@mopata wrote:
When I started on ebay 20 years ago, it was new and cool. It was a little bit of the wild west and a definite case of "buyer beware". However, with the feedback system allowing both positive and negative feedback for both buyers and sellers, you could get a good idea who the bad actors were, with a little experience. The sellers were mostly small to medium sized operations and service was personal but, a bit inconsistent. Shipping, return and refund policies were completely up to each individual seller so, buyers did have to read the terms carefully and bid or not bid accordingly. However, the 95% of buyers and sellers that were honest liked the system and the bad actors were weeded out through bad feedback fairly quickly. Fast forward 20 years and ebay has become safe, bureaucratic and boring. This is not a reflection on just ebay, it is the natural progression of almost any large, successful organization. Rules get set based on the least honest sellers and the least sophisticated buyers. Unfortunately, these same rules also hamstring the best sellers and buyers that use the site. This particularly applies to those that buy and sell antique, vintage or even 2nd hand items. The majority of sellers of these kinds of items are usually small to medium sized operations who do not sell thousands of items each month. In recent years, ebay's focus has shifted toward large sellers of new items, particularly from overseas. It's understandable, that's where the growth is. The small sellers of unique items who were ebay's original focus seem to be getting lost in the shuffle. I wonder if it would be a good idea for ebay to split off a site dedicated to antique, vintage, second hand and hand made items with a structure better suited to that market with fewer rules and less bureaucracy. I think this would benefit both the buyers and sellers of these types of items and allow ebay to focus the main site on the large sellers of new items that seems to be their future. Who knows, they may even get some of their reputation of being "cool" back.
mopata,
The one rule that universally applied on eBay way back when, was “Caveat Emptor”.
The eBay Feedback Forum of old, in my opinion ever since I registered my buying ID in early 2000, was a freaking joke. I could not possibly care less that eBay feedback was a two-way street. Back then, since disreputable sellers knew they could and did manipulate the system to their advantage, they could screw buyers at a whim since the common understanding was that feedback signalled the end of the transaction.
If a disreputable seller listed an item concealing the damage or defects and an eBay bidder won it, paid for it with a check/money order (or even cash), received it, there was NOTHING the eBay buyer could do to get their problem resolved without costing the buyer even MORE money. If the eBay seller misrepresented the condition of the item, the buyer ended up spending their OWN money to send back the item to the seller (WITH TRACKING) and the seller only refunded the purchase price. NO shipping costs were ever refunded to the ripped off buyer since the seller’s argument was the USPS has that money.
If a newbie eBay buyer had the misfortune of dealing with a disreputable eBay seller, and the newbie was too trusting, the seller would tell the buyer to post positive feedback first and then the seller would “make good”. Well, the buyer posted positive feedback and then NOTHING was resolved. Also, if the buyer had the temerity to leave deserved negative feedback about their BLEEPY experience, the seller simply blasted the buyer for their troubles and still, NOTHING was resolved. And, this is exactly how disreputable eBay sellers flourished since ripped off buyers were coerced into silence by not leaving any feedback and these dirtbag sellers’ profiles looked a lot like reputable eBay sellers’ profiles. These are some reasons why eBay’s feedback system was a freaking joke.
Back then, eBay had NO Money Back Guarantee. Back then, eBay had NO SNAD (Significantly Not As Described) reporting mechanism. Back then, eBay had NO INR (Item Not Received) reporting mechanism. Back then, eBay had NO Feedback Extortion reporting mechanism. Back then, eBay had NO telephone Customer Service (stateside or off-shore) to speak of. Back then, eBay had an easily understandable User Agreement in place. Back then, eBay had FAR fewer buyer and seller policies in place. Back then, eBay considered itself a “venue” and pretty much stayed out of the transactions between eBay buyers and eBay sellers. Back then, if a buyer bid and won a total of 4 auctions from 4 different sellers and these sellers filed NPB (Non-Paying-Bidder) complaints against the deadbeat bidder, eBay suspended that bidder and put a red NARU beside that user’s ID. Back then, eBay had a NPS (Non-Performing-Seller) reporting mechanism and I do not know of even ONE eBay seller that was ever suspended through this NPS mechanism that predated INRs and SNADs and eBay Star ratings and eBay Defects and eBay Cases and so on.
Back then, when eBay did have any buyer protection, it was limited to a (lifetime) US $200.00 less a $25.00 deductible and it was eBay who paid out the claims to ripped off buyers. The scamming sellers took the buyers’ money and disappeared. If a buyers bid on a computer, sent their check/money order for $1,000 to the seller’s Post Office Box and received NOTHING for their money, and filed a claim with eBay, that buyer only received $175.00 for their troubles and that buyer “ATE” the $850.00 loss and if that buyer had the temerity to leave negative feedback, the seller blasted the buyer for their troubles. Ripped off buyers had to go outside of eBay and filed Fraud Complaints with Law Enforcement agencies.
All of this BLEEP happened during Meg Whitman’s tenure and she did NOTHING to address the litany of buyers’ legitimate complaints and these ripped off buyers LEFT the site, and spread the word that eBay was a BLEEP-hole. As far as I remember, she was only interested in growing the number of registered eBay users and kept touting these numbers comparing the number of registered users to being comparable to the nth sized country in the world.
Before Meg Whitman left, she hand-picked her successor, John Donahoe, to be eBay’s next CEO. John Donahoe made a lot of changes (“Disruptive Innovation”) to the eBay site and instituted a lot of policies that a lot of eBay sellers hate. John Donahoe left eBay after eBay spun off PayPal and Devin Wenig is the current eBay CEO with his own plans for eBay’s future.
Honestly, I don’t think even Devin Wenig has any plans (or intentions) to split up eBay into two separate marketplaces catering to different buyers. That would just make things even more complicated as there would be even more policies created to “manage” the “marketplaces”.
After buyers were burned during the old eBay, some became smarter consumers when shopping online because the universal rule of “Caveat Emptor” still applies today when shopping online.
