Has Ebay Finally Shot Itself In the Foot?

[dadween]

... which probably explains why that post http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.js...=1212267983950 has now been pulled for "Violation of Board Policy".

Typical eBay reaction, try to sweep unwelcome (but sadly predictable) revelations that are a direct consequence of their misguided changes under the carpet.

How will their much-vaunted "Feedback Hub" (if it ever does come into being) cope, I wonder? I can't see them changing the habits of a lifetime and actually employing any more real people in Customer Services.

[SalusLibrorum]

I don't believe they have a Customer Services department at all, I think it's a Bot with a poor algorithm just doing random cut and pastes, and an automated telephone system that just links around in circles.

Has anyone actually managed to speak to a real person?

[starlady22]

I've just read this in one of the eBay groups, seems like ebay have created a new feedback industry

.................................
Listen very carefully. I am the winner of this item. I have 4 other eBay Users in place either bidding on or have won items from you plus myself totaling 5. We are prepared to leave you 5 Positive Feedbacks or 5 Negative Feedbacks depending on your actions. In a nutshell, we are in the business of selling Positive Feedbacks to eBay Sellers for $20 each, totaling $100 for 5 Positive Feedbacks. If you purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks for $100, you not only get to sell your items, you also receive 5 Positive Feedbacks. As you well know, Feedback is EVERYTHING to an eBay seller on whether they are successful or not. I’m sure that you want to remain successful in your eBay business. Plus, along with the 5 Positive Feedbacks, we will also Guarantee Never to contact you again and we take you off of our list. You’ll even get a receipt for your purchase. Now, here’s the important part. If you refuse to purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks, we will leave you 5 Negative Feedbacks for starters. We have 100’s & 100’s of eBay Users in place that we can use to leave feedbacks. In fact, we have enough to consistently leave you Negative Feedbacks for months resulting in you having to shut down your business. The absolute worst thing that you can do at this point is to try and contact eBay at any time about this or refuse to cooperate; we Will start leaving you Negative Feedbacks and shut your business down. Make no mistake, we’ve been doing this for years and have the power & resources to continually leave you Negative Feedbacks resulting in the closing of your business. Think about this, if you try to report us to eBay and they try and suspend our account or something like that, it will not stop us whatsoever. Remember, I said we have 100’s if not 1,000’s of eBay Users in place that we can use to leave you Negative Feedbacks over & over again until you are forced to shut your business down that you worked so hard to build up. Even if eBay were to keep suspending our user accounts, we have plenty more that we can use to keep leaving you Negative Feedbacks and there’s No way that eBay can keep up and stop us. They have tried & failed miserably. They also know about what we do. So the best and smartest thing that you can do is protect your business and just purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks from us. That way, it’s done and over with and you can successfully continue to run your business without ever hearing from us again. We will give you up to 72 hours from now, to reply. The sooner, the better of course. Just send us an email stating that you want to purchase the 5 Positive Feedbacks from us and let us know your main email that you use so we can contact you. If we don’t hear from you by the end of the 72 hours, we will assume that you are refusing to cooperate and we will start leaving you Negative Feedbacks. So don’t do anything stupid. The smartest thing that you can do is take this seriously, we know what we’re doing. After we hear your reply to this email, we will contact you with further instructions.

There are some wicked people out there. If someone did that to me although i would be gutted, there is no way i would pay up, Infact i think i would report it to the police, as that is blackmail, and i would report it to ebay.

Jane

[RockyWolf]

I did Hazel way way back when I refused to pay my bill at one time over a none paying bidder and a car deal of 4'000 pounds and they wouldn't left a finger to help my monthly bill to eBay was at that time over 1'000 a month so as you can see money talks I had a email from them with a contact number to phone I had a few words with a woman and 5 days later things had been sorted out and bad buyer removed after not paying for 3 other cars from other sellers you could see in his feedback that he had been making a habit of this..

[ukvideogamer]

That is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read!
No one is stupid enough to fall for that....surely not!

@ SalusLibrorum
Belive it or not, I used to be an eBay Platinum Powerseller just a couple of weeks ago. And because I was spending so much money of fees and whatever, they now give you a personal account manager (yes, a real person!)

The only problem is, they are pretty much useless anyway!

In my experience of eBay customer service over the past 6 years, it has been pretty dreadful. If you email them, all you get is a standard automated reply with irrelevant rubbish and you have to email them back a good 4-5times to get a relevant response. In the end customer service, (but mainly fees!) were why I closed my eBay account. The fee changes meant that we could no longer make any money on eBay, we sell media products, which ebay charge 9% in FVF + Paypal's 2.9%, thats 11.9% in toal of the selling price!

Don't mean to go on, but eBay has really lost it....
I think there are going to be a lot more eBid users over the next few months.

[SalusLibrorum]

I have the same problem, I'm in books, and the fees just about ensure making a loss, I used to sell mostly bulk lots on there because of that - and now with the feedback changes I can't even do that.

It was worse for me on the fees, no discounts, 20p +3.4% on Paypal, it just wasn't worth it.

[johnwash1]

I have to say though - Posting that information gives a 'blueprint' of how to do it!!

A blueprint of how to end up banned from mutinyBay at best, and go to jail at worst!

[nacp1]

Hey everyone,

The reason I found this site was I actually looked up 'better auction site'. We too are sick of the way E-bay treats its sellers. The problem is that it's still pretty good for the buyers. It'd be great if all the honest sellers left ebay and came over here, with the honest buyers trailing behind them. : - )

I tried signing up for that banner that goes out in your email, but I had a problem trying to sign up. Any suggestions?
Thanks. Carolyn

[johnwash1]

...
I tried signing up for that banner that goes out in your email, but I had a problem trying to sign up. Any suggestions?
Thanks. Carolyn

Hi Carolyn, can you give more info about the problem you had?

Meanwhile, something I spotted recently on eBay, made me chuckle:

[evingartrading]

This prescriptive price for posting items is all very well for " standard" items like CDs or books, but some of us sell "non standard" things. For example, I sell industrial power supplies that are very heavy, I can't see how anyone will be able to prescribe a price for those - especially as they are vulnerable items that need foam lined or double skinned boxes (etc..) - not cheap !

eBay gets more barmy by the day. The number of exemptions will have to be high if they don't want to end up with a very dull site with no unusual items. It was the fact that you could get almost anything on eBay, no matter how unusual, that attracted me to it in the first place - Now it looks like they driving all the small "quirky" sellers away and are trying to turn it into a virtual version the dullest kind small town shopping mall !