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John Biggs
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September 8, 2006
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My slim-to-nil experience with e-bay has also been poor but not painful, but I must ask: What’s the significance of the picture accompanying the ebay rant?
I used to think ebay was the only safe haven to pawn stuff. Although now that I think about it I get less and less emails from Craigslist postings asking me to send things to an orphanage in Africa….
In ebay’s defense I was able to get the evdo router I needed and it was brand new and exactly what was described.
The thing I like about ebay is that it has alot of stuff I cant find anywhere else. Although I do agree with you its getting harder and harder to sell there, I still enjoy buying from ebay.
I never buy electronic stuff on eBay. The price difference isn’t worth it. I prefer buying from a retail store where I’m sure that dealing with warranty won’t be a pain.
I once purchased a mail order bride and a used kidney for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, due to some confusion caused by a little language barrier, the kidney was actually in the bride. It didn’t end well for anyone.
I have bought and sold on eBay plenty and never had any problems. Guess it just depends on who you are what you are selling. Naked.
As a Canadian, I often bid on stuff that says “ship to US only” (only if they don’t ask for a PayPal verified US address - my PP address is in Canada). If I win, I give the seller a choice - a US address of a friend, or my Canadian address.
I’ve never has a seller refuse my Canadian address.
Interesting. I’ve sold stuff on eBay off and on for years, but my first Craigslist attempt was less than satisfying (http://tinyurl.com/nj4kp).
I have had some great experiences buying and selling on ebay and I am now a power user. I make sure to state in my auction who can and can not bid. I also make use of CANCELING BIDS of people who dont follow my guidelines. Just as in any auction house the auctioneer needs to make sure the bidders are on the up and up….
Happy Bidding
eBay is becoming a scam haven. My pops was looking at eBay Motors for a car. There were 3 auctions that he didn’t win but he got 3 emails that “resembled” eBay second chance emails but they weren’t! Thank God he wasn’t easily fooled.
Also, I have known friends and family who have sold rare games on eBay and the buyers said they never received it so eBay refunded them! Now sellers have to demand that people pay for insurance and certified delivery.
My brother has had some problems with ebay buying 360 games but I guess I just take the time to read the feedback and hardly ever buy from sellers with less than 20 feedbacks.
On a side note…John looks like the boys at Giz are still utilizing some of your pieces.
Uh, you could just set your preferences to not sell to people outside the US… easily done…
I am an eBay employee, and there are several ways to mediate any problems you may have buying or selling - visit our help site @ http://pages.ebay.com/help/index.html
You can go into your account settings on ebay and change it so you will not allow bidders in countries you do not ship to. Some still get by, but if they do, you can request a credit of your seller fees. Ebay’s fees are outrageous, but you will get your money back when it’s not your fault.
I think there is some merit to what he is saying. I tried to buy a CPU from someone with a good rating, power seller, and ebay verified. Needless to say, the person evaporated, had sent me a CPU where one of the bypass capacitors was blown off, and I was out my money. Enter in hassle of buyer protection. I recouped 80 out of 120 bucks. Great. Point being, this is the second time I have been burned on ebay in 3 months. I started ebay in 2001. I know how to buy things and what to look for.
Craigslist and other sites have the same issues, of course.
I was selling a car, and got two of the “I’m representing a client who wants you to ship it somewhere” scams. For a 1974 Super Beetle.
Yeah, there’s so many places that don’t have VWs on sale.
I set my preferences to not allow bidders from outside the US. It didn’t help. The jerk from Africa that won the auction for my Mac laptop used an account that said it was created in the US. He then wanted me to ship the laptop to his ‘traveling son in Nigeria’. I also had a potential bidder send me a phish email that would have tricked me into divulging my eBay user/password if I wouldn’t have noticed the URL in the address bar wasn’t really ebay.com. After emailing eBay’s support back and forth I gave up on the idea of trying to sell anything as expensive as a laptop using eBay. Sellers are not protected that well, it seems.
I had a similar experience selling some laptops. It took 4 auctions to get a real bid. The rest were in Nigeria. It is so stupid, they offer you $2500 for a broken laptop.
ebay isn’t perfect, but if you are buying, pay with paypal. if anything goes wrong you can get your money back, it’s a seller’s nightmare because they always side with the buyer. so if you are a buyer…
I’ve only HEARD about scams from people using Ebay - personally
I’ve yet to come across one myself, then again - I believe in using common sense.
If it’s too good to be true - it usually is.
So far I’ve bought over 50 items on Ebay….the only problem I’ve had
is with one seller that sent me a different “looking” item than what was
pictured, it was useable but not great, then again - all the 49 other
purchases saved me over 90 % i electronics in My country….
…so people’s experiences may vary greatly obviously.
And I guess some countries are known to be more honest to
deal with than others.
Personally I get a bit “offended” when someone from USA don’t
want to sell outside of USA - especially as we Danish people
are world renown for our honesty, but I can understand about
nigeria …we get countless spam letters from that country…and
the government is a “rogue” one….
…there’s a difference you know!
Most USA people have allowed sales to me when I’ve written
politely to them though, and they’ve never had any trouble from
me (or the ones I know from my country).
Honesty is a matter of PRIDE!
I’ve had scammers “buy” my auctions before as well. I sent a complaint to eBay and the seller fees were rebated quickly.
I just wish eBay would allow me to restrict auctions to people with certain levels of positive feedback. (like +10 or +25, instead of this >= 0 crap)
I’ve done a lot of eBay buying and selling (esp. coins and precious metals); one would think that’s an arena fraught with trouble. But I’ve had VERY few problems.
Some simple rules: use paypal, which verifies buyers and guarantees exchanges, insiure your shipments (it’s not expensive),
and.. duh! - read the feedback about the people you’re doing business with.
-Mark Ship only to US
-Block negative feedback bidders
-Manually cancel bids from foreign bidders that leak through
-If they end up buying it, request a refund through ebay
Ebay is much more business oriented now, hence the strict policies nowadays. Learn the rules ;)
By the way, don’t be offended when US sellers block non-US buyers. Paypal only offers seller protection to buyers from US, Canada, and UK. And mentioned above, Paypal usually always sides with the buyer in disputes. Sellers usually get screwed in the end.
“I just wish eBay would allow me to restrict auctions to people with certain levels of positive feedback. (like +10 or +25, instead of this >= 0 crap)”
That wouldn’t do any good. I don’t know if they’re still allowed to do it, but scammers would set up penny sales for .txt documents or similar and use it to generate positive feedback. At one time, you could buy 300 positive feedbacks for like $5.
And of course there’s always compromised accounts.
I believe Ebay, should have the accounts checked and should not allow nigerians or other time-wasters.
I bought a Shaver from UK I’ve been waiting for it for 8 weeks and the guy keeps saying its taking long cos of customs. Bullshit.
I looked up us his IP/whois/cmd/ and hacked into his pc, Hes a Muslim Arab living in Uk, TARNISHING THE GOOD MERCANTILE NAME of My English Brothers!
If my shaver shall not turn up within 2 weeks (whihc would be 10 weeks) than his CPU shall Blow up(overclock his little 2Ghz celeron to 5Ghz lets see some fireworks) & motherboard (a little program i have) Short out.
My $10 cost him $300, That’ll leave a nasty bruise on his little balls, nevertheless he had Good Feedback. EBAY should Check !
I also belive that to have a good service, adverts should be added and $1 or 30cents should go to Ebay for each Purchase! So that moderators can be employed to check accounts, email them and send them ID card, Credit cards ect for PROTECTION.
And if you get to a certain level, one would not need to pay the misrable $1.
Lets say 1 million products are sold everyday. Thats $1 million a day, without hassling anyone (whats $1 …).
I’m from Malta, I’ve been trying to find a Audiovox from Ebay.Com for ages, nobody ships because of these Bastards Scamming . This is not the Ebay I knew .. We should Reconsider giving these ignorent 3rd world people computers, they will use it to scam, as they are doing in Nigeria with normal desktops (THEY HAVE SCAM BUISNESSES THERE..with a house full of computers).
No to Scam! The scammers are ruining the great buisiness experience I’ve had with them in the past.
(Even South Koreans are Great to deal with, I’ve had an OS flaw with my Unbranded Mp4 , they wanted me to send it back and give me a new one, but I hesitated because I loved it so much, the OS was bugging, but I couldn’t let go of it! I also got an Sd Card for peanuts, unbranded aswell, but its working well!)
Ebay Wake Up, these african scammers should not be tolerated!
wow, such a lot of burned e-bayers. for me it has been nothing but good experiences. i don´t live in the usa, i am from mexico and i have bought losts of electronics,and hell of a lot of stuff. i had passed by 3 accounts now. i was there from the start and i must say that even if there are a lot of bad seeds, it is easy to identificate the bad seeds and that if you are the seller you have all the power… is easier to get shafted as buyer that as a seller, you really only have to know ebay very well to make sure that a seller you always be in the upper ground.
Why hate on Canada? We’re like youre little cooler brother who gets the hotter chicks!
Dick
I have had a number of out-of-US bidders win my auction, and since my auction specifically states I will not ship outside the US, I will not ship it. I have had to give the next-highest bidder a second-chance bid, and sometimes it works. If you are from Canada, I will not ship to you. Why not? Because your postal delivery system is unbelievably unreliable.
