eBay

plsrequestdisputeifitemnotreceived · ‎11-27-2023

This is something all new sellers on eBay need to see. I never type rants or ratings of anything, but eBay has created an immense amount of stress for me over the last year.

In the last year eBay has posed constant issues with my account, despite being 99.7% positive rating on 3,000+ items sold. The percentage recently dropped because of issues I will describe soon.

Here are the basics of why you should not depend on eBay, before I get into my year of experience here.

1. Customer service does not care nor understand your concerns. They are 95% from India or the Philippines, speaking with a heavy accent and are there to repeat eBay policies you already know. Nothing is completed by them or supervisors, it’s all in the systems. No exceptions can be made. If you get the agent Rimsha, just skip and try a different one.

2. eBay is extremely greedy. The fees are already bad enough but they try to take every extra bit they can. When they take fees, it’s on the price+tax, which should be illegal at least.

3. Seller protection sucks. Buyers can leave negative reviews saying something wrong about the shipment or quality and it won’t be removed. You cannot leave any negative feedback. If orders are delayed from issues out of your control, over $20, buyers can dispute it and you take a double loss. Again, no exceptions can be made.

My account was first accidentally restricted in March 2023, where they apologized but said they could not do anything to bring back my listings with thousands of watchers. I paid a ton for them with eBay promotions & other types of marketing. I had enough, took a break and came back in September. This was after messaging over 11 associates as most were completely clueless or robots that repeated the same policies.

eBay recently restricted my account again, holding all funds from new orders. They do not allow me to refund buyers using the held funds but only out of my pocket. This makes 0 sense. I spoke to 6 associates all with completely different guidelines to remove the restriction.

Associate 1: Just ship out all the items and the restriction will be lifted.

Associate 2: Wait until the items are fully delivered and it will be lifted.

Associate 3: Please provide an excel sheet with all the order numbers and tracking numbers for the past 3 months, not including presale items.

Associate 4: Please make sure all the tracking numbers are shipped and no cases are open.

Associate 5: Please provide proof of all presale fulfillment or suppliers.

Associate 6: Please have all items delivered including presale items.

I gave up on eBay. I don’t want to get to associate 7. I stated clearly in my descriptions of the time frames to ship. I didn’t take any of the held funds but still shipped out all products like I was supposed to. Items were delivered, funds still held, account still restricted. I hope managers of other platforms can see this and make the selling experience better.

Thanks for your time.

ckimodog · ‎11-27-2023

@plsrequestdisputeifitemnotreceived

So sorry for your situation & frustration. Being a seller on line with any e commerce site has been difficult for so many in the last few years. If you have all the info that eBay requiring you to remit, by all means give them what they want and hopefully they will unstrict your account. You may also want to consider to stop using the private listings feature. It looks like you're trying to hide something.

Hoping and wishing for you a positive outcome.

itsjustasprain · ‎11-27-2023

Your sold or completed items show a number of presale orders which can be troublesome if you are trying to pre-sell something that then gets delayed by the manufacturer. Your feedback shows a number of problems with that. Selling items you actually have in hand and shipping them promptly will avoid those problems.

One other question - what in the world is a $50 Shipping Price Adjustment listing?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185853840361?

You cannot charge buyers more for shipping after the sale has been made - regardless of how creatively you package up the extra charge.

hartungcards · ‎11-27-2023

You lost me at, " I never type rants or ratings of anything."

tobaccocardyahoo · ‎11-27-2023

Whenever I read the words "Seller Protection" in a forum post, I think of sellers who have no clue what has made Ebay an ecommerce also-ran.

Ebay's growth has been limited because in the early days of Ebay there was no buyer protection.

It has never been able to regain the loss of potential buyers which it has suffered.

Every CEO of Ebay since Meg Whitman has tried to improve its image, and large numbers of sellers have been enflamed by any effort to make Ebay a Buyer Friendly venue.

No amount of Advertsing can overcome the damage done many years ago. Ebay's handling of disputes has not made it possible to overcome the long-lasting image because many of its sellers have made it clear that they think any buyer with a dispute is a scammer. And after those sellers they attempt to find another marketplace, and discover none is more seller friendly than Ebay.

As for payment holds, there has been an increase each year in the absolute number of scamming sellers, and every marketplace and payment processor are hold more and more funds. And their support reps are limited in the information they have on security measures to make it harder for scammers to defeat these measures.

The worse things get, the more chances of the government doing what the marketplaces have not done.

chariot_badges · ‎11-27-2023

I kind of have no choice.

The product(s) that I sell are highly specialized and used. I don't know of any other platforms that would accept my inventory.

soh.maryl · ‎11-27-2023

And yet there are tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of sellers who are successfully selling and earning here year after year after year. Go figure.

bonjourami · ‎11-27-2023

Im sorry, but for only selling here for a year, you certainly have a lot of unhappy customers, in regards to your products and your shipping problems.

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“Never pick a fight with an ugly person. They don’t have anything to lose.” ~Robin Williams

monroe67 · ‎11-27-2023

"2. eBay is extremely greedy. The fees are already bad enough but they try to take every extra bit they can. When they take fees, it’s on the price+tax, which should be illegal at least."

