My very bad selling experiences on Ebay

[lctb51]

When I first joined ebay I was very thrilled to start selling and everything. My mother has been a member of ebay since 1999 I believe, which was when Ebay was in its hayday and it was great. I think I must have had retrospective memory about ebay when I joined in 2010, because its clearly a shadow of its former self, especially with all the scammers who ruined it .

1. When I sold a couple of things, Paypal placed very very wrong 21 day hold on all my payments from buyers. I had to constantly call paypal daily to request them to release my funds. At one point, one of my buyers had to call the buffoons at Paypal to explain they got their item and all was good.

2. Fees: Ebay should be renamed Feebay, the amount of fees they have on ebay are excessive. For instance, 50 cents for a subtitle on an auction, reallly? With all the members they have, they couldnt ease up on their fees?

3. Scammers: I had a nigerian scammer come on ebay and buy an auction but never payed and caused me all sorts of trouble following after.

4.  Deliquent Buyers A person came on and won an auction and never payed. I had to open a unpaid item case and the person was making all sorts of excuses.

5.  Poor treatment of Sellers: Ebay treats their sellers like criminals, Ebay treats its so badly that its enough to never come back to ebay. This is epecially when a buyer starts claiming things like the item was damaged or something else. Ebay will go in and hold onto your money in Paypal until the case is closed. Then they will predictibly rule in favor of the buyer.

6. No Negative or not even neutral feedback for buyers: This is just a total injustice. If there are buyers going around scamming people like damaging items and making not as described cases, sellers will not be aware of it though feedback.  Bad buyers will continue to scam sellers. Sure there is a report feature but it doesnt let sellers be aware of the bad buyer.

7. Have to use Paypal: Ebay extremely limits choices of payments other than Paypal which is also BTW owned by ebay thus they are the same company essentially. Ebay can easily go into paypal and screw with your bank account.

[ossea0]

I could not agree more, eBay is appalling for how hard it is to sell successfully, the nickel and dime fees, the poor and slow customer service it is impossible to reach.

My favourite is the 404 error whenever you futilely click on "Tell us what you think", for three months clicking on the link to tell them what I think produces that 404 error, see the screenshots.

I joined in June to sell a laptop despite watching my wife suffer through an experience trying to sell something six months earlier.

It took her two months to get them to reverse the fee for the sale that never happened. Tied to their requirement we use Paypal.

I have tried three times to sell the same item, the first auction failed because despite selecting the option for my listing to say I would only ship inside the UK eBay's platform allowed someone from New Jersey in the USA to win the auction.

That someone wanted me to quickly ship the item to Nigeria to her "cousin's" wedding.

It took a month to get the fees reversed on that, I could not just relist it even two weeks later. 

Finally, I recreated the listing from scratch but this time the winner never followed up. Silence. I contacted customer service, and again it took days to get a response. But at the end of it my old listing was back to relist from.

So, I relisted and this time the winner did contact me. To say they had not realised there was a £20 shipping fee, that they could not access their PayPal account as well. It was like talking to a five-year-old.

This is still going on, what started in June is now still going on in September.

I saw I could offer it to the next bidder, but that I had to cancel the auction. By this time I was done paying any attention to eBay. So instead I found I am able to offer it to the next two bidders without cancelling it. Why not allow you to click one button to accomplish whatever they deem is necessary? Instead, their system makes it easy to circumvent their policies, or that is what it looks like. 

Their system is poorly coded, and overrun by scammers.

Throughout each of the three auctions, none of them successful and eBay still wants the 50 pence fee associated with each because they "can't refund" that portion of each of the listing fees, my messages inbox has been filled with scammers and eBay security telling me they are scammers.  

**bleep**?! I am getting messages and bids from profiles at the same time eBay is telling me that their accounts are compromised, or that they are scammers. 

Ebay is an awful e-commerce platform that underfunds support and whose developers are either inept, mismanaged or understaffed. The eBay site is inoperable in the most basic ways with missing pages and it is almost impossible to contact eBay. I tried phoning, got my pin code, and was on hold for half an hour and the system never asked me for the pin code. I hung up, and requested a callback, the same page lead to the same telephone system, but I was called back in less than five minutes. By a hostile, unhelpful operator who had no solutions or advice that solved anything.

It is as if the people running it are intoxicated it is so bad.

I am done, I am going to sell it locally using Facebook or whatever, no fees, no hassles.

[tlc9313]

I agree with you totally about EBay being for the Buyer and a bad place to sell. I recently sold a picture that was a vintage by Carl Weber. It was from my Moms Estate that she had purchased at an Auction a few years ago. I wasn't sure if it was a true painting or not so I priced it to what I thought was fair? A lady from PA ask me to take a few extra photos without flash so she could see the true coloring and I did. She bought it right away, I insured it for the $295.00 she paid and shipped it. She blasted me when she received the art. She said I was a crook and a scammer that it was a print and not an original. I issued her a refund and she never return my painting back to me. She said EBay told her she did not have to return it that the case was closed. Carl Weber originals are going for $2000 to $5000 on EBay. She thought she had found one for $295. I to am looking for somewhere else to sell very soon!!

Terry C,

[loveyourimagination49]

You don’t refund until you receive your item back.

[surehall]

Yes I sold a phone on ebay and the buyer opened a not as described case ebay automatically told the buyer to return the phone and when he did it was not the same phone I sold him in the end after a lot of calling ebay I keep the payment he keep my phone and got his money back ebay is totally screwed up.

[jtfinnegan]

But everyone knows ebay is full of **bleep** ! what's new.  You will never make it in business if you depend on ebay they should be only a  side line. Remember online classified ads are powerful 🙂