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I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those

by steven2012 8y ago

I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a buyer, however, it's great so unless you have enough margins to protect you from scammers, and if you just want to sell one-off things like eBay from the 2000s, then don't bother. As a technology platform, eBay is an embarrassment. They released features like collections that didn't work on their production website and it looks like they got rid of it entirely now. They have a half-built API that has confusing documentation, and their APIs that do work aren't very useful. Nothing about their site has changed in 20 years, and they're waiting to die, like Yahoo. I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet, since they're a stationary target that hasn't done anything meaningful in over a decade.

DrScump 8y ago
Their UI is so bad, they have to use a phony mockup app in their TV commercials. Watch the commercials where a woman sees a fashion item on the street and then buys it on eBay. Just try doing anything like that on the actual site. Their entire query mechanism has had severe breakages for years. You couldn't possibly construct a search that could isolate a particular shoe or handbag or whatever without traversing thousands of dissimilar items. Tickets are a great example. I've done thousands of ticket buys and sales alike on eBay since the 1990s. But now, eBay actually sabotages ticket searches by polluting every event with hundreds of fake "classified ads" for StubHub (which they own) so that people give up and go to StubHub instead, more than tripling their cut (at the same price point). And you can't exclude those shell ads, which don't even represent actual tickets, from your searches anymore. And the fraud problem is very real.
- tim333 8y ago
  There's good and bad in the UI. Some of the features like being able to search for items in a set price range are very handy and don't seem to be available on other sites.
  - OJFord 8y ago
    That's possible on all sorts of sites, including Amazon as far back as I remember.
  - oldcynic 8y ago
    Most of their UI changes have been user hostile or added dark patterns. For instance where once you got local items and sellers by default, now it defaults to international and you have to change a setting to exclude overseas sellers. Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. Picking out one feature that they haven't ruined is poor consolation. As the other commenter notes Amazon has let you break down into price tiers for years. Most sites I shop at can do this. eBay search results are better than Amazon however - but that is because Amazon's has become so awful.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      > Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. A lot of people want to shop price first then see how much cost would increase by buying from someone already on the same continent. Including shipping when sorting by price is the opposite of user-hostile and they've done this since forever, most online retailers don't do this.
      - oldcynic 8y ago
        Including shipping is indeed useful, but I was calling out changes, and as you say they've done that forever. Just about every change they've made in the last half decade that I can think of makes it less friendly. I would be surprised if it's a lot that prefer default inclusion of international. They made the change right about the same time they made customs fees for international automatic and unavoidable. Makes me suspect that fee is including a hidden profit element in this dark pattern.
      - DrScump 8y ago
        Including shipping when sorting by price Actually, they give search results preference to items with "free shipping" (their so-called "Fast and Free" cobrand) regardless of final price to the consumer.
- ianamartin 8y ago
  The fake ui for an ad seems like a pretty red herring. I’m not saying you’re wrong. That just seems like flimsy evidence. I mean, maybe they use a fake UI in the ad because it’s so good. On a completely different note: the internet of commerce things has always felt like some sick mashup EvE Online and game of thrones. Not only is scamming and awful behavior allowed, it is encouraged by the way rules are enforced. The net is dark and full of terrors
cm2187 8y ago
Agree with all of your points plus the UI is massively inconsistent, not just in term of format, but different pages will give you different message count or items sold count, or one page will tell you you received a message and the message page will show nothing, it looks like something quickly hacked together in php in the old days. And I am not even talking about consistency between browser and iOS UI in term of information available. Hadn’t use ebay for a long time and bought and sold a dozen items last month. Had to deal with scammers twice. One fake account winning an auction I was selling then failing to pay, forcing me to relist (I assume the scam is that a fraction of the users will ship before payment). Another fake account bidding seconds before the end on an auction I was bidding for a large amount, revealing everyone’s max bid limit, then cancelling the bid, and bidding £1 below my max bid limit to max me out (all within seconds). Unimpressed by ebay’ support reaction: “it is probably a new user who isn’t familiar with how ebay works”. Seriously? I even wondered if ebay wasn’t behind that fake account, then I thought that any decent programmer with access to the back end would do something more subtle than that to max out transaction prices, then I thought: but if it is the same guys who designed the rest of the website...
