Ebay condones blackmail

I sold 3 pamphlets to a buyer in Italy. We sent him an invoice but he didn't pay. He said he never got the invoice and wanted another one. We made up another invoice and after a few days, he paid.

Then he wrote and said he would "vote for me" if I left him positive feedback. I wasn't sure what he meant by that but I didn't feel I needed to leave positive feedback for him. It wasn't a positive experience but eBay doesn't allow sellers the privilege of leaving truthful feedback. As a seller, you can only leave a buyer positive feedback or no feedback. So I didn't leave him any feedback.

Then I got an email from him telling me he was going to leave me negative feedback because I didn't leave him feedback. He blackmailed me. I should have left him positive feedback even though the experience of selling to him wasn't positive. He left me 3 negative feedbacks because I didn't leave him feedback and because I issued a non-paying bidder alert on him.

I wrote to eBay and told them that he had blackmailed me and when I didn't comply, he retaliated by leaving me negative feedback and they told me that their rules don't allow them to remove feedback for blackmail or retaliatory reasons unless you're a buyer.

So there you go, eBay does it once again. Screws as many people as it can. No wonder they are losing business.

First they take away the ability for a seller to say that they accept money orders and checks from buyers. We've lost a lot of buyers who refuse to use PayPal.

Ebay did this for one reason and one reason only: GREED. Ebay is double-dipping. First they get fees from the seller through their fee structure on eBay when an item is sold. Then when they force the buyer to pay through PayPal which they own, they get paid even more in fees.

Now that Ebay all but has a monopoly on the internet auction business, it's easy for them to do whatever the hell they want to do without anybody being able to do a thing about it.

A few years ago, Yahoo and Amazon both had auctions that were not as lively as eBay's site at the time but were doing reasonably okay. Now neither of those sites, sites with the ability to compete with Ebay is offering auction services. It's a shame. Because eBay is running its own customers off.