Ebay idiots

[Uaithne]

...Further to this, there's a guy I know that is constantly complaining about buyers bitching about him and his products, and that he's trying to do the right thing etc. But from what I've seen, I actually think he's the dodgy one - not listing items in their actual condition, charging a heap for postage etc. Kind of weirds me out that he tries to then put that on to other people.

Not to say that all sellers are like that or anything though...

I don't think I've really had any major problems as a buyer over the years. One issue (only recently) was that something I ordered hadn't arrived, so I got in contact with the seller a few weeks later asking if they'd received payment etc etc. They then said that they had run out of stock. I was kind of annoyed that they hadn't mentioned anything to me about it (ie, "is it okay if we send in a few weeks when we get more?" etc - I would have been fine with that), but what was worse is that they were still selling the items on their account - so chances are they were screwing more than just me. They said it would then be posted that week ... which it wasn't. I messaged them again another week later asking if things were sent as yet - they then started getting up in my face about annoying them (two messages over about a 3 week period when they hadn't sent anything isn't annoying in my books). Item arrived a week or so later and was great. (Apologies for the useless rant).

[killbot]

I recently sold three boxed, mint condition Game Boy games on eBay and managed to make precisely £1.20. At this point I could have tried to wriggle out of the sale (I actually ended up losing money because the postage was more than I thought) but hey - fair's fair, so I package up the games and send them off the very next day. After all, eBay is always a gamble - if the right people don't find your auction or aren't interested then you could end up in the red.

So I sent them off and despite the guy getting three very decent games in good nick for less than the cost of half a lager he still - three months later - hasn't left any feedback, despite me politely messaging him to ask if he wouldn't mind doing so. Some people just seem to stop giving a toss once they get the goods. I bet he'd have been onto me pretty bloody sharpish if I'd not sent the games.

In the interests of balance, I'd like to give a shout out to steves-bargains. I've bought a couple of NES games from them/him recently and not only is he pretty reasonably priced, he really doesn't hang about getting them out to people (they usually arrive after 2 days, despite being advertised as 5-8 days) - and he cleans the contacts up first. The copy of Solar Jetman that arrived the other day looked like new and worked the FIRST TIME I put it in the machine. That's bloody unheard of.

[GameOver]

I do find it so annoying when buyers don't leave you feedback. Only around half of my buyers have bothered to give me any feedback at all!

But I do find myself buying most of my games from eBay these days - I've had enough of Amazon sending me classic/platinum or US versions of games which are clearly advertised as UK originals. And this is from Amazon themselves! I gave up on Play.com for this same reason.

[dste]

I won Pokemon XD on the Cube a while back for £4.32 if I remember correctly. I paid but knew straight away that I would never receive it and course I didn't. Got an excuse on the first message and then nothing on the second message. T

he thing that pissed me off the most though was the complete and utter faff that it took to get my money back. The annoying time limits, the amount of crap that you have to fill in, it's asolutely ridiculous.

I haven't bought anything from the site since September and haven't sold anything since March due to the hassle and fees. it's just now got to the point where it's barely worth it.

[Lorfarius]

There's not much to fill in at all and I'm not sure why there was so much hassle? You wait a set period (10 days I think) start a case and let the time run out. Then they sort it out through Paypal, it's easy. Sounds like you made the mistake of getting involved with all the communication, you should drop them a line or 2 during the early days but if it looks like they are playing silly buggers, start the case asap.

[Evander]

I've made 261 retro gaming Ebay purchases over the last 3 years and only once has an item failed to arrive (99p Gameboy game which I just reordered). I wouldn't relish venturing into the sellers world though, sounds like a nightmare half the time. Not being able to leave buyer feedback is absolute BS if you ask me.

Personally I think you should be able to register something with Ebay if you get messed around, so that frequent dodgy buyer / seller behaviour can at least be tallied up.

[crusto]

Not being able to leave buyer feedback is absolute BS if you ask me.

Its just proof of what Ebay is all about, they couldnt give a toss about the goings on as long as they are getting their (massively inflated) seller fees.

