Selling item not in posession of....

MORPH3US

Hi guys, really peeved off at the moment....

On 29/12 I purchased a leather case for my pda with buy it now from ebay....

Today I have just received an e-mail saying:

"Dear PRIVACY,

Regarding your Order XXXXXXXXXXX at First2Save.co.uk

Thank you for placing an PRE-ORDER with First2Save.co.uk. Your order ORD-522906-667738 has been received and will be processed when the stock arrives.

What is a Pre-order?

- When you placed this order one or all of the items you ordered were indicated as out of stock and displayed an "est" message (estimated time until re-stock). We will not contact you again until the order is despatched. Please be aware that the estimated time is a guide and not guaranteed to arrive within this time.

If you have ordered several items and part of the order is available we may split the order and ship the available item/items, the remaining goods will be shipped at no extra costs once they become available."

The auction said nothing about any "pre order" if it had I wouldn't have purchased from them... I am really annoyed, surely this is against the rules of ebay but I can't find anything to say so...

Does anyone else think this is wrong or am I being unreasonable....?

I want to just cancel the purchase and neg the seller but I don't want to risk a neg back to affect my perfect rating (I don't use ebay much but am proud of all my good feedback)...

Help!!!

M

rockin_plumber

As you stated you didnt know this was a pre-sale listing...
It is against eBay rules anyway :rolleyes:

Pre-sale listings are those that describe items for sale that are not in the control or possession of the seller at the time of the listing. These listings generally consist of items that are sold in advance of a delivery date to the public.
eBay permits pre-sale listings only on a limited basis. The seller must guarantee that the item will be available for dispatch within 30 days from the date of purchase (i.e., the day the listing ends or the date the item is purchased from a shop front listing). The seller must also clearly indicate within the listing the fact that the item is a pre-sale item with a delivery date that indicates the item will be dispatched by the 30th day from the end date of the listing. Additionally, this text must be no less than the default font size of the eBay Sell-Your-Item form. Currently, the default font size is HTML font size 3.
Breaches of this policy can result in a range of actions, including:

• Listing cancellation
• Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
• Limits on account privileges
• Loss of PowerSeller status
• Account suspension

MORPH3US

They have three other auctions offering the same item for sale so have reported them to ebay.

Given that a) ebay didn't ask for any proof of what they are doing wrong and b) that they have 177,000 feedback (about 800 negs and 500 mutual withdrawals) then I seriously doubt feebay will do anything about this...

rockin_plumber

So this is a lie then :rolleyes:

MORPH3US

Yeah looks like it mate, wouldn't be surprised if they are drop shipping from HK and just saying "Item Location: Liverpool"

Like I said though, ebay make you use their drop down boxes form to tell them what the supplier is doing wrong, but when they look at the auction, they will see that it all looks legit, that is until you buy from them and then they send you the e-mai saying "well actually you've just pre-ordered" but I wasn't given the opportunity to tell them about that.....

I also love the ebay (bull*hit) in their auto response "Please be aware that, as it's important that eBay maintains member privacy, we can't share details of any action we take on the seller's account. This eBay principle protects the privacy of all our members."

Translated that means... if you are ripped off, we reserve the right to do f**k all about it but pretend we have and then hide behind our privacy rules so we don't have to tell you what we've done. If you are ripped off by a company who sells s**t loads through us making lots of money, the above also applies...

MORPH3US

UPDATE:

For anyone interested...

Reported this to ebay and got the generic response that they would look into it. Also used the "Contact Us" link to report it giving more details and they e-mailed back and said they'd pass my e-mail on.

Contacted the company and asked for a refund which the promised on Thursday (still hasn't shown up surprisingly).

Anyway the most annoying thing is, ebay are still allowing the user to list the exact same items that they still don't have. E-mailed ebay last night again and they gave me the old "we can't tell you what action we have taken in order to protect the privacy of the user (who happens to be ripping people off!!!)

"Before we take action, we consider the circumstances of an alleged offence and the member's feedback profile, as well as any previous warnings or offences." So in otherwords if they sell s**t loads through us and make us loads of money, we don't care who they rip off

I despise ebay :mad::mad:

Avoriaz

MORPH3US wrote: »

…I despise ebay

I take it you will not be buying or selling on ebay again?;)

Ebay has its problems but most of them are well know to experienced users.

I buy a lot of stuff from ebay but I never buy anything I need quickly as rapid delivery cannot be guaranteed.

I do appreciate your frustration with this particular purchase, but is it really so urgent that you must get it straight away? A drop shipper may take a while to deliver to you but may still beat the delivery time of a low volume seller who is slow at despatching as he only goes to the post office every other weekend.

We all know that buying from powersellers with huge ebay turnover means that ebay are more tolerant of any poor behaviour by them.

I tend to avoid power sellers as I find them pricey. I’d rather buy from the newbie or low volume seller. They start their auctions at 99p and fewer people bid as they are nervous of a newbie. I get the very occasional non performing seller but I also get lots of absolute bargains.

Use ebay with your eyes open and your expectations set correctly and it is fine.

MORPH3US

@ Avoriaz...

All valid points, BUT:

1. The seller clearly states in all of their auctions "All items are held and shipped from our UK warehouse" Therefore what you say about drop shipping does not apply!!!

2. The seller also clearly states in all of their auctions "Next day delivery"

Both of the points above are clearly LIES!!

Ok so the purchase isn't urgent (except for me being like a kid waiting for Christmas) but they should be honest - if they are drop shipping, they should say they are drop shipping, if they don't have the item in stock, say its a pre-order... then the buyer can make their own mind up about whether to buy from them or not.

As long as an ebay seller has good feedback, I don't worry about powerseller or not, in this particular case however they were the only company that sell the item I wanted so I had no choice (until I found the item in the US for half the price)

M