Does Ebay Respect our consumer rights?

vinylmusic

I used to sell tons of stuff on ebay and took a break for a while.
Then I had hundreds of DVD's to sell.
I usually list them for 99p and charge £1.50 for postage and packing
Then ebay started offering discounted final value fees to those who offered free postage which was fair enough
That messed things up a bit for me because so many people fell for it but I found it to be false economy
You'd have to include your P&P in the starting price so although you got a small discount on your FVF you paid a higher listing fee for going over 99p AND the FVF would be higher from incorporating P&P.
To make matters worse Ebay now oblige you to include P&P in the starting price which is only beneficial to them and not the seller. Not only for DVD's but many other categories too.
I believe its only a matter of time before they apply this rule to all categories.
I've even heard that they are now dictating to sellers how much they can charge for P&P
I'm not a solicitor but I wonder how legal is ebays behaviour

Also I am sure that Ebay break competition rules the way they buy out or stifle any competition. I'm suprised no one has already brought them to book

Is there anyone with legal knowledge who can answer this?

montyrebel

ebay are the biggest joke online, i would rather pay full price for a dvd in a shop than use them robbing b*****ds

custardy

use ebid,nobody is stifling them
of course nobody is using them either.........................

soolin

You don't have to use ebay though and can choose not to and find another way to sell things. Obviously if you want to use ebay you do need to abide by their rules even if you don't necessarily agree with them.

pendulum

eBay is so unfair for sellers that I no longer sell anything on there, I only buy. Sellers get a horrible deal. eBay are too greedy with their fees and everything they do seems to make it harder for sellers.

vinylmusic

The point I was making is that ebay is anti copletitive and are they not breaking competition rules?
Companies like Microsoft, etc are always getting their knuckles wrapped for being anti competitive. How come ebay always get away with it?

I started using ebay when it was small and only based in USA and it was great. I could phone them whenever I wanted and problems were resolved very quickly.
I was selling rare records and sales were so good I was astonished with the success.
Even when they opened their offices in UK they were a great company to deal with. I'd call up to resolve a small problem and got on so well with their reps our conversations would last as long as 20 or 30 minutes.
I was then recognized as an importan seller and once I even received a bottle of Moets for Christmas.
Now that ebay has developed to become the monster it is now I am such a small concern to them I start to feel s__t upon


What's wrong with ebay?

Sellers get a raw deal, they can no longer give negative feedback to buyers who mess them around while those same buyers can walk all over them even with unjustified negatives.

Ebay now dictates to many sellers how much they can charge for P&P. If for example you sell computer parts, If you try to insert a postage amount it is rejected. You are supposed to include it in the asking price giving more commission to ebay.

Your allowed to ask P&P from overseas buyers but that is adding on to what you have already included in the privce for domestic customers.

Customer service is rubbish. You have to jump through hoops, wading through pages of faqs just to find the web form and even when you do get your question sent you are more than likely to only get an unhelpful template response and that can take days to arrive.
Phone contact is out of the question unless your a major "power" seller.

Ebay have already bought out the most serious competition so much that those like ebid that still exist have such an uphill struggle its no competition at all

Ebay make it hard for sellers to use other companies than Paypal for online payments (yes they bought that too) and absolutely forbid sellers to use google payments etc

Its easy to say ~~

soolin wrote: »

You don't have to use ebay though and can choose not to and find another way to sell things. Obviously if you want to use ebay you do need to abide by their rules even if you don't necessarily agree with them.

When you have lots to sell and they dominate the market so much that the alternatives are not very encouraging. I want to go on using them and would do if I wasn't so hampered by their unreasonable restrictions

Something needs to be done to knock them down to size and I am hoping that theres a way force them to change by legal means

Any ideas? anyone?

custardy

M$ are not comparable
they have the market cornered as their software is installed on machines from new

ebay are just the biggest in their market,hell they even offer gumtree for free!!!