eBay rant as a seller

[cybermaus]

I feel safer using Paypal then using credit cards. At least with Paypal I left my details only at in one place, if you leave it in dozens of seperate shops, even if all of them are of good trustworthy intend, statistic risk of one being hacked is a too large.

Well, they share your financial data with literally hundreds of companies. Check their "you have no right to privacy" privacy statement. It is an impressive list.

No, I think that's where you are incorrect. They share my commercial data with hundreds of companies, no doubt. Irritating enough. But I am pretty sure they do not share my financial data. Its an important distinction.

[Corporate666]

I think ebay have started thinking of themselves as a competitor to Amazon and want their sellers to fall in line, I'm not sure they really want to keep the occasional private sellers. Nor am I sure they want to retain small volume niche businesses either.

But if want to sell tech stuff ebay is pretty much the only game in town, certainly in the UK. If I search "oscilloscope" I get 1,206 hits and if I look at just the 965 "Electrical & Test Equipment" hits almost all are actually oscilloscopes or directly relevant (there are a few probes and the odd tek plugin).

...

Oh and if you think ebay is expensive take a look at bricks and mortar auction houses. 20% buyers premium and 20% VAT are not uncommon in the UK. It's true that the seller gets the amount at which the hammer fell and its more transparent that the buyer is paying the fees but the bids will be accordingly lower.

I believe eBay has been trying to be an Amazon.com competitor for quite some time... I don't think they care about the little guys at all - they are basically a clearing house for crap.  They don't really want to be giving out Top Rated 20% discounts, nor do they want to deal with anything other than huge sellers, unless those sellers are totally trouble free.  For the very large sellers, the rates and rules are negotiated on a case-by-case basis... so things like Top Rated and final value fees and the number of negatives you are allowed are all negotiated between eBay and the seller.

But as for the price - I think eBay is quite expensive.  I was approached about 7 or 8 years ago by Amazon who wanted to stock our products (not "Fulfilled by Amazon" but they wanted to warehouse it as part of their normal catalog).  They wanted 20%.  And they handled the returns, fulfillment, billing, advertising, everything.  I just shipped a pallet of stuff and faxed an invoice.  eBay is around 15% if you include all the fees, but I have to do all the work - all they provide is the venue to sell within, but I do all the support, fulfillment, handle warranties/complaints, etc. 

Ultimately, I hope eBay fails.  Their sole saving grace is that they are the biggest market... but that can change quickly (MySpace -> Facebook).

[Corporate666]

No, I think that's where you are incorrect. They share my commercial data with hundreds of companies, no doubt. Irritating enough. But I am pretty sure they do not share my financial data. Its an important distinction.

PayPal protection isn't near as good as CC protection.  And truthfully, consumers worry too much about their financial data being stolen - at least for your credit card, it is the vendor accepting your card that is taking all the risk in the transaction.  If the card winds up being stolen, the money is taking back from the vendor's bank account. 

The best of both worlds is to use American Express to make payments through PayPal.  Then you can dispute with PayPal, and if you get no satisfaction, dispute the charge with Amex.  Double protection, and Amex is the best in the world at looking out for the consumer

[all_repair]

Well, If you would ask me to document a faulty unit with a video I would at least be annoyed.

That's fair enough, and that's why I asked also for at least a description of the problem besides it being "faulty".

In any case, after a few message exchanges I finally got the buyer to describe the problem for me and it's actually a non-issue. The buyer thought the random reading on the meter (I presume it's set on the voltage range) was a fault when it is not connected to anything. I have now told him/her to try shorting the probes and see if a stable zero reading can be achieved. I even took a short video and uploaded to Youtube (as a private video) to demonstrate that it's normal behaviour. The buyer did indicate he/she would be willing to retract the feedback if it was proven incorrect so there is still hope. Fingers crossed...

Bravo Franky,

for the follow up, showing commitment to customer satisfaction and not just ignoring an apparent newcomer to the hobby. 

Send this user a one time discount coupon for use in the next 30 days and you will not only get another order but probably have gained a customer for life. Take the opportunity to capitalize on the situation you just turned around. 

Look me a long time to realize what I should be offering at the end of the day to the clients is "happiness".  But I am only allowed to do that if I have trust from them, and I am providing value to them.
?? ?? ??

[steve30]

I'm glad the Franky problem got sorted. I think Franky was being reasonable, but I do feel that some customers might find it a bit much being asked for a video. Many people won't have the equipment, software, upload speed or storage space for videos. Although I have reasonable quality equipment now, I would still struggle to get a video uploaded somewhere.

Regarding ebay, I got an insignificant negative feedback some years ago. It lowered my percentage to 99%, but a year or two later, they changed the rule so that older negative feedback won't affect your percentage. Now my percentage is back at 100%.

[iloveelectronics]

Just a quick follow-up in case anyone cares...

