Karaoke Forums

Yeah, one of the worst things I've noticed about Ebay (and I've sent them complaints about this), is if you are a seller selling something like a computer with 'Buy It Now' you have tons of fraudulent people coming in with newly created Id's and 0 ratings. They usually purchase it at full price. A few days later you see a notice by their Userid that says something like 'Account Suspended', or 'Not an active account'.  I haven't looked in a while but I'm pretty sure if you do a search for a notebook such as an IBM Thinkpad, or Acer, etc almost all the Buy It Now's are already purchased like this. Many with the same Userid. It's infuriating as a seller.

Bill,  aren't you allowed (when stated in description) to NOT sell to buyers with no established history ?  Many sellers I (at least used to read descriptions on) stated..

"Buyers with no prior history or less than 20 transactions please don't bid, I apologise for this but unfortuneately the dishonesty of a few has made my implement such a policy, I've been burnt by Ghost bids"

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

No word from the guy yet today. I gave him lots of install and setup instructions last night. I know there is nothing wrong with that drive! It's only a few months old. Reason I bought it was because I wanted to back it up my harddrive before sending my Gateway computer to the manufacturer to have the screen replaced. Figured the safest way was to back up another another drive - although I do have an image file copy on my desktop as well. I bought a similar drive, only slight faster rotation speed for quicker access.

I think I am going to bluff about the serial number so that he thinks I have it. I don't mind getting my own drive back as long as he pays return shipping (which should be standard), and I don't have to repay original shipping. But I've had people complain about that. Only folks that I've seen pay return shipping is usually larger corporations such as Gateway, or Maxtor, etc.  That PayPal Buyers Protection can really be a problem though as mentioned. There really is not much protection for sellers anymore, especially for the little guys.

I only have about 100 old pc parts I need to sell. Can you believe this happens on the first one I put on the market?!  :banghead:

I haven't sold very many PC parts on ebay. My experience has been good. I might just have gotten lucky.

Bill, can you PM me? We need some parts here and I would like to know your user name so I can see if you are selling items we need.

You can, but it doesn't keep them from bidding. Almost seems some of these bids are made my 'bots' designed to go in and bid. You used to be able to go in and remove people that aren't 'qualified', and then block them. You can create an 'approved only' type auction where people have to first get approval from you to bid, but any restrictions reduce your chance of bidding if people feel hassled.  You can also put limits like no one with negative feedback, or that is bidding on more than 'X' number of your auctions. However you can't block bidders with 0 rating or that are new. That was my complaint to Ebay. While they feel it is too prejudicial and hurts their commerce to be able to screen out 0 rated newbies - it is also where almost all the fraud occurs. I think it is unreasonable that they don't give sellers that ability. It should be up to the seller to decide their criteria and Ebay should just enable / empower them to trade the way they want. I'm sure there would be those - so equipped - that would deal with the 0 rated newbies so they aren't completely left out. IMO 0 rated newbies on Ebay should have to prove themselves with a track record before being allowed to freely bid as the rest - kind of a probationary period. But Ebay doesn't seem to care. They will though when they lose all their sellers by overprotecting buyers.

Bill

Bill,


   Was this always the case ?    Or are you saying that there's no means of autoblocking them such as in the case of Dutch auction bids, Sniping, etc ?  Although I've seen that done in the past too. Yet it must be observation of seller, no means of auto eliminating.   I recall years back sellers just didn't acknowledge buyers that didn't qualify, closest bid to highest bidder they had the option of selling to in such a case, or relisting item,  of course not certain how this would affect payout to ebay.  Has this changed now ?

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Jeff has much more experience buying and selling on Ebay than me. He can probably give the best advice. Alternatively search through Ebay's online help. I'll try and answer though. Basically there is no auto way of blocking this type of bidder currently. If they have a previous bad record, or are bidding on more than one of your auctions at the same time you can do auto then. Most buyers do snipe and it is a good method.  Any time you try and disqualify the actual winner of an auction you risk issues. For instance the bidder that came in second might not be interested anymore. I think you also have to prove to Ebay you have a valid reason for disqualifying the winning bidder. You can relist one time without paying new fees if the item didn't sell.  If it sold and you have a non-paying bidder then you can also relist, but you have to go through a bit of administrative hassle before that can occur. You always risk receiving neg feedback by morons that are just trying to make your life difficult and they are out there.

