quite sure why they are doing this.

I have already started to move away from eBay after they screwed over the eBay Shops by removing listings from the general pages and upped their fees last time. Whereas before 90+% of my business was on eBay, now only about 50% is, am I am actively starting to list items on other sites to trial my complete discontinuation of eBay sales. With the increases in fees coming in on 20th Feb, I am then likely to list even less pieces than I do now - so I don't like it, and I'm already reducing the amount I play with their ball!

Matt

Exactly - I've been screwed around many times by buyers, and in nearly

10 years (1000+ transactions) of buying on eBay I've only had one bad experience, and I still managed to get my money back from Paypal so didn't loose anything.

Maybe for people selling 100's of pieces cheap tat every week it isn't going to affect them, but it will me. My business works on selling low volume, high quality expensive goods - my listings are all on a BIN/offers basis. Before accepting any offer I asses the quality of the buyer. As far as eBay are concerned now, all buyers are perfect! Yeah right - get real. I've been messed about many many more times as a seller than as a buyer. They are handing buyers carte-blanche to screw sellers over left right and centre with absolutely no recourse, and no way of warning other sellers. I have a 100% feedback, which I feel is very important to maintain when selling expensive pieces. What happens when a buyer demands a 20% discount after buying and threatens to leave a neg if I don't give them the discount? Don't think it ain't gonna happen, and there will be nothing you can do about it, even to warn other sellers. The irony I find in this is that below the announcement about not allowing sellers to leave neg, they are upping the amount of blocked buyers we can have in our list from 1000 to 5000!! and I thought they had just said all buyers were 100% perfect?!

Oh, and BTW, even for the casual buyers you're gonna get screwed over. If you have less than 100 feedback and accept Paypal (which is a requirement for listing in some categories) then you are not going to be allowed to touch the money for 21 days. They have hidden a lot of these changes and not told anyone - I wonder why!

Matt

Who are you using/trialling? SWMBO'd has an eBay shop and is not happy about the coming changes. She has found eBid, which looks good on the surface and reading through the FAQ. Any others worth looking at? She says Amazon market Place doesn't have a good reputation.

Well, they are pushing the "No Payment Received" route as a better alternative. From the link you gave, it seems that two NPR notices will result in a suspension of the buyer, and deletions of the negative left (if any). I prefer the fact the ratings are based now on 12 months, not the whole account life (I have some negs from five years ago that are dropping my rating), although teh negatives are still isted for anyone bothered to look them up. I also like the fact that multiple buys from the same vendor will count more than once for the rating.

But then, I don't make a living out of eBay.

Stuart

Never tried Amazon, not suitable for me. I registered on eBid a couple of years ago, but most of the stuff on there is crap from what I have seen and had little success.

Mainly I've developed my own website and pay for Google Adwords to drive visitors to the site. I have a fairly high monthly budget on Adwords, but it still works out at around 1/2 my monthly eBay fees, plus I sell things for higher prices on the website because eBay can only support prices up to a certain amount as I think it has a down-market image for people buying quality goods (in my case antiques), so they are only prepared to pay so much, and there is a lot of competition selling antique rip-offs on eBay (or just general junk!) which dilutes the market on there.

I have been selling more and more in the 'real' world through shops on a commission basis (much higher commission than eBay, but balanced against pieces selling for a lot more in shops!) I've also started listing on a specialist antiques sites (lots of visitors, but not much luck so far - tho they do drive people to the website too), and am currently looking at Tazbar - quite small at the moment, but growing and I can list for free with no risk. I'm also looking into specialistauctions.com - check out this site for lots of details.

Matt

In message , Andy writes

What about bad sellers under this? I will have three days to leave negative or neutral feedback - I never leave feedback until I get and check the goods so basically any bad feedback for 90% of transactions isn't going to happen ... win auction on Friday night, goods to the courier on Monday ... oops, over the three day limit so out of time for a neg feedback and I haven't got the goods yet by next day delivery!

In my view this is making the entire feedback system for buyers and sellers a waste of time. The current system does not allow for the legitimate use of negs for bad sellers (and buyers) because of reprisal ... but the new system will potentially increase undeserved negs issued by buyers and decrease legitimate ones because of simple timing.

To me it looks as if it's a recipe for eBay to reduce neg feedback and make more money ... I must find this "less than 100 feedback, money stays in Paypal account for 21 days" mentioned earlier ... Probably introduced as it is illegal for Paypal to take money from a private account without prior notice and authorisation ... but if they still have it it's under their control ...

You've misread it. You can't leave any feedback for 3 days as a buyer, but then you have up to 60 days to leave the feedback.

Next step I can see happening is eBay leaving auto feedback for a buyer on your behalf as soon as they pay using Paypal.