- DrScump 8y ago
  ...revealing everyone’s max bid limit, then cancelling the bid It's deliberate and common. This is why I, as most sellers, do only fixed-price listings anymore.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    That makes sense but in my case the auction is also a price discovery thing. In the end I sold for about twice what I thought I could get from these items.
    - DrScump 8y ago
      You can list for a high-end price and use the "best offer" feature to capture lower offers.
  - foobar1962 8y ago
Jaruzel 8y ago
This is anecdotal, because it's only my experience from being a long time eBay user (buying and selling). 1 Buying on ebay is nice and safe because eBay protects the buyer and will almost always rule in the buyers favour. 2. Selling on eBay is fraught with problems: The Seller is not protected from scams at all. It's easy for a buyer to buy something, and they can flag to eBay that their account was compromised. Because eBay own PayPal they then just yank back the payment until the issue is resolved, and there's nothing a Seller can do about it. See point #1 3. If you are just having a clear-out and want 'some money' for old stuff you no longer want, then yeah it's still worth putting stuff on eBay. You may not get top-dollar for what you sell but at least stuff doesn't end up in landfill. 4. Trying to sell on eBay as a new business is a complete no-no these days. The big powersellers are so entrenched that for most product lines they dominate the search results. eBay now lets you 'boost' your items for an extra fee, which is basically a scam to paper over their broken ranking systems. 5. If you are a new 'business' seller, you are limited to a set number of items up for auction at any one time, which severely limits your ability to get exposure in listings. This is a crazy policy. It is like buying shop premises in a mall, but only being allowed to stock up one shelf inside the shop for 6 months. It's just not a viable start-up situation. 6. If you want to sell as a business, doing that via Amazon is a much better bet these days. Depending on how much you want to pay you can either just list your item and manage everything else yourself, or send a palette of your stock to Amazon and let them deal with everything for you ('fullfilled by Amazon'). tbh, I've not doing this in practice yet, as my current stock doesn't qualify, but it certainly seems more new-business friendly than eBay.
- DrScump 8y ago
  Because eBay own PayPal Not anymore.
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    Good point, forgot about that. tbh, nothing changed after the spin off. eBay still seem to have direct control over how your paypal account gets/loses funds.
    - 8y ago
yaegers 8y ago
Same here. Although it's been a very long time since I bought on eBay as well. Now that I make some serious money, I'd rather buy from Amazon. Not the marketplace either. Just plain old Amazon. Where I know I am dealing with a company should problems come up and not some kid in their parents basement. As far as selling goes, I come to know that all the buyer has to do is complain to eBay they never got the goods. How do they proof that? As far as I know they don't. They just write a colorful mail to eBay claiming nothing arrived and they sent the money via paypal and just as easy, the payment gets reversed.
orbitingpluto 8y ago
In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. Obtaining refunds is an easy process but frustrating. Many of the sellers will have rankings that make them seem trustworthy only to disappear completely. And we can also lay blame on the western hemisphere. Canada and USA postal systems bear the brunt of the costs of "free" delivery. They will give these packages low priority. Packages will languish for months and when items finally arrive, it can be difficult to arrange payment with the seller after a refund.
- spiralx 8y ago
  > In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. I tend to use AliExpress for buying things directly from China. It's not always the easiest site to use if you want to make complex queries, but I've only had three packages out of a couple of hundred purchases not arrive - one the seller resent, the other two I flagged as not having arrived and got my money back pretty quickly - the site keeps your payment in it's own escrow service, only releasing it to the seller when you confirm receipt.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Can't say that's my experience, buying from the EU. They can take a while, but I've only had a no-show once.
