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Ebay hits rock bottom
Magic8Ball
Posts: 3,808 Forum Member
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Well I haven't used Ebay for a few years, and I foolishly decided last week to auction off some old copies of Viz magazine.
So I fired them all up, and probably lost money because hardly any sold, but some did and today the buyers paid by Paypal.
So I get an email from Paypal saying "Hooray, they have paid" but referencing an account that's not my Paypal account. It's the email address I use for Ebay but that's not the same as my Paypal account.
Infact the Paypal account they have paid into does not exist. So the Paypal email says I can create this new Paypal account to receive payment, which is a right old hassle, but I do it anyway, and what a surprise - no funds.
So I close that useless account and contact the buyers to tell them to cancel their Paypal payments because Ebay has told them a lot of bollocks for the paypal account, and here is the correct paypal account.
"No, you can't do that" says Ebay, because you are not allowed to mention an email address in a message to a buyer.
Pathetic.
So I have to message them to cancel their payments, then reinvoice them from Ebay (because that kind of contact IS allowed to mention an email address) and then wait for them to pay a second time.
I would not blame them for just walking away to be honest, this system is even worse than I remember.
Is this some new nonsense that Ebay came up with, that your Paypal account has to be the same email address as your Ebay account, or is their system just totally broken.
I'm thinking of just deleting my Ebay account entirely, it's not worth the hassle, as a seller OR a buyer now.
So I fired them all up, and probably lost money because hardly any sold, but some did and today the buyers paid by Paypal.
So I get an email from Paypal saying "Hooray, they have paid" but referencing an account that's not my Paypal account. It's the email address I use for Ebay but that's not the same as my Paypal account.
Infact the Paypal account they have paid into does not exist. So the Paypal email says I can create this new Paypal account to receive payment, which is a right old hassle, but I do it anyway, and what a surprise - no funds.
So I close that useless account and contact the buyers to tell them to cancel their Paypal payments because Ebay has told them a lot of bollocks for the paypal account, and here is the correct paypal account.
"No, you can't do that" says Ebay, because you are not allowed to mention an email address in a message to a buyer.
Pathetic.
So I have to message them to cancel their payments, then reinvoice them from Ebay (because that kind of contact IS allowed to mention an email address) and then wait for them to pay a second time.
I would not blame them for just walking away to be honest, this system is even worse than I remember.
Is this some new nonsense that Ebay came up with, that your Paypal account has to be the same email address as your Ebay account, or is their system just totally broken.
I'm thinking of just deleting my Ebay account entirely, it's not worth the hassle, as a seller OR a buyer now.
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Mine is different and I buy and sell.
You can have more than 1 email address associated with your paypal account so you could have just added that email address to your existing account.
When you list an item, you can specify your paypal account in the "Select how you'll be paid" section.
Nice one, thanks.
Right, I've added the address Ebay has started telling everyone to my actual Paypal account, so hopefully I'll get the payments whether they use the correct email address or the one Ebay has started telling people.
Thanks for that
You could always check the details are correct to start with in future.
I hope you found my advice useful
On investigating further, the scale of this scam is unprecedented, the likes of which i've never seen in my fourteen years of eBay use. It's fraud on a massive scale. The monetary value amounts of each item is relatively small ranging between £30 - £70, but he is scamming on a daily basis so net total and we are talking in thousands.
The scammer registered a username on DS on February 3rd in order to watch what posts are being made discussing the operation of his fraud. Needless to say he's never made a post anywhere on DS yet logs in several times a day every day.
You can read the thread here;
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1936413
and 10% fees
If they don't post to me.........they get nothing from me.
I currently have three sellers i've bought from who haven't left feedback. I'm more than happy knowing that they aren't getting any from me.
As for now taking a percentage from sellers postal fees......i think that's a step too far and ebay could well have shot themselves in the foot on this. The only way for a seller to avoid it is buy offering each item as "postage free".....leaving the seller totally unprotected from scammers such as the one already mentioned.
You are just being selfish. If everyone did that then no feedback would be left and you would be walking into every transaction completely blind. I can see no reason not to leave feedback when you are a buyer and you receive everything satisfactorily. The purpose of giving feedback is to review their performance to aid other buyers/sellers, not to receive a mutual pat on the back.
They were quick off the mark.
I took a grab of the list of names though and put it on FB for my friends there.A good few of them use ebay a lot.
