<VV> More on the eBay bum

[corvairs]

Folks - E Bay seems to be sliding .......  It's no secret that it has 
become increasingly hostile to sellers. This trend will continue because 
simply put, buyers can go anywhere - sellers have much more limited 
options - especially if you have committed yourself to an E bay store. 
Rumor was let out that, as of the first of the year, E bay will no 
longer allow the selling of anything used. This rumor is several months 
old now - and I doubt it's veracity  (for reasons too long to go into 
now) - but it's not entirely possible some version of it could 
eventually manifest itself at some point.

The situation is going to get a lot worse for sellers. That's just the 
sad fact. I also wonder what happens to a huge company like E Bay when 
they're used to having a virtual monopoly and everything going thier way 
for so long, then thier income takes a huge drop. What do they do next?  Lon

  Jim Houston wrote:
> Well, I've had an eBay account since 2000 but I am closing it because of 
> things like what happened to Alan, their new rule that you HAVE to use 
> PayPal (which does nothing more than increase their profit, while 
> decreasing mine), the fact that there are very few small sellers with 
> real bargains, and just general dissatisfaction with the changes that 
> have occurred...  eBay used to be a good deal, but no longer..
>
> Jim Houston
> '65 Monza coupe
>
> Alan and Clare Wesson wrote:
>   
>> I was staggered recently when someone bought something from me, paid by 
>> PayPal, I sent them the item and forgot all about it, and then three weeks 
>> later I received an email from PayPal saying that because they suspected the 
>> transaction had been paid for fraudulently they had returned the guy's money 
>> to his account (so I was $50 down). I emailed and asked them what I should 
>> do, as I had lost out on the transaction through no fault of my own, and 
>> they replied (I am not making this up) that I should contact the guy and ask 
>> if he would return the goods to me.
>>
>> Now, what kind of planet has someone got to be living on if they think that 
>> someone who has paid for goods by fraud is likely to roll over and give them 
>> back to the seller? Predictably, all my efforts to contact the guy have met 
>> with no response, and as the transaction took place before 1st Oct 2008 I am 
>> not covered by PayPal's seller insurance. So I can just go hang.
>>
>> But the worst bit of all is that we had already exchanged feedback (and 
>> sellers can no longer give negative feedback either), so there is no trace 
>> of the fraud having happened and I can't warn other vendors about the guy. 
>> And he is still continuing to trade on eBay and still has a 100% positive 
>> feedback record (but what's that worth, if he can get away with doing what 
>> he did to me? He could have done it 50 times for all I know). After a 
>> protracted exchange of emails with PayPal customer service I have finally 
>> resigned myself to the fact that I am not going to get my money back, but I 
>> am unhappy that they won't do anything to penalise the guy - after all, it 
>> was PayPal who told me that the transaction was fraudulent!!! The reason 
>> they can't or won't act appears to be that the organisation that uncovered 
>> the fraud is PayPal, and they are technically separate from eBay.
>>
>> So he can continue to trade with impunity, and I have been defrauded out of 
>> $50, and there is nothing I can do about it. O.K., so $50 isn't the end of 
>> the world, but the amount wasn't the crucial factor - as far as I can tell 
>> the effect would have been the same with any transaction up to 1000 GBP 
>> (which used to be $2000 but is now down to $1480, and sliding...).
>>
>> So I hate to contradict JR, but I don't think the dispute resolution methods 
>> offered by eBay and PayPal are worth a row of beans. Caveat emptor (and even 
>> more so, caveat venditor). I have been doing eBay since 1999, and every year 
>> that passes the deal for sellers becomes worse and the deal for buyers 
>> improves.
>>
>> I can understand that this is a) because there are a lot of crooks out 
>> there; and b) eBay needs to protect its buyers because that's what sets it 
>> apart from other auction sites (according to The Economist magazine, what 
>> sets it apart is that most sale sites have lots of vendors and few buyers, 
>> whereas eBay has both). However, I feel that if eBay continues to worsen the 
>> deal for the small seller much more, they will destroy the business model 
>> they started with (because they are also, according to The Economist, moving 
>> towards an Amazon.com style model, where they want to attract high-volume, 
>> business, retail sellers, rather than the 'flea market' style of vendor that 
>> they started with).
>>
>> Corvair content here is that the item  had sold the guy was a set of NOS 
>> 1960s 'E-Z Eye' 5-inch headlight eyebrows, which fit a Corvair well 
>> (although I think he had bought them for a Brit car). And as an aside, I 
>> spent years wondering why someone would call their product 'Ee-Zed Eye', 
>> until someone pointed out to me that it wasn't pronounced like that in the 
>> USA...
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>