Has Ebay Finally Shot Itself In the Foot?

[gorgeousuk]

Ebay have got it wrong,
I disagree with earlier comment about Ebay's buyers protection from sellers. It works both ways don't you think? A buyer can't buy if they haven't got a seller to buy from!!!! Ebay have taken away all sellers rights and left them open to rogue and non paying buyers and negative feedback they can't even respond to! It's crazy.
Buyers now know they can leave whatever comments they like, even if it is blatently untrue and the seller loses their feedback score.(sounds really fair?)
I just got given a neutral & my score went down!Aparently for slow postage, Get this- The guy didn't pay for one week,then sent personal chq, all pro sellers will wait for clearance then send the item. I sent straight away from this and they still complained. (again fairness?)
I have loads of examples why sellers need protection too.
I have had 15/20 non payers - (is this fair buyers?)
I have had 8 neutrals through buyers sending personal chqs or wrong amounts & then complaining about time & payment shortage (is this fair?)
I have had about 50 timewasters emailing about doing deals.
All good sellers offer refunds and exchanges in their policies, buyers need to make sure they go to the right sellers and they will be fine,

Don't get me wrong, i like buying on ebay too,i don't expect my items the next day! But if sellers can't have clear policies that buyers don't respect and abide too, sellers will move on. They don't spend endless hours to serve the buyer for free, it has to be profitable too.

Buyers & sellers should stick together, why spoil a good formula
Most sellers are like me and are really helpful and care about their customers
Sorry for the rant, i had to get it off my chest!

[RockyWolf]

Ebay have got it wrong,
I disagree with earlier comment about Ebay's buyers protection from sellers. It works both ways don't you think? A buyer can't buy if they haven't got a
I have loads of examples why sellers need protection too.


Buyers & sellers should stick together, why spoil a good formula
Most sellers are like me and are really helpful and care about their customers
Sorry for the rant, i had to get it off my chest!

Sort your link out chap one to many http:// in there and I totally agree with what you are saying by the way

Dave

[rosiemac]

starlady22 regarding your post 492. I wish I had read it sooner. I got involved in feebay on the discussion regarding the changes to feedback. I took a lot of flak for my posts from, as you say the clique, and allowed myself to be drawn into an argument.

They (the clique) reported my posts which were a lot more subdued than the abuse levelled at me. Anyway they reported enough of them for feebay Community Team to send me a NOTICE PROCEDURAL WARNING. It basically means they're threating to suspend my account.

I also had a go at feebay (who hasn't) and suggested everyone stops listing until their hair-brained policy is changed, so perhaps that had more to do with it than those who reported my posts..Either way it's a madhouse over there at the minute, if it was on the streets the riot police in full battle dress would be out in force...I wish I had the guts to unregister and close down my account with feebay, I'm standing on the edge but just can't get the courage to jump. Perhaps if they suspend me they that may just do it. regards rosiemac

[Heruur]

"They (the clique) reported my posts which were a lot more subdued than the abuse levelled at me. Anyway they reported enough of them for feebay Community Team to send me a NOTICE PROCEDURAL WARNING. It basically means they're threating to suspend my account."

Been there done that got the tee shirt. Anything that even remotely could be bad PR for FEE-bay is reason to suspend.. Warning: this is a horror story...

If you're a power seller they'll even call you and threaten you saying that it is in violation of their Terms Of Service, and if you argue they'll talk like a broken record that we'll suspend your account, continue to argue and actually prove your point they go for the sweets...

Warning: this MAY push you over the edge...

"Sir, Continued violations of our TOS will result in loss of your power seller status and indefinite suspension of your ebay and paypal accounts... According to our records last year your gross sales were $XXX,XXX.XX please be advised that we are authorized to report sales in excess of $10,000 a year to the IRS. Please cease and desist these violations or we will cancel your account and pursue legal action against you."

My response to this was... As far as IRS goes I PAY MY G.D. TAXES, And I PAID YOUR G.D. PAYCHECK with the $3X,XXX.XX worth of FEES i wrote off last year! So SHUT UP AND STOP THREATENING ME! THIS IS NOT how to treat your customers!

Think I'm gonna be listing next week. Or ever again?

FAT CHANCE!

*CLICK*

So what did they do? Sent me a 10% off coupon about 10 minutes later.. stating....

"we are sorry about your recent bad experience on an eBay transaction, please use this coupon on any item on eBay from now till June 10 2008"

Nice, threaten to sue me AND sick the IRS on me- then expect a coupon that has a max value of $100 to keep me as loyal customer...
FAT CHANCE!