Most high volume business sellers have it set up so feedback is returned automatically when it's left for them. It's proof of how redundant leaving feedback for buyers really is. It has to be positive & what can you say really, other than 'this person bought & paid for the item'. I haven't left any feedback for buyers since November as I have more important to do like send customers their items than copy & past a stock phrase. I have a high feedback score so it doesn't really mean anything to me if they leave feedback or not. No feedback is better than bad feedback.
BUT... rather than cutting my nose of to spite my face and boycotting them I started occasionally to complete transactions outside of my listing. Eg I bunged some trainers up for sale on one of their free-listing days and sold them cash a few hours a later to someone who emailed me. Whole thing cost me nowt. I reckon I conduct 20% of my sales like that now and I target higher value or heavier things that people are likely to have to personally collect anyway.
Basically I view them like Ryanair... onus is on me to understand their terms and conditions and to manoeuvre about within them as much as I can.
Hidden away in this corner of ebay, dodgy buyers rarely come along. Fingers crossed, touch wood, etc, the site still serves my needs very well despite the drawbacks.
As for regular selling to the masses, I wouldn't touch that sort of with a bargepole on modern ebay.
As for 'walking into a transaction blind'........read below.
Actually you will find they have it set on auto feedback when payment is made....not when they receive feedback.
All Sellers i've bought from who have their feedback set to auto on payment, receive feedback from me on receipt of goods.
TBH the whole Feedback issue has pretty much become meaningless now since eBay stopped sellers from posting negative to troublesome buyers. All of a sudden peoples feedback rating made miraculous jumps to 100% and you now have little idea of who you are dealing with.
Sorry but you are just making stuff up now to prove a point.
It's clear from your comment you don't know what you're talking about.
I have been running an eBay business for the past 6 years. Obviously not all the sellers leave feedback on payment or you wouldn't have outstanding feedback. Some sellers do have it set to leave it on payment but a lot don't. The last thing they want to do is leave positive feedback for a buyer to then con them by reversing the payment or claiming INR.
There is a reason that eBay stopped letting sellers leave Neg feedback. It didn't stop bad buyers. And it was open to a lot of abuse in tit for tat feedback. If you have a problem buyer you open a case against them, then other sellers can set their restrictions to stop them from buying them. It has worked well for me. If I go to the buyer requirements page I have a long list of people who tried to buy from me but were blocked because of too many non payment strikes. Which saves me time & money in lost fees I would have to open a case to reclaim. If you are a high volume seller the last thing you would have time to do is go through a buyers feedback to look for negs then cancel the bid & block them.
I only use it for buying nowadays.
I've been ebaying fourteen years.
You are right......unfortunately some Sellers don't have their feedback set to 'auto' on payment, but the more business 'savvy' do and they are running it right. I will explain why.
If a Trader then you should be looking at ebay a little bit like your "shop".
When a buyer makes a purchase they have completed their side of 'the deal'. Payment in full has been made to the Sellers account. Feedback should now be instantaneous. Pretty much in the same way as when a customer in a shop goes to to pay at the till, it's seen as good manners for the person on the till receiving the payment to say "thank you".....this is good customer 'feedback'.
You, as The Seller have yet to complete your side of 'the deal' by dispatching the item to the Buyer.
Assuming The Seller has posted instant feedback on payment to my site, then they will receive the same as soon as i receive the item. And i make 100% sure that i post it (i check my ebay account daily....even if i haven't bought/sold anything).
The only reason i resorted to using this method was after getting totally fed up by the endless amount of Sellers i'd bought from who, even after i'd posted feedback to them, failed to return any to my ebay site.
It's the only solution......and i'm more than content in that it works.
The 'tit for tat' business was getting out of hand......but it went both ways, not just one way.
I had one buyer who bid and won an item at a real rock bottom price. I'd made sure the description was thorough and precise down to the last detail. I posted positive on her site as obviously payment had been made.....she'd completed her side of 'the deal'.
She returned negative feedback claiming the item wasn't new (it was actually described as 'used' in the item description!).
I offered her a full refund including postage on condition she returned the item and withdrew the negative comment.
She refused!
Looking back through her feedback history soon told me she had a nasty habit of doing this with other ebayers. Posting 'negatives' but refusing to return the allegedly 'incorrectly' described item. Strange reaction when if so disappointed with an item you've bought, you refuse to return it and want to keep it instead!
She's now blocked from buying from me but blocking a troublemaker doesn't always mean you've solved the problem because some will run with multiple accounts.