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.
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6 comments:
Sorry to hear about your bad eBay experience. In the future you might want to check out an eBay alternative with more transparency, like Wigix.
Wow. I have stopped selling on eBay due to the fees. I just can't keep prices low and make a reasonable profit margin. So sorry to hear about your experience. What a jerk you had to deal with.
+1 to this. I had a terrible expirience with eBay last month. I turns out someone I sold a video game to logged in awhile after the sale and left negative feedback on my account. Of course eBay doesn't think to email sellers when a buyer leaves feedback, so I didn't know anything about it.
6 hours of arguing with ebay later we had established two things: This was not a proper use of their system, and they were not willing to do anything about it.
So now, after having an account in good standing for almost 5 years, I'm stuck watching my feedback score continue to drop over the next 12 months because of a *single* negative feedback. Senseless.
This sounds like my nightmare eBay scenario. Whoever is making the big decisions at eBay in the past few years is purely driven by profits (the new outside ads that show up in searches, paypal debacle, and the imbalance they've added to the feedback system with no negative buyer feedback). It's in the guise of protecting buyers from scamming, but what it's really doing it making eBay susceptible to scammers buying from reputable sellers. I've been on eBay for 11 years and as soon as something else solid comes along, I'm jumping ship.
What I don't understand is why eBay continues to disregard what their sellers tell them. Ebay is losing business now and yet they continue to look to window dressing "improvements" to try to shore them up but the truth is that they are losing business because they have done things to anger both buyers and sellers.
The fact that sellers are at the mercy of buyers in a myriad of ways, including the feedback scheme (it's no longer a system) and the ability to say they didn't receive an item (eBay always sides with the buyer) tells me that they believe they can continue to take advantage of sellers. Sellers pay fees for the privilege of listing on eBay and then again by selling through PayPal. It reminds me of the company store so prevalent in the 19th and early 20th century where the mine owners provided their workers with a company store so that the workers all spent their paychecks and went into debt with guess who....the mine owners!
You can share your eBay nightmares http://ebaynightmares.com
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