Probably the vast majority of Ebayers are good and in the past I've had no problems. Seems it is only in the last few years it is becoming more difficult. I hear this from other people too.

That was always a huge problem when I was a volunteer in the community feedback room.   "Feedback" hostage  holding.  90 day 11th hour sabotages, neutral begets negative, etc..  The politics were disgusting.   Sort've reminded me of singer's showcase... Everyone wanted 100% postive feedback even the sellers and buyers with 1K+ transactions.  Now while ALL will agree that's a great goal to aspire to.  What is the likelihood in reality of a "store" having 1000 sales, and all 1000 customers are giving the owner

" A+++++++++++ seller, this seller rules" !!! ?

The type of greed we saw come into the feedback room, EVEN if the next transaction got the seller one less "+" after the A by the buyer, or only 10 of those "+'s rather than the 11 like the prior time, the seller would see

BUYER: A++++++++ seller

and end up retorting with

SELLER: "Unreasonable buyer,  I tried everything to please this person, he never communicated with me there was a problem.  It was unfair to hold those extra
pluses after my "A" without trying to work this out first... Stay away from this person, Buyer made no attempt to resolve issue in civil manner prior to trashing me"

NEGATIVE

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

While most of my experiences so far have been favorable, there are a couple that really left me with my initial reluctance in venturing into the Ebay abyss.
I bought a disc pak from one seller. I got it for 6.50 plus his flat 7.99 shipping.
Of course I have to pay immediately, while he takes three days just to get it to the post office. Five days into transaction, he sends me an email requesting feedback. I replied, that I would consider it, once I had received my item, but not until then, that it should in fact be him who should be leaving feedback, since I had paid immediately after the bids had closed. Well ten working days later, I finally get my pack, intact as promised. But what amused me, was that he mailed the cheapest way possible, in fact most of the delay was that he hadn't paid enough on his end and owed additional postage. He denied this, but of course I had the package in hand as proof, with the additional postage due written on it. What a cheap SOB. Charges 7.99, mails it out for a 1.49 and pockets the rest...  
I did finally leave him a review, positive of course to avoid the obvious crapage, but sent him an email, thanking him for his services, but the fact that I would no longer consider him even remotely for future use.  
Now on the other hand, the one guy I use on a very regular basis, Todhill, mails out priority from Idaho and I get it in 2 days, 3 days tops. The other vendor lives in Ohio and it took ten working days!!!!!!!!!!
You learn real quick who to deal with and who to stay away from.  
I purchased a cd storage box from one company, and when I got it, the item was so cheaply constructed, that it was questionable whether I could actually use it or not.
I wrote them back, saying that there was no way in good faith I could leave a positive review, and I requested that they also not leave a review on my account, because I did not want anyone to see that I was stupid enough to have purchased from them. Of course I never heard back from them at all, no 'how can we make the transaction right' basically, it was we got your money, you got the crap we sell, tough sh*t goodbye.  
But like I said, you learn real quick.
James
Maninblack

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I serve no man and am loyal to only one God.

Being critical of a person's success in any respect speaks volumes about the lack of your own.

Love as though you've never been hurt, Dance as though no one's watching, Sing as though God Himself were listening.

I've only had two neg feedbacks, and those weren't by a 0 nubie, but they were done by a fairly new guy. He didn't read my auction that I was ONLY taking paypal, and he wanted to write me a check. I just didn't have the time to cash it, hope it cleared, and try to hassle him if it DIDn't cash.

Anyway, he demanded to make the auction a good one, and wanted to send me a check. I finally said I'd take a United States Postal Money Order, but NO checks, unless he got a CASHIERS check. He said he didn't have time. Well, during all of this, he got TWO neg feedbacks in one day from two seperate people.

SO I told him, "LOOK, let's just end this... I'll eat the fee for the bad auction. You didn't read the auction, and I will NOT accept checks, and you've just now gotten two more negs."

So he goes and sabotages me, and gives me my first two negs. I tried the dispute with Ebay, and they gave up after awhile, and kept asking me to retract MY feedback first (cause I slammed him for what he did to me). I finally said yes, and by that point, another person had complained about him... so they withdrew him as a buyer!

AND I've had a couple people still ask about it from time to time on there.

I've bought a lot of things on Ebay. Only thing that burnt me was literally buying burns! !

Just completed a couple of auctions on getting some Plextor external and internal burners.  A couple of games too that were impossible to find!