- ballenf 8y ago
  I wonder if there's anything unique about your situation or just a lot of bad luck. Are you buying generally higher-end items? What does the tracking reveal in terms of where in the process the item disappeared? In the US or China? Or was it just never tendered for delivery? I've bought a lot of stuff from China on ali and ebay, but no single item over $30 in value. So far I'm at 100% in terms of delivered items. A lot of crushed packaging, but no damaged items. Maybe 95% in terms of on-time delivery.
  - orbitingpluto 8y ago
    I have had good experiences with items that cost over $50. They tend to arrive quickly. For instance, a tray of CPUs was shipped to me in less than 36 hours for $10 total shipping. For me, it is the inexpensive items with free shipping that seem to be the most risky. I also probably bid on auctions rather than fixed prices items more than the average person.
bitL 8y ago
I've sold quite a few older "premium" things (>$1000) over eBay and didn't have any issues so far. Things I did no longer need like older computers, GPUs, drones, cameras, synths etc. I however always took photos of the package in the final stages of wrapping up, showing what exactly I shipped (together with serial numbers if available), including when it was ready for shipping in case anything scam-like arose. Maybe the price level guaranteed nobody wanted to commit that much money for scam?
- stirlo 8y ago
  You've just been lucky so far. All those photos, serial numbers and the likes will mean almost zero to ebay if a buyer ever raises a dispute.
- stevekemp 8y ago
  >Maybe the price level guaranteed nobody wanted to commit that much money for scam? I think you've just been lucky, after all the whole point of buyer-scams is that they buy something, then raise a complaint and get a refund. The end result is that the buyer has your item, and has their money returned. Sure they might need some available money, but they don't lose out.
setquk 8y ago
It’s not that bad. I sell a lot of stuff and have had no problems with scammers other than a couple of people doing a buy it now and then wanting stuff shipped to Lagos etc and payment via money order. You just cancel the sale and relist then. The real risks are couriers in my experience. eBay success: 1. Avoid GSP 2. Sell only inside your region 3. Mark and photograph everything sold and keep the serial numbers. 4. If there’s any risk of something packing up, sell it spares or repair. Doesn’t affect the final value. 5. If someone pulls one just cancel the sale and move on. 6. If someone picks up from you take a signature. 7. If you do a buy it now, tick the immediate payment box.
- DrScump 8y ago
  If someone picks up from you take a signature. Why? It offers you no seller protection whatsoever. Even a photo of the person picking it up wouldn't qualify. If you do a buy it now, tick the immediate payment box If it's ship-only, yes.
  - setquk 8y ago
    ebay seller protection is pointless either way as the decisions are arbitrary. The receipt offers you protection as in if you have to take the buyer to small claims court or defend yourself then you are covered for transfer of goods. If you're a private seller, selling items under $20/£25 it's not worth arguing. Unless you're selling volume, don't even sell the items just throw them away or give them to someone. Also run a mule bank account. All money in and out goes through an empty account which you transfer in and out of paypal. Never link a card to it. No arbitrary charges or refunds can be taken then. If ebay have a problem with you they can come to your door and do it via official legal paths. They usually hire a debt collector here in the UK who will fuck off instantly if you file an SAR with them and ask for court documents (I had a run in with them a few years back after they didn't receive a fees payment I made due to a system problem) But honestly there are so few problems out there really.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > If there’s any risk of something packing up, sell it spares or repair. Doesn’t affect the final value. This is rather surprising, as I'd expect this to halve the prices of items.
jjeaff 8y ago
I use eBay frequently as a seller and buyer. If I don't need it fast, and I want it cheaper, I'll use eBay. As a seller, I have very rarely had issues with buyers. I always sell via buy it now and I usually am able to get a price comparable to what I would have gotten on Amazon. I find that Amazon is not ideal for one off, used items. eBay tends to be better.