I was in the market for an OQO Model 01+ a few months ago, and virtually all of the auctions were scams from hijacked accounts. It’s getting really bad there. Ebay has to do better policing or risk losing business. It’s getting to the point where I don’t want to use Ebay at all anymore. People advertise their items to be in “as new” condition, and it arrives with scratches and cracks. They blatantly lie, and it is very hard to get satisfaction. The guy I eventually bought the OQO from shipped it without some of the supposedly included accessories, the extra battery and the AC adaper were both defective and had to be replaced. I took care of all the replacements and was so sick of dealing with it that I resold it, this time revealing the gouge on the case…something the original seller never did.
I BUY HELLO KITTY PHONE FROM JAPAN, IT ARRIVE WELL, ME SO HAPPY!
Safe countries to sell to:
Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Germany, England(UK), Canada, America, Japan, Holland(Netherland), Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Jordan.
Reason for placing these in the “safe category:
Well policed, good law-enforcement, stable political situation,
effective mail systems, good natured people (because of wealth)
Generally “unsafe” countries to sell privately to:
HongKong, Russia, China, Vietnam, Lithuania, Turkey, Nigeria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Africa, Armenia, Lebanon, Liberia, Hungary, Bulgaria,
Albania, Bosnia.
Reason for placing these in the “unsafe” category:
Rogue law enforcement, mafia, poverty, politically-unstable,
war, unrest etc. These things doesn’t count for all these
countries - it’s just problems with various countries that makes
it difficult to get safe transactions trough. With poverty (Nigeria)
and Rogue law-enforcement - the criminal ratings go sky-high
and there’s high risk of disgruntled post-workers, thieves etc.
that have little or no moral (or can’t afford to have moral) etc.
If you guys think that I’m being “select, racist and biased”
you’d be totally wrong (look at the lists again) I’m only
talking about my experience with TV, Trades, Business and
people in general. This is not to say that any of the “unsafe”
countries are totally unsafe - not by any means. I believe
that most people are honest and safe no matter where
they come from - but some countries doesn’t do enough
to enforce the law and thus fall into the “unsafe” category
because the crime rate increases with the lack of employment,
law-enforcement etc. Anyone with just a “minimal” understanding
of the human mind will already know this and trade safely.
Blocking “all countries” is just plain stupid and will get you
bad deals because you COULD get more, but THINKING about
the world situation and UNDERSTANDING the different cultures
WILL pay off in the long run - so use your minds and exchange
experience rather than run off to hide ;)
I wish you all good luck and happy trading!
I had this exact same problem.
Four times I tried to sell a HTC Windows mobile PDA that I could not get the hang of.
I listed it, BAM! It was bought via “Buy it Now” buy a scammer with ZERO feedback trying to scam me into sending the phone to his “son” in Nigeria going to college.
All three times this was tried.
They will send a spoof PayPal funds received email, trying to make you think you have been paid on the item, for the correct amount, but when you look at your PayPal transaction record in your PayPal account, “surprisingly” there is no money.
This happend four times in a row. Each time I sent eBay an email to their “trust and safety” department. eBay must be backed up with fraud, because what should have taken 24-48 hours according to the email that immediately bounced back to me from eBay, it took seven days for someone to get back to me. All I received back from eBay at that time was a form letter.. It was not until I replied to eBay again that a real human responded and credited me my listing fee back.
eBay has a huge problem with fraud!
HUGE!
They should have much better buyer and seller verification. Each time that the fraudulent buyer bought from me, when I got his address and phone, it was a non-working phone number and an address that did not exist. Can’t eBay do a little verification?
In addition, could they not let the seller block bidders with ZERO feedback?
At least allow this on larger ticket items.
eBay sure does charge a lot for the kind of fraud to go on.
They get you for listing the item, then they get a cut of the sale, then if you get paid with PayPal, they get a cut there too!
Wow, that is a lot of cash, I wish someone would come up with an alternative..
Let the scammers have eBay!
Dude get a clue…in the ebay seller prefs you can set where you are willing to ship and where you won’t ship…chillout before you get an lamer
I ordered a Flash Drive online (4gb), I received a 256mb Drive that was Firmware flashed to show up as a 4GB drive, Any data copied to it would show up as Binary and was unusable.
Took me 3 months but I finally got my money back, and I no longer use Ebay, I would rather pay the extra couple dollars and get my products from a reputable company.
Tommy, a couple of points. Africa is not a country, it is a continent. Nigeria is a country in Africa, England is a part of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands are not referred to as Holland in official terms.
I would also like to point out that Australia and New Zealand are reputable countries to deal with. I know that they are on the other side of the planet, but lets not forget them!
