As one who has been here a long time 23 years and 50,000 items sold I think at this juncture I have pretty good instincts about buyers. 98% of my customers are fine It’s that 2% that do whatever they can to scam a seller. The worst of it is that eBay does not seem to care much about buyers that are scammers. I sell mostly in one category Digital media DVD Blu Ray and sometimes CDs. Most of what I have sold are purchased directly from distribution as I come from a family that has been involved with film distribution since the silent film era. Needless to say I am reasonably well connected in this area and have access many just do not have.
recently there is a lot of scamming going on from buyers. You send a new factory sealed item. They open it or at least they say they opened it and claim it is all scratched up or missing. Disc. They then ask for a refund or a partial refund but not a return. This makes little sense if something is wrong why not return it?
now as I am familiar with the production process discs are not packaged scratched nor does distribution sell repackaged used items missing discs almost never happen maybe once in 100,000 times. The new game is trying to get items for free by taking pictures of a different disc with scratches and calling “foul” on the seller, or saying the disc is missing. . If I ask the buyer to return the item they either take a screwdriver and destroy the disk or just don’t return it at all but threaten bad feedback unless they get their money back. Buyer bullying is uncalled for and sellers need to ban together and demand that eBay put a stop to these buyers. It’s become easy to spot them as you only have to check their feedback and see all the negatives that they left for sellers and that at least leaves sellers open to responding but does not solve this problem. I have had this happen maybe one or two out of a hundred sales, I block the buyers but somehow they re-register and I find the same buyer pulling the same thing under a different eBay name. I feel eBay is way too lenient on these buyers. I lately have demanded a return and provided a label only to get reemed out by the buyer and threatened. They only want to get items for free and never want to return them as that gets them nothing. It does however cost the seller product and money at least the shipping one way even if you’ve worked hard to become a top rated seller. There is a Union for the self employed. I am thinking sellers need a way to push eBay towards making some better decisions. I think eBay sends us these sellers and eBay needs to take on the responsibility of financing returns especially for those who have been around for a long time and earned a top rated status. The rules are really not very fair a buyer is permitted to destroy an item open a new item and use it and simply make a false claim and the seller is stuck with whatever eBay decides. There was a buyer blacklist at one time and sellers added to it but that exploded into tens of thousands of buyers.
i subscribed to it but it was just too difficult to keep adding buyers to a blocked buyer list. One of the worst things on eBay is that eBay allows more than one account to the same person. There are buyers out there who scam sellers as a buyer, then resell what they bullied to get. Look at those buyers with thousands of purchases a month and you pretty much can tell it is a seller that buys then resells. Hidden feedback should not be permitted why do buyers have privelidges that allow them to hide? There is just a lot of stuff going on that needs a more powerful group to push the eBay envelope. As sellers we are already robbed of a huge portion of shipping under the lure that this is to stop abuse of overcharging shipping. Looks like the greedier eBay gets the more buyers will have to pay for shipping as sabayon steels shipping money. Why not just tax the buyers? Sellers don’t need to lose a % of shipping. We have to pack and buy materials then charge what eBay allows us to charge and lose on every package that we ship. It has come to the crossroads and we as sellers need representation. eBay makes plenty from us and we need more rights and lower and fairer rates. The taxing on shipping needs to go, the discrepancy towards corporate sellers needs to go. We need the same % charge across the board for all categories and reduced % based on total amount of sale, not be different rates per category just because we are in a competitive category much higher charges. There is a great deal sellers should have some say about. I expect to retire soon and I want to start a sellers group from the outside that can get rights for all sellers. Those who depend on this as a self employed job need help. The nonsense of allowing sellers to be bullied should be first on the list. When a buyer requests a partial refund he should be removed It should be against policy. I get returns but I do not get bullying to get money back without a return. I could rant all day but in order to make eBay a better place sellers need to form a group and the group needs access to the brass, not customer service who needs to start an SR discussion but the actual higher ups that make eBay rules and we need to start changing many things to keep eBay a safe and a secure environment for sellers. We have built eBay and eBay needs a shake up to repay us for all our hard work.