robocat 8y ago
> Nothing about their site has changed in 20 years, and they're waiting to die, like Yahoo. I'm from NZ and I suspect our local equivalent (TradeMe) has the same systemic problems: * Horrific UI flaws. * Adverts. Everywhere. It's like they don't want me to use the site. * A new version of the UI for mobile browsers (a replacement for the broken mobile browser version), that breaks all their links within emails * Automated emails sent at 4 o'clock in the morning (I complained and was told it was so they could use their servers efficiently). * Please please let me filter for NZ only - so I can choose not to have drop shipped items if I want it this week... I also use eBay.com.au and it is sweet to use in comparison to our local TradeMe, but TradeMe is the incumbent that everyone uses...
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Somehow eBay's core business seems to be trying to force me to use something not-eBay. The horrendous UI, unresponsive servers, bids being lost like every other auction, the easiest features like watchlist being outright broken 50 % of the time, watching items randomly not working, random 500/"oops" errors, broken search, tons and tons of ads (THIS IS A PAID SITE FFS) and so on make me think that they don't want to make money. UX wise; I don't think it's possible to do worse than "Your bid of X has been submitted" followed by "This auction has ended. Sold for X-1.". Don't expect users to come back soon if you keep doing this to them!
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  > Automated emails sent at 4 o'clock in the morning Turn off your e-mail notifications during sleeping hours? Pretty certain we all get e-mails at all hours of the day.
Angostura 8y ago
I sell quite a lot, but only on a Buyer collect basis and I always make it clear that the buyer can inspect and then pay cash if satisfied.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Interesting that the public perception of trust has degraded so much as a seller. I've been a member since 2003 and buy small bits and bobs on there most weeks and go through phases of occasionally selling things maybe a couple of times a year when I need space / money - most recently an old computer and some guitar pedals. I've only ever had a problem as a seller twice in all those years - one scammer insisting the cheque was in the post and demanding that I send the item immediately (and leaving bad feedback when I didn't) and another reporting the items being faulty despite being (incredibly cheap) untested vintage electronics for spares. Neither time was I left out of pocket and I'd more than happily sell stuff on there again. But I have heard the horror stories and appreciate that I may have just been incredibly lucky. That said, a few years back I did trip some kind of threshold and was automatically upgraded to a business account, which means that my "business" (aka home) address now appears prominently on all my listings. Apparently ebay have no way to downgrade it again and have asked me to just create a new account - throwing away 15 years' worth of positive feedback in the process...
- dec0dedab0de 8y ago
  a few years back I did trip some kind of threshold and was automatically upgraded to a business account, which means that my "business" (aka home) address now appears prominently on all my listings. Apparently ebay have no way to downgrade it again and have asked me to just create a new account - throwing away 15 years' worth of positive feedback in the process... Did they reach out to you? Did they threaten to ban your account for not listing as much as before? I cant imagine going through the effort to do a clean up of accounts, but not have a way to fix them. Not even a manual one.
- e40 8y ago
  My impression is that if you sell something of higher value, the scammers come out in droves. I tried to sell a DSLR through them, and the same scammer kept winning the auction and it took weeks to get out from under that bogus bid. I ended up selling on craigslist. Yeah, I had a few scammers, but they are easier to identify on CL, IMO.
  - 8y ago
rusk 8y ago
> I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet Amazon's site is quite flawed as well. It's a lot better but not by much. Etsy seems a better proposition but for whatever reason they limit the types of stuff that they sell. Facebook seems to be coming on the scene now though their offering is more like classifieds than auction.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  > Amazon's site is quite flawed as well. It's a lot better but not by much. Amazon's UX is far from perfect but the site at least works. eBay's site is so completely dysfunctional I'm almost surprised that people still manage to complete a significant amount of transactions on there.