I'll try and find a link later - busy listing my wares on a couple of other auction sites to see how they go!

Matt

In message , Matt M writes

Sorry, my mistake.

That would save me time, effort and any possibility of causing their site to get a bad reputation with high levels of negative feedback ... hmm might be a good idea eBay!

No, you cannot leave feedback until three days have passed - to stop kneejerk "it dint get 'ere necks day, so 'e muss be a cheatin' barstard" type reactions. The upper limit is now 60 days, not 90 (which is crap for people who choose surface mail from the States, but there you are).

No, I think it will actually bebetter. Less chance of reprisal negs, and better protection in case of non payers (two NPRs in a week and the buyer is suspended).

Now, as for the PayPal 21 day thing. If current reports are correct, it is currently very easy for PayPal to refund the buyer to the detriment of the seller - this way, PayPal becomes more of an Escrow account, where the money is held until BOTH parties are stisfied. This could well turn out to be a positive thing for the vendor, except when sales are needed quickly in desperate circumstances.

Stuart

In article , Matt M writes

Ebay own PayPal too. Having read it, this is a move to support commercial/high volume sellers at the expense of the little guy.

No more ebay sales for me. Great shame, but no longer worth the risks.

Regards,

Simonm.

Bloody good too. I buy and sell on ebay, when selling I leave feedback when a buyer pays, and when buying I get annoyed when sellers abuse the system by not leaving feedback when I've done my bit so they can leave retaliatory feedback if they decide to f*ck me around.

A seller waits until the buyer pays before they ship, and if the buyer doesn't pay, they don't ship. A buyer on the other hand gets their balls in the sling from the start and the sellers who won't leave feedback once they've been paid are abusing the system. This is the result.

In article , Ian Rawlings writes

Or, as happened to me, a buyer starts a dispute with PayPal approx. 48 hours after the end of the auction (in Ireland!), claiming non-delivery. It was transparently dishonest.

Despite sending a replacement item (and with proof of posting in both cases, and receipt in the second), the buyer was given their money back by PayPal and they then proceeded to fine me too. They never even read my correspondence on the subject.

Read

ignore all the silly posts and you'll find a core of people, usually small traders, who have learned the hard way that PayPal are not trustworthy. Asking around amongst friends who traded on eBay, I quickly discovered my experience was by no means unique, and that others had been affected far worse than me, one to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds (when a trading account was apparently arbitrarily frozen when PP deemed it "suspicious").

Why bang on about PP? Because PayPal and eBay are the same company, and therefore the same ethic pervades both wings of the organisation.

As MM commented, if you look realistically at eBay's fees, selling there is not a cheap way to do business either. The process often operates to inflate prices too. I was at a trade show yesterday, and was surprised to see new semi-pro video cameras selling for equal to (or less) than heavily used equivalents on eBay. As you can't research bidders any more, it's very hard to tell sometimes if these bidding wars are genuine or not - either way they give the purchaser a false sense of value (someone has to take the write-down eventually!).

Thus I buy on eBay carefully, but I don't sell there any more. I don't trust the management.

If I may be so bold, I fear you are being a bit idealistic: confusing the great idea (the original eBay concept) with the sordid reality of today's large and greedy corporations.

Regards,

Simonm.

Far more common is retaliatory feedback, it's rife. The seller holds the buyer to ransom once, when they insist on receiving payment before they ship (which is fine), and a second time, when they insist on the buyer leaving positive feedback before they will leave any, and if they do not leave positive feedback, the seller leaves negative feedback even if the buyer did not warrant it.

The balance of power has been on the seller's side for far too long, the balance of power has not shifted much, after all feedback isn't that important, far less so than money. While the seller can get shafted by paypal or buyers, it's far more common to get shit goods from sellers and the buyer often won't indicate that's happened because they fear negative feedback.

And I think you're being idealistic about the good intentions of sellers.

On or around Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:18:55 +0100, Stuart Gray enlightened us thusly:

Most of the changes are OK, some are not much bother and some are good.

but skewing the feedback is stupid.

On or around Sat, 2 Feb 2008 01:22:04 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

As a seller, I don't leave feedback until I receive it from the buyer, which implies that the buyer has received the goods (or not, of course) in good order.

As a buyer I leave feedback when the goods are received and seen to be in good order, and working.

but this change to the feedback is giving the buyer too much power. If the buyer has the slightest quibble, they wait 3 days and give a negative, justified or not, reasonable or not.

It's not valid to skew the feedback to the extant that buyers can't get a negative.

In which case, I'll happily leave you to it.

I continue to buy on eBay, successfully in the main, but I haven't tried to sell anything on there for several years. Your mileage evidently varies. I wish you continued success.

Regards,

Simonm.