[crusto]

Im currently selling Half life 2 collectors edition on there. People are asking as much as £90 on Amazon for it so I thought i'd list it starting at £25, nothing ventured nothing gained and all that. Had one moron message me earlier on offering £17 for it, including postage. . Better still, he lives in Poland, why bother wasting my (and your own) time with such stupidity?

[JetSetWilly]

Im currently selling Half life 2 collectors edition on there. People are asking as much as £90 on Amazon for it so I thought i'd list it starting at £25, nothing ventured nothing gained and all that. Had one moron message me earlier on offering £17 for it, including postage. . Better still, he lives in Poland, why bother wasting my (and your own) time with such stupidity?

I had that when I sold Super Metroid a few years ago (I've even got a feeling it might be the same bloke). He offered me £8 including postage, so I told him politely to go ride a bike. Made £30 in the end

[Mr Kipling]

I do find it so annoying when buyers don't leave you feedback. Only around half of my buyers have bothered to give me any feedback at all!

I once bought a 99p PS1 game from some guy, and even before it had arrived he sent me an really arsey email about leaving him feedback. Now, I don't mind being politely asked, but every time I get sent a pushy one, I'll put off doing it for a couple weeks just to make them stew. Matey boy here didn't like this one bit, and proceeded to bombard me with about nine emails over the next few weeks, with each one getting more rude, threatening and personal. This guy was a total grade A fruit loaf.

So to teach him a lesson, I negged him and left this: "HERE'S THE FEEDBACK YOU CRAVE SO MUCH FOR, HA HA HA! FU!!"

I felt a slight twinge of guilt afterwards, but quickly got over it as he totally deserved it..

[jdanddiet]

Unfortunately censored for tat "revenge" negging was rife in the days before sellers couldn't leave negs. Even if you as a buyer had done nothing wrong, there was nothing to stop a seller negging you or threatening to. It was inevitable.

[ivortheinjun]

I sell mainly CDs on there.

There's generally at least one troublesome censored of a buyer for every batch of listings I put up, but to be honest after 10 years on there, it's all water off a duck's back.

Send signed-for if it's over £10 or to someone with iffy feedback. Everything else, 2nd class large letter.
Be remorselessly polite, cloyingly so to the point of irritation when the mood takes you.
Most of all though, just don't worry about not getting feedback. I stopped being concerned about that somewhere around 2003. Plug away doing your thing, and you'll see the same IDs coming back. I've got a handful of regular buyers that will - without fail - buy half a dozen things off me each time I list. More so in some cases. I had one regular bid on 40 auctions recently, winning 29 of them. Turned out they'd logged on while drunk and kept finding stuff they wanted, oblivious to how much or a bill they were racking up. They paid within about 45 seconds of getting an invoice through.

Nice little earner if you're prepared to put the hours in, and to tolerate occasional frustration.

[crusto]

Ive just had some guy argue with me over postage, as he thinks im am 40p too expensive! 40 fuckin pence! You couldnt make it up . What he doesnt realise that I am actually making a loss on the postage, once you factor in the cost of the mailing bags, printing the labels etc, its A loss of approx £1. Also, the listing clearly states that postage may not be cheap due to the weight of the items.

Havent people got better things to do with their time than question something what amounts to no more than 40p?

Edit: The guy has just got back in touch telling me he had made a mistake reading the invoice and didnt realise the cost was for combined postage. He is more than happy with the cost now! Fair play to him, not an idiot after all. There is hope for ebay yet.

[CraigGrannell]

I do find it so annoying when buyers don't leave you feedback. Only around half of my buyers have bothered to give me any feedback at all!

I wonder for some people if this stems from the days when sellers would wait for buyers to leave feedback and then respond in kind, regardless of what the buyer had done. That said, even these days I will only leave feedback if the seller has already done so. If I've paid, that's the end of my end of the deal—sellers shouldn't wait until I've added feedback to do the same.

[Mr Kipling]

What's peeing me off at the mo are sellers flogging consoles with enticing lines like, "Only played a few times then got bored of it" and, "Kids preferred to play XYZ etc.."

Then you have a peek at the other items they're selling and they have like 35+ games for said console system..