  - rusk 8y ago
    In my experience, Ebay is "just good enough" to do the buying I've been doing recently. It's not good but it does "work". Amazon is an altogether more structured and reassuring experience, but you don't have all the stuff you get on Ebay.
imgabe 8y ago
I've sold a few things on eBay and never gotten scammed. Maybe it's just random luck, but it's nowhere near the 100% scam-rate that posts like this lead you to believe.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  Me too. I've sold maybe 30 items from $50-$1000 in value and not been scammed yet.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    Key word here is "yet"
pavs 8y ago
I have never used eBay to buy anything. Though visited the site several times to look up random items. Regarding "Collections", I just visited their websites out of curiosity and looks like it's right on the front page and very prominent unless I am missing something.
rconti 8y ago
I've been using eBay since ~99. Bought and sold probably 50 or 100 things over that time; so I'm hardly a power user, but I've never come close to being scammed. You have to keep your wits about you, sure, but it generally works pretty well. It helps that I'm generally selling personal stuff I don't need/want anymore, so the risk is relatively low (I've only had a couple of expensive sales where I sold things worth over $1500). On the other hand, if I was a store where profit margins were king and a scam could really hurt me, I'd probably have a better system and better intuition about scams as well.
IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
Your comments regarding change in 20 years is rather over the top. I used to work at eBay and there has been massive change to the platform both internally and on the UI front. There were major changes rolled live to site in terms of search, mobile and web/desktop. Behind the scenes, there was movement from in-house to open source technology in a major way. Movement from 30k windows servers, to linux cloud (w/250K VMs on openshift), to docker to kubernetes. Moves on the client facing code from new implementations in java(raptor), then to node.js and more. eBay has embraced open source and also open sources many of their solutions as well.
jonhendry18 8y ago
"I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet" About 8 years ago I used Amazon to sell a bunch of my old books. Worked great. Last year I tried to start doing it again, and it's a giant pain. Yesterday I tried setting up a new account and they aren't letting me add anything for sale to inventory because of some supposed undescribed problem with my credit card (which works fine for purchases). So.. Amazon has its own problems.

DrScump 8y ago

Their UI is so bad, they have to use a phony mockup app in their TV commercials. Watch the commercials where a woman sees a fashion item on the street and then buys it on eBay. Just try doing anything like that on the actual site. Their entire query mechanism has had severe breakages for years. You couldn't possibly construct a search that could isolate a particular shoe or handbag or whatever without traversing thousands of dissimilar items. Tickets are a great example. I've done thousands of ticket buys and sales alike on eBay since the 1990s. But now, eBay actually sabotages ticket searches by polluting every event with hundreds of fake "classified ads" for StubHub (which they own) so that people give up and go to StubHub instead, more than tripling their cut (at the same price point). And you can't exclude those shell ads, which don't even represent actual tickets, from your searches anymore. And the fraud problem is very real.

tim333 8y ago
There's good and bad in the UI. Some of the features like being able to search for items in a set price range are very handy and don't seem to be available on other sites.
- OJFord 8y ago
  That's possible on all sorts of sites, including Amazon as far back as I remember.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Most of their UI changes have been user hostile or added dark patterns. For instance where once you got local items and sellers by default, now it defaults to international and you have to change a setting to exclude overseas sellers. Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. Picking out one feature that they haven't ruined is poor consolation. As the other commenter notes Amazon has let you break down into price tiers for years. Most sites I shop at can do this. eBay search results are better than Amazon however - but that is because Amazon's has become so awful.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    > Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. A lot of people want to shop price first then see how much cost would increase by buying from someone already on the same continent. Including shipping when sorting by price is the opposite of user-hostile and they've done this since forever, most online retailers don't do this.
    - oldcynic 8y ago
      Including shipping is indeed useful, but I was calling out changes, and as you say they've done that forever. Just about every change they've made in the last half decade that I can think of makes it less friendly. I would be surprised if it's a lot that prefer default inclusion of international. They made the change right about the same time they made customs fees for international automatic and unavoidable. Makes me suspect that fee is including a hidden profit element in this dark pattern.
    - DrScