Good old days of Ebay.... long gone!!

soolin

Mintstrel wrote: »

Maybe Music Magpie is the way forward. Which proves my point that eBay has maybe had its day.

It isn't just ebay where you'll struggle to sell DVDs, there's thousands on Amazon at 1p a go where sellers if they are pro merchant making be netting less than 10p a DVD.

Seriously, it isn'r scammers giving you a loss if you are selling DVDs at 99p with free postage. Work your figures again

OK, free to list assuming these are your own unwanted items, 10p final value fees, sat 15p paypal assuming you are using a micro account and £1.10 for postage. So 35p down for every item that goes at 99p even before you allow for an envelope.

alykatz

geri1965 wrote: »

As a seller I have never had any problems at all - one of my items went missing once, I refunded the buyer, that was that. It could have been a scam but I had no reason to disbelieve her.

As a buyer though, my experiences have been shocking. A few good items and a lot of garbage which is only fit for the bin.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with this judging with quite a few of the sellers ive dealt with over the 2 years or so.

I mean when is a used item brand new and unused?
To quite a lot of the sellers ive bought from in the past 6 months or so,the answer is when its only been used once or twice and cost them a lot to purchase.After all im getting a bargain what more do i want? Well what i would like, is for something to be as described.

Mintstrel

soolin wrote: »

It isn't just ebay where you'll struggle to sell DVDs, there's thousands on Amazon at 1p a go where sellers if they are pro merchant making be netting less than 10p a DVD.

Seriously, it isn'r scammers giving you a loss if you are selling DVDs at 99p with free postage. Work your figures again

OK, free to list assuming these are your own unwanted items, 10p final value fees, sat 15p paypal assuming you are using a micro account and £1.10 for postage. So 35p down for every item that goes at 99p even before you allow for an envelope.

It isn't just DVD's I used to sell, was just using that as an example of how fussy buyers can be..'a minute scratch on cover therefore not as described'. A scratch which probably only the Hubble Telescope could see. They leave neg and I can't do anything about it in return. A second hand item is second hand...and priced accordingly. I don't get what part of second hand at a mere fraction of new price buyers don't understand.

RFW

Pont wrote: »

But the 'nice' bit of Ebay has disappeared into the ether.

I have bought and sold loads in the past (clearing out attic, looking for something a little bit unusual etc). It's gone all 'business' and 'hard' and 'scammy' rather than the original ethos behind it.

I don't bother using it anymore.

Still plenty of small sellers and plenty of happy buyers. I had a problem customer a couple of weeks ago, first one in years. Can only recall one major attempt at being scammed and they never got away with it. I would say I'm a relatively small seller with a few thousand transactions a year for ten plus years.

It is different to how it was in many ways, but so is pretty much any sales environment, from high street stores to your average market stall. Customer service has been pushed everywhere, just think how different you get treated in a supermarket now compared to ten and twenty years ago.

Ebay made changes to improve customer service, there will be scammers, there always are, but if they have to exist I'd rather they were buyers than sellers.

If you get complaints from customers over description of items, then you aren't describing the items well enough. If you can't understand why the buyer needs to be the most important in a transaction then you shouldn't be selling anyway.

Crowqueen

The original ethos was flawed anyway. You can have a community of people swapping items amongst themselves, but you can't have a community where money is involved - unfortunately.

Money generates greed. Greed means scams and fraud - eBay is not the only place where fraud/theft happens in commercial transactions. eBay made a couple of mistakes; one was the whole concept of buyer feedback, and one was setting itself up as a 'community'. Amazon have done much better by avoiding either and pushing the business and customer service element from day 1.

eBay is still great for stuff like stamps, books etc. but increasingly as a buyer if I want consumer durables I'm going elsewhere. I made no secret of my reluctance to buy electronics there, and I stand by that, but I also stay away from clothes and stuff that has moving parts. Too much disappointment, too much propensity for stuff to go wrong. The big thing with Amazon is that they restrict certain categories to certain pre-vetted sellers, IIRC, and so they do get a better quality of seller.

eBay's 'ethos' just gets in the way, convinces sellers that there is somehow a free lunch, away from normal rules, or they are somehow 'entitled' to a livelihood without the hard work that normally involves setting up something of their own from scratch, and they can abuse their buyers in new and interesting ways with impunity, whether it's an SNAD or an INR. I just don't want the hassle of buying certain things or from certain sellers so have really cut back the categories I buy in and always scrutinise a seller very closely, something I just don't need to do elsewhere.

I'm sorry, but though I do still sell on eBay, I've got extremely cautious when I buy, largely to be honest because of the attitudes expressed in the OP.

Ericparke

Mintstrel wrote: »

An Ebay member since 2000. See lots of discrepancies these days. Why can't anyone just simply list an item for sale without idiot/scammer buyers claiming this and that wrong/not received...yawn yawn. I NEVER EVER had any problem whatsoever when I started buying/selling until recently. Memo to Ebay (if you want to keep your customers)..let sellers again be able to leave feedback to buyers ...problem solved.

Am I wrong on this?

Its not fun at all, I use gumtree now! After I tried to sell my phone and someone clicked buy now but never paid.. So ebay still socked me with the fee to sell it

alykatz

Ericparke wrote: »

Its not fun at all, I use gumtree now! After I tried to sell my phone and someone clicked buy now but never paid.. So ebay still socked me with the fee to sell it

You could have started a npb case after 4 days which would have enabled you to get your fees back..

sharpy2010

alykatz wrote: »

You could have started a npb case after 4 days which would have enabled you to get your fees back..

But after you open the nbp, doesn't that mean the buyer can simply pay and then leave you negative feedback?

That doesn't seem fair to me.

Mindless_Clone

sharpy2010 wrote: »

But after you open the nbp, doesn't that mean the buyer can simply pay and then leave you negative feedback?

That doesn't seem fair to me.

But if the buyer pays, you've got your money, you'll send the item and then they will have no cause to leave you neg, surely? And if they do you could appeal it.
Assuming of course you had tried to contact them for payment before opening the dispute.

soolin

sharpy2010 wrote: »

But after you open the nbp, doesn't that mean the buyer can simply pay and then leave you negative feedback?

That doesn't seem fair to me.

Therein lies the problem of sellers too afraid to use ebay properly.

Some sellers are so afraid of buyers that they waste their own money trying to avoid a potential neg, so buyers don't get strikes and can carry on bidding with no problem at all.

If sellers do a full NPB and buyer does not pay, the buyer gets a strike and with two strikes they are banned from most savvy sellers auctions.

If sellers are too afraid to do an NPB they would surely also be too afraid to leave a neg if the facility was there- so basically they just roll over, pay all their fees and generally think ebay is a bad place.

I applaud each and every fellow seller who has ever done an NPB on a non payer-thank you every one of you. That's one strike closer to getting these idiots banned.