[bloss000]

My feedback % went down also, because of some neutral feedbacks. i was on 99.9% up until yesterday. At the moment i have nothing listed on there, and although i will have to keep listing on there for the moment, my hearts not in it anymore.
I don't write on the forums over there either, mostly because if your not part of the clique your either torn apart, or ignored.
I really hope ebid gets alot more people to come over from ebay, so that i can
list less there, and more here.

Jane

Like you I would love to come over here full time and although e*ay is slow, there is not enough happening here at the mo to give it up full time. I have cut my listings right down though and I seriously considering giving up my shop there as it isn't viable anymore.

I agree with 'your heart' - I feel like tha and find it really hard to get motivated to list anything! I guess that won't help my sales though!??

With all the new changes hopefully sellers will continue listing here instead!

[stampsulove]

ROFL! Stampsulove, what a superb cartoon. Did you draw it, or where did you find it??

Glad You liked It, Partly Drawn and Partly clipart from two large online clipart librarys, Retired 2 weeks ago so thought I would see if I could still remember some of the things I learnt from my days as a graphic artist way back when we used to use Amiga,s and Lightwave.( god that was a long time ago) LOL

[calnorthern]

Hi..am recent member of eBid having almost timed out with eBay. I agree with Gorgeousuk and there is more I know. I have experienced some 6 years of fairly strong business using eBay/Paypal. When selling/buying goes wrong, eBay (and certainly Paypal) via Customer Help appears to provide a minimal response and is often evasive. Provision of lengthy weak advice, generally placing onus on complainant to solve. The statements that appear in their unmaintained policies plastered on their website seem positively supportive. In the event they are not much use. eBay give little in my view and simply avoid issues whenever they can. It is business process failure, if indeed processes exist? The UK Turbolister failure (shipping) last week is an example of recent process failure. eBay failed to respond properly to concerns voiced about it on their bulletin boards. Email response from Customer Help was outside their 48 hour limit and largely incorrect. Maybe that needs changing to 72 hours.

Its certainly business incompetence at first sight, but behind that it has to be a carefully managed method of mass money gathering for minimal effort.

Feedback (FB) changes...eBay changes much and often, why not that also? Like much of eBay its a system that appears to be difficult to administer. View their explanation and ask yourself if you or a body you know could do it, I mean properly. Their evasive performance in the past and lack of site wide management tells me that this latest idea will not adequately fix the original problem.

I don't have a solution for FB, other than don't use complicated systems incorporating poor resources to do it. If you purchase/sell using Distance Selling of any kind you are at risk of loosing your money/goods. This FB thing can only guide you to a decision and you are soley responsible for that decison. Using their FB data...I wonder? Government legislation and eBay nonsense will not guarantee that the outcome is good. Government departments do little about such problems, so why should eBay...or anybody? Would you take eBay to court for 100 bucks or so, and do they know something about that?

I have complained to eBay many times about their system and some of their Customers. No doubt some have complained about me. Most of it though to little effect. I do object to an organisation such as eBay enforcing rules as they and their close supporters think fit. Answer to that is leave them, go elsewhere and if you are a seller get your own selling website going.

[starlady22]

Hi
I would love to have my own website, but firstly i have no clue as to how to get one, or set it up. I only found out what a domain meant today, and it still doesn't make much sense to me :-). Also i wouldn't want to pay out a fortune for one.
Also i sell all different items, and mostly only 1 of each item, and once that's sold i probably won't get the same again, so it would mean that everytime something sold i would have to delete that listing, and list something totally different. Is it possible to have a website, that i can list just one of something, and keep changing things, because i have no idea.

Jane

[kengillam]

Setting up a website is not that difficult, just learn some basic HTML and go from there. Getting a domain name and hosting is also relatively inexpensive, the difficult part is getting visitors to your website.

[johnwash1]

Hi
I would love to have my own website, but firstly i have no clue as to how to get one, or set it up. I only found out what a domain meant today, and it still doesn't make much sense to me :-). Also i wouldn't want to pay out a fortune for one.
Also i sell all different items, and mostly only 1 of each item, and once that's sold i probably won't get the same again, so it would mean that everytime something sold i would have to delete that listing, and list something totally different. Is it possible to have a website, that i can list just one of something, and keep changing things, because i have no idea.

Jane

For incredible value I would recommend nearlyfreespeech.net -- instead of x quid a month it's the only hosting I know of that's pay-as-you-go, which may mean a month's charges are one cent or less! If you're very high traffic (you should be so lucky!) it's not such good value, but it's not a problem to move away. And the beauty of it is that if you get a huge spike of traffic (e.g. you get slashdotted or other massive publicity) you only risk the few dollars that you've prepaid (whereas a traditional hosting company will hold you to ransom).

The catch is that it's a service for people who really know what they're doing. You need to find a local friend who can help you.

However, all that said, why do you actually want a website, rather than listing things on eBid? What will it gain you?