I took a video demonstrating that the DMM showing random floating voltages being normal. Buyer claimed his didn't behave the same. A new, fully tested, replacement unit was sent to the buyer. He acknowledged receipt, but still said he didn't understand why the meter would show random voltages when not connected. I took another video showing him even a $200+ Brymen DMM does the same thing. He stopped responding to my messages and feedback revision requests after that

I then called eBay and asked if it was possible to have the negative feedback removed. They reviewed the case but declined

So that's how my feedback virginity was broken...sigh.

[Lightages]

Your kindness to offer better deals here on the forums is hurting you in the end Franky. We cannt give feedback on ebay and so the ratio of idiots is higher for you ebay sales and you receive less positive feedback on ebay for your sales in total.

[station240]

Yeah, the "it doesn't work" people, I hate them. Got to wonder how they get on with others we they cannot describe what they want.
What's is really daft is ebay actually put a word limit on ebay messages, so you have to send 2 messages if the problem is complicated.

I had an item arrive from and ebay UK seller with minor damage, which I knew I could fix. Not only did I only ask for 1/3rd the money back, I also described the damage and how to protect his stuff so it would survive. I didn't go stupid because he wasn't contactable over the xmas/new years break, and send him 10,000 messages either.

Yeah ebay, expensive hole in the internet to throw money into.

I always read seller feedback, as it gives me an idea of what products have "issues".

I found two sellers with more or less the same product for sale, with the same % of negative feedback
1. Lots of complaints about the items being the wrong type, broken, badly packaged etc. I gave up and kept looking
2. Lots of complaints about the postage being slow, with the seller clearly stating the company delivering his stuff was the cause. The listings also say to allow 3-5 days, yes some buyers going  I needed it yesterday.
Yeah I'm going with #2, turns out his stuff is cheaper to boot

[justanothercanuck]

My biggest gripe with ebay is their limits for new accounts.  Apparently I can only sell one single-quantity electronic item at a time.   

[humgar]

No one reading that negative feedback would hold it against you.

I don't even bother reading feedback, it's pointless.

Not always. It's useful to take a look at what's the problem (through the negative feedback's comments) if the feedback score is <97%. Sometimes it's just one bad feedback left by inexperienced buyers (they don't know the etiquette: sometimes I see good comments on neutral feedback, wtf) and I'll promptly ignore that. If I see >5 negative feedback complaining about justifiably inaccurate description or much delayed shipping, it sets a red flag. If they just complain their auctions getting canceled, it's no big deal.

As you might have noticed that feedback cheating is rampant among Chinese eBay sellers, so even with 99% positive feedback, I scan for the text of negative feedback to see if they are >5 material accusations, because there's no way flooding it with fake positive reviews can get rid of the negatives. For me, it screens out very late shippers and those who ship junk. I bought a set of ESD brushes from 19babydeals on eBay and it never arrived, they claimed they've shipped it and beg me for another chance for them to reship. The 2nd try didn't arrive, it has already dragged for half a year that eBay thought the transaction was closed and it wasn't on the system (aka I missed the filing deadline), and then I checked their feedback and I see similar comments about labels generated by not shipped (that's my situation). Now I make it a habit to read through the negative comments if it's worse than 99.5% positive for a Chinese seller.

[GopherT]

No one reading that negative feedback would hold it against you.

I don't even bother reading feedback, it's pointless.

Not always. It's useful to take a look at what's the problem (through the negative feedback's comments) if the feedback score is <97%. Sometimes it's just one bad feedback left by inexperienced buyers (they don't know the etiquette: sometimes I see good comments on neutral feedback, wtf) and I'll promptly ignore that. If I see >5 negative feedback complaining about justifiably inaccurate description or much delayed shipping, it sets a red flag. If they just complain their auctions getting canceled, it's no big deal.

As you might have noticed that feedback cheating is rampant among Chinese eBay sellers, so even with 99% positive feedback, I scan for the text of negative feedback to see if they are >5 material accusations, because there's no way flooding it with fake positive reviews can get rid of the negatives. For me, it screens out very late shippers and those who ship junk. I bought a set of ESD brushes from 19babydeals on eBay and it never arrived, they claimed they've shipped it and beg me for another chance for them to reship. The 2nd try didn't arrive, it has already dragged for half a year that eBay thought the transaction was closed and it wasn't on the system (aka I missed the filing deadline), and then I checked their feedback and I see similar comments about labels generated by not shipped (that's my situation). Now I make it a habit to read through the negative comments if it's worse than 99.5% positive for a Chinese seller.

Why did you dig up a 5-year-old thread to comment on an old eBay issue?

[humgar]

Came across it through Google. That was my recent experience though. Sorry for necrobumping the thread. The stuff mentioned in this thread still apply after 5 years.

Here's an example where I wish I had read the seller's eBay feedbacks first:
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=19babydeals&iid=-1&de=off&items=25&searchInterval=30&which=negative&interval=30&_trkparms=negative_30

Now I am one of the victims as well.