I don't think I've seen such an original observation and complaint for awhile -- since maybe ten days or two weeks ago?

Surprise, "card", eBay's Final Value Fee (FVF) percentage is charged on the full amount paid by your buyer.
That usually includes at least the item price + sales tax + shipping charge. If you add a handling charge to your listings, that is added to the shipping charge that your buyer pays. AND if your buyer has the item sent to a state that charges sales tax on shipping charges, that buyer pays more in sales tax, meaning eBay keeps proportionately more in FVFs on those sales.

My selling ID, like many other sellers who post here regularly, takes the position that her buyers pay her eBay fees anyway.

As for what you think "should" be illegal -- eBay doesn't care. eBay complies with laws that apply to it and to online commerce in general. eBay's User Agreement has likely been reviewed by many lawyers and maybe amended and further re-reviewed to be in line with all the laws and regulations that apply to it.

femmefan1946 · ‎11-27-2023

Keyless fobs are highly specialized?

Most of the small sellers here sell "highly specialized" collectibles or similar goods where the customer has been looking for a while.

Have you looked at Bonanza or iCrater ? Or for that matter AutoTrader?

tobaccocardyahoo · ‎11-27-2023

@soh.maryl wrote:
And yet there are tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of sellers who are successfully selling and earning here year after year after year. Go figure.

Those sellers probably understand what is expected in customer service, and choose products to sell with enough profit to afford to provide excellent customer service.

Providing excellent customer service is easy if your products have adequate dollar margin.

Many online marketplace sellers are hanging on by a thread because any product they sell has lots of downward pressure on margins, and too much competition.

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-27-2023

Never not ever sell pre-sale items online as a third party seller, that's an instant formula for trouble. Yes, Amazon, Gamestop, this one that one do that but they are large retailers. eBay has fulfillment requirements for many reasons, if they were try make exceptions that'd be very difficult given volume of sellers and open to sellers who care scam and run. Additionally eBay has an external credit card processor and they have requirements as set down by the card franchises. I've had a merchant account, they allowed three business days on ANY order. Back then sold various video games and yes, pre-orders were available to us... Distributor doesn't care, the card processor however does care and we were not a corporation with retail locations or big brand name. Guaranteed 110% if we'd sold pre-sale games we'd lost our ability to process credit cards, no doubts about it.

Now even the likes of Best Buy or Gamestop etc. read the fine print in pre-orders, thats what HAS to be there in place all those legalities for the potential customer to be able get at. Gamestops phone rings off the hook when people pre-order and either a title is delayed or they simply don't have enough in a given store at the moment to fulfill those orders. That said, Gamestop doesn't have a public wall whereby consumers can express their upset gut nor are those upset gut metrics tracked by an entity that rules over them.

As to the fee's they are not unreasonable, again, when I'd the merchant account just like when you place any order online the fee's the card processor takes are on the total. When you but at Walmart the card processor fee's are based on the total, not just the product alone. Those fee's are about 2.5% nominal for Visa/MC and higher for Discover, Amex etc. So eBay at 13.5% is actually more like 11%

eBay once upon a time did not charge fee's for the shipping and due to sellers who then sell something for $5 and add $60 in shipping when actual shipping was say $10 creates problems. The sellers are trying to escape eBay's fee's and essentially leaving consumers going, "How did this cost $60 to ship" and can readily look up that in reality it cost $10.

As I've said many a time in posts, most of eBay rules and restrictions and prevention mechanisms exist due to sellers who try bamboozle the site or consumers.

I am sorry to hear of you're situation and hopefully you can get back to selling. In doing so I would strongly encourage you do no pre-sale items at all and that you take the time to understand and recognize that eBay has millions of sellers. The policies the company has exist to try best protect both consumers and sellers from transacting problems of which there are 100 times more of than both you're and my toes and fingers combined.

ed8108 · ‎11-27-2023

@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

It has never been able to regain the loss of potential buyers which it has suffered.

ebay needs to continue to gain potential buyers

I suppose that autopay is an example of how ebay helps to foster the belief that ebay is buyer friendly & also increase sales for it's sellers.

I suppose that's really why auto pay failed to be provided as a opt in for it's sellers & to buyers

Oh, Happy 2023 Holiday Sales

retro_entertainment_collectibles · ‎11-27-2023

@ed8108 wrote:
@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

It has never been able to regain the loss of potential buyers which it has suffered.

ebay needs to continue to gain potential buyers
I suppose that autopay is an example of how ebay helps to foster the belief that ebay is buyer friendly & also increase sales for it's sellers.

I suppose that's really why auto pay failed to be provided as a opt in for it's sellers & to buyers

Oh, Happy 2023 Holiday Sales

Gaining potential buyers when every retailer of any notability has now embraced the Internet leveraging low overhead and heaps of overstock, delisted and surplus inventories is quite the challenge. Online retailers are in many respects working to follow Walmarts lead and enormous online success. How that's done well... I've many many ideas but speaking to my PC screen doesn't convey them to the powers that be nor perhaps do they care listen as they've made short and long term plans as any corporation does.