Sep
2006
eBay Sucks
September 22nd, 2006 at 08:59 am by Administrator in RamblingsLast weekend, without notice, eBay closed all 400 some of my auctions. They sent me some vague canned email stating that my listing were closed because I was trying to circumvent eBay fees. Everyone who was bidding on one of the auctions as well as customers that recently won and paid for one of my eBay auctions received a notice from eBay stating that I was in violation of an eBay policy and my listings were removed. WTF? I had customers contacting me freaking out thinking I just ripped them off. I later found out what the problem was. I had the URL to my website built into the banner image I used in my auctions. eBay didn’t like that. Once I knew this it took me all of 3 minutes to remove the URL from the image in Photoshop and re-upload it to my webserver. It would have been nice if they would have just told me to fix it to begin with instead of trying to wreck my business.
I lost a ton of sales from this and my reputation with my customers was tainted. I had to do something. And I did. I marked all the items on my website half off and email thousands of my past customers to announce my “eBay sucks” sale. The response was fantastic. I had so many customers email me back to give me their support and in some cases their own story about how eBay screwed them over that it took me days to read all of them. The sale was also a big hit. I made enough sales from it to cover my loss of eBay sales from the closed auctions.
But wait there’s more. Since eBay closed all my auctions, including my store items, they had to credit me back the eBay fees for them. They not only had to credit back my listing fees, but also my final value fees because they emailed customers who had won auctions to tell them I was bad and they didn’t have to pay me. They emailed customers that had won auctions and paid for them months and months and months ago. The end result, I received a credit of over $800. So this all started with them thinking that I was trying to circumvent fees and it ends with them crediting me back for eight hundred buck of the fees. That sure makes a lot of sense, don’t it? Thanks eBay!
Comments
wow. That’s crazy!
I sold on ebay for over 7 years with positive feedback and one negative. I was removed from ebay two days ago for leaving negative feedback from another user’s account to a fellow who sold me dead plants. Not only me but many others. So I’m now not a registered user and the fellow who sold dead plants is still on ebay selling more dead plants to more unsuspecting buyers. Now is there any justice in any of this??? I did file a paypal dispute but of course that could take months to resolve. Meanwhile the bogus dead plant seller is still on ebay, has my money and I’m out of business. I guess my mistake was to use my seller account to make the purchase to begin with. But who can figure out all the ebay rules and regulations? I think a lawyer would be hard pressed to remain on ebay. Ebay is arbitrary. I say that because they penalize one individual for an action that others are also guilty of without penalizing them. I’ve paid ebay/paypal over $30,000 in fees in the last 18 months (I got the books out and figured it out) only to be put out of business by them for a feedback violation. And the purpose of the violation was to warn other buyers. The seller of the dead plants has numerous negatives from others who received dead plants. His reply is always the same, “it’s not my responsibility you don’t know how to care for plants”. Mine were dead on arrival. I opened the box immediately and they looked like cooked spinach. I guess it’s better not to complain about another seller if you are a seller too. That is if you plan to remain in business selling on ebay. The real problem makers are free to keep using ebay. I know I sound like I’m venting and I know I shouldn’t have done the feedback thing, but this fellow really ticked me off. I left positive feedback for him and mentioned the problem originally and he left me neutral feedback and stated that I was disagreeable in his feedback assessment. I was helpless to solve the issue any other way I could think of. I even contacted ebay regarding this seller before I did the deed. I received no reply and was just angry. Now I’m doing crossword puzzles instead of selling on ebay.
If you can relate to this story and want to tell me yours please feel free to email me at ad2889@roadrunner.com
Thanks.
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I fully support your eBay business and will be making a purchase as my way of saying so. My below comments are due to being sick and tired of people breaking the rules, it only ever leads to the rest of us loosing out when the bad apples get punished… they usually throw out the whole bag of apples
This is not an attempt to flame or anything BUT in fairness, if you don’t take the time to educate yourself on the eBay terms of use then its your own fault. They don’t write those for a laugh, business is a serious…er..business, all they are doing is setting out ground rules, break the rules and you will pay the consequences. You agreed to the rules when you signed up to eBay, if you didn’t take the time to read the rules that governed how you can run your eBay business.. well thats just irresponsible and unprofessional as it can and did impact your ability to make a living. You can’t run any business as you see fit, regardless of being online or brick and mortar, there are laws, rules and business practices. After all, this is one of your sources of income and should be treated as the precious thing that it is.
To add to the ebay sux theme here, they also own www.shopping.com they pay other websites to promote affiliat’s products then pay the promoters 1p-10p per sale when they receive £6-£500 per sale. They are all about the money, they have changed sooo much since they started up. you should read their book “the perfect store”. More like “A quick and easy way to make a load of money, with no customer care”. So If your looking for an alternative to ebay, ItchyPig limited run its own auction site www.itchypig.co.uk. Im a co-director, we have just been backed by Northampton university. Theres no final value fees and no listing fees. we make all our money from selling advertising space on the site (but no spyware). Check out the website www.itchypig.co.uk. Cheers for reading. Frank
EBay is not for the little guy anymore. Shoot eBay itself sells you stuff. Too, too many fees! you have to pay for the product you list, then eBay gets its cut whether it sells or not, aka-PayPal “eBay” then digs a little further into your pocket, and after all that you have to pay to package the item and in some cases eat the shipping costs as well. And that’s if your listing is not cancelled by eBay for some silly excuse. Not the same place anymore, I sure wish Yahoo would have stayed on. If I knew then what I know now I would have switched to them in a heartbeat, never knew eBay would get so ugly. I have been with eBay, since they practically opened their doors, but seeing how nasty they have become, I truly have second thoughts. If you’re not a corporation or mega seller, it’s not worth selling anything on eBay. EBay now caters to big business and I think these idiots help police eBay in order to get rid of the little guy so they can sell their junk at high dollar, as they eliminate their competition. If I can recall correctly eBay’s roots consisted of the average Joe, don’t remember it was all about mega sellers & big companies. What a sell out, if people had wanted to deal with big companies and so forth, why shop on eBay, when many of them have sites of their own. EBay is truly lost…ouch.
EBay’s listings now consist of eBay’s valued sellers listings showing up first and whether you are a decent seller or not, you’ll be lucky if your listing shows up somewhere in the middle or last. Therefore deal or not, does not matter on eBay, you get the deal eBay decide you ought to have. Don’t be surprised if you don’t sell an item on eBay even if it is dirt cheap and all you get in return is scam email from individuals trying to get into your email, paypal, and ebay account to try to take more of your $$$.
Oh by the way anoymous must be having an out of body experience or has no idea what she is rambling about. Ebay changes their rules, regulations, fees, you name it constantly .
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