ebay

[Bigdennis52]

I love ebay, I love paypal.

EBAY 4 President! :bouncy:

 

[Kinetic man]

unless you have a good rep

As far as the site itself goes, ebay is incredibly slanted towards buyers. Granted this was my first time selling something there but I noticed I was unable to leave negative feedback. After a little research I found out that it\'s actually quite difficult to leave any negative feedback although I\'ve never needed to thankfully.
This is because of ebay\'s claims that they wish to resolve discrepancies that warrant the feedback thus eliminating the need for it, but really even when it should be left it isn\'t because the whole thing is a system built on fear.
What I mean by that is that people don\'t leave bad feedback for sellers or buyers as often as they should because they fear the same thing happening to them in retaliation, thus ruining their flawless reputation. I liken it to playing an online game where everyone wants to have a perfect zero loses record, but business isn\'t like that...
Here\'s an example of an experience I had leaving bad feedback about this time a year ago:

I purchased a small sculpture brand new at half the cost ($15) I would pay for it in store, well aware that to ship it I\'d be paying another fifteen dollars which ended up making up for that 50% off and eliminating the saving. However, I couldn\'t find it anywhere by me anyway and the shipping costs said it was that high to cover a two day UPS shipping standard.
So, I waited.
And waited.
And waited....
And eventually Christmas rolled around and come to find out a family member bought it for me anyway while I was waiting. But I still never saw the item I purchased...
Finally just before January rolled around it shows up. On my porch mailed USPS, bottom of the line.
I was pretty pissed since I thought I was paying that extra money for faster shipping not to mention with a different service. On a hunch I took it to the post office still in the box and found that to have it shipped at the same rate as it had been to me it would only cost five bucks.
So I left bad feedback saying that shipping costs/times were deceptive. I wasn\'t overly rude in it, but I felt cheated and thought it was appropriate to leave the response I did.
The next day the seller calls my house, belligerent and hurling accusations of my tarnishing of her \"good name\" as this was the first bad feedback that she had ever received.
She claimed that the only reason she even shipped the item that way in the first place was because the UPS place was closed, and when I asked her why she didn\'t just go the next day or refund the difference she simply threatened me with leaving bad feedback in retaliation.
I honestly didn\'t care and told her that if that was what she felt I deserved then she was more then welcome to do so since that is why the system is there.
She yelled some more and hung up.
For a while I kept receiving emails about \"Ways we can both remove our bad feedback\" from the seller but I didn\'t pay any attention to it since my bad feedback just said \"Buyer left me bad feedback\" and thus didn\'t effect my transactions too much.
All in all it was a crap experience that kept me from wanting to use ebay too much afterward.

But what concerns me the most about ebay is how easy it is to get an account. In theory as long as you have a friend who is willing to have an item shipped to their home you can have as many accounts as you want, enabling you to drive your own auction prices up, and as long as you own a phone book and have access to a proxy server you can place as many non-paying bids as you want without any fear of retaliation.

 

[Infidel Castro]

I had my first purchase go missing last week. Gutted Cracking seller though - refunded and did it in fine style. He\'s now a favourite seller for me.

 

[Bigdennis52]

I use ebay all the time, I like how buyer friendly it is

I tried to sell 1 item, a whole dark elf army. the buyer never sent me the money, no item was ever shipped and it took about 45 days for ebay to finally let me give him a negative feedback.