Didn't ebay at one point (perhaps they still do) have a system where feedback could under certain conditions be retracted if the negative is premature, (or, as a few of these rocket scientists claimed.. "I accidently hit the wrong button") however to mediate, ebay, or some ebay org charged a fee of 20 dollars?   I vaguely recall something like that about 3-4 years back.  Either it just cost 20 dollars if both parties agreed to this, or it had to go thru some small appeal ?   Just seemed to me this was doable assuming ebay had a means of generating money from this process.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

You have I believe 30 days (maybe 45?) to agree to retract feedback.  That is with no cost to anyone. You just have to go into their "help" and find the "form" to fill out for mutual feedback withdrawl. If you miss the deadline and that sometimes happens while you're waiting for your junk or while you're trying to get it all done then you have the option of going through ebay's system which costs I believe now $25 (It used to cost I believe $15) Negatives suck. I had someone leave me a negative without so much as an email and said the item I sent was beat up (It wasn't) I emailed him asked him why he didn't email first (gave him negative saying "no email, left negative, sent him two more of the same" which I did under the guidelines that he retract the feedback. He never did, the little jerk.  Sometimes you don't have a reason, you just get nailed by psychos and there are plenty of them on ebay (believe me). It's been a while so I'm probably due for my next moron to come by soon.  

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Who loves ya baby?

Being from a rural background and literally growing up with auctions might have given me an advantage. I adapted very quick to ebay, have never had a serious problem  and have this feedback record I always bought cds that were guaranteed sealed. And alot from companys like Doowop.

I do sometimes think the karaoke gods were smiling on me because some of it is luck.....

I look for this when I'm checking feedback. If I'm about to bid on an item but I see the seller has negative feedback, I look to see who left it and why. I will then look at that person's feedback (left and received) to see if they have a history of "not playing fair". You can almost always tell whether the person you're buying from has received unfair feedback. There are also times where I will take a chance if it looks like the seller has had some problem that they seem to have fixed in handling their ebay business such as a lot of negative feedback over time but in the last few months very good feedback.

Yeah, he wound up with three of the item instead of one and I wound up keeping the negative anyway. Peeps on ebay sometimes just don't care. I saw someone fry their account by going around and leaving negatives for everyone he had dealt with (almost 30 people) because he was issued two negatives for not paying. He burned all his bridges on his account but also hurt alot of good accounts. All of his comments he left on those negatives bordered on slander.  :shock:

EBay is sometimes a freak show.

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Who loves ya baby?

That must've been a change made over the past few years Jeff.  That was never an option when I was active on ebay.  Once left, it was final.  Unless you paid and went thru ebay. I was trying to push something like that for the first 3 days even....I brought up,  "How about 36 hours even, free" ?? I like that change however.  That was in fact the type of thing we were trying to get ebay to implement in the feedback community room.  While I believe you had a time-period to make possible changes assuming it was mediated by a third party, it wasn't a free modification.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

They don't make it well known and in fact you have to go into search help to find it. It's under mutual feedback removal or will link into this. This is always the best method. Try to work something out and get it removed. I will never leave feedback first anymore. It leaves you wide open to what amounts to extortion. I remember when I had 100% positive feedback I used to get people that would threaten to ruin it. They would send whatever they wanted for postage and say you should be able to ship it for this. That was not the auction guidelines. One of the best things that happened was when an idiot left me negative feedback. Of course he emailed asking for feedback first and I left it and then he left me negative saying he never received it. Obviously that was untrue or he would have said so in the email. I would have gladly given him back his money instead of getting the negative as it was very important to me at the time. I even offered him $10 in cash to remove it if I paid the fees. He said to send him the cash first and I could not allow myself to be that stupid. (and his feedback stunk). Now I have three negatives, none deserved, but maintain 99.9 positive feedback with over 6,000 positives. Oh well.

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Who loves ya baby?

If you ask me that's a Da mn good record Jeff for that many transactions. I don't know how you keep up with all of that. I have trouble with just one at a time it seems.

Also, on that mutual feedback withdrawal doesn't it make it a neutral feedback and leave a message under the feedback that says 'Feedback mutually withdrawn'?

No the comments stay but the rating disappears. What happnened to tennis today homeboy?

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Who loves ya baby?

That's amazing Jeff,  If I were a seller I'd likely have three positives, two negs, and than "No longer a registered User"  LMAO

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".