Good advice but I’d like to add that Ebay should have a mandatory “Scam avoidance” site that all users have to pass a test at the end to show they at least know the basics to protect themselves. Even at the least to be able to post an auction in a high risk category like computer chips or things like that would be great.
Also “Make my auctions visible only to countries I will ship to” would be a nice option to keep it down or at least make it harder for them (yes I know about proxies but it would make the scammers lives more complicated. It’s amazing that Ebay doesn’t put as much effort into curbing fraud as ISP’s spend on limiting Spam.
One other thing I did was setting the option in Paypal to not accept from outside the US, and only accept payments from verified accounts, and I only ship to the verified address. Otherwise they can send it Western Union or Moneygram and I’ll ship it anyplace if they pay the shipping and customs, and I’ve had a couple people who did when buying an online game account years ago.
I have nothing against selling to people in other countries (aside from the obvious high risk ones) but the real problem is the address verification system doesn’t work overseas and Paypal doesn’t offer seller protection on them either so if in doubt, tell them to ship outside the US (though I would take Canada or even Mexico as I never had a problem, same with some European countries like Germany or Sweden, etc) it must be prepaid with western union or moneygram, then you know the money is in the bank when you pick up the check at the counter.
They taught us in high school to do our homework. It’s obvious that none of you blokes remember this. If you want to sell/buy something in a public forum you have to take a proactive stance to insurance the integrity of the sale. eBay offers many options to prevent this type of circumstance. You can’t just throw something up there and expect a smooth transaction. So, don’t go complaining when it’s plainly your ignorance that is at the heart of the matter.
Nick:
That’s because PayPal doesn’t have a verification system for the whole world - yet. But there IS a way to ensure that your get your money from overseas PayPal users - just wait a few days until the “real” money is in your account, that’s what most sellers do to me (I always wondered why they waited excactly 2 days to send the goods…this goes for nearly EVERY experienced seller!) and I finally figured it out…it’s because of the “real” transfer from our visas to the actual PayPal account - it simply takes 2 days! After that it’s all good!
Birdseed:
I stand corrected, and you’re right - Australians are 100 % okay too, probably New Zealand too but I don’t have experience with these yet :)
I had this happen to me 5 years ago with a Powerbook Platinum right I was selling.
Lousy scumbags (may they die of cancer, these human cockroach wastes of space) overbid on my auction… then they asked to pay by money order COD, and I agreed to it at the time… I shipped, and they tried to pass off a counterfeit money order at the UPS store.
UPS said they called the cops but the guys got away.
I got my laptop back and had to re-list it. By the time I got the laptop back from UPS, got time to do a relisting with paypal, etc. (I was extremely busy starting a business at the time), it was 2 weeks after the original listing.
I lost about $800 in value in those 2 weeks, because the Platinum was in serious shortages around the country in many areas when I first listed, and 2 weeks later, the thing was available everywhere.
-
I would gladly have GIVEN away that $2500 laptop if I could have seen those dirtbags caught, and in prison.
How did you get a bid? An obvious scam, there is no such animal. I might have gone for a Powerbook Latium. Now there was a machine…..
You could just setup your preferences to block people in countries to which you do not ship…
In regards to the image accompanying the article. It is a drawing done by Ralph Steadman, the long time collaborator with Hunter S Thompson. Thompson once wrote an article titled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” So there you go.
Ebay may be going bad for people trying to sell stuff but it is an absolute Godsend for buying new electronics. I rarely go into a store to buy anything anymore as I always know I could get it for half the price on ebay. Also when it comes to electronics stores down here in Adelaide, Australia, its hard to actually find anything that can be called “new.”
Sold a laptop on ebay, was bid up to 535 by someone in Nigeria with no feedback. I told him I only ship to US (like it said in the auction) he offeref addt’l $50 to ship to Nigeria. I told him no. Nevertheless, I got an email from “paypal” that I got a payment of 585. Of course, I didn’t follow the link, rather typed paypal manually, and the money was not there. Ebay refunded me the money after I chatted with them online.
hello sir/ma,
This is Mr James Davids from manchester united I base here In uk but I am a citizen of this country am from western africa(nigeria).my son have been woring me about the new playstation3 so I will like to know if you do have that right now and if you do I will like you to email me the price of the one that has a lagest memory in your store and I will like you to help e in processing this order cause I have to get it to nigeria before the ending of this month so I will like you to send the feedback as soon as you get this email and I will also like to know if you accept paypal or credit card for the terms of payment.
any one intrested should email me on jamesdavids_160@yahoo.com
cool blog!
Hey Fred,
I am hoping that this is the Fred Garver I used to know from the Beachcomber.
If it is Thank God, because I would feel a bit weird about saying hey…
Fred,
I need help.
I want to come in.
I’m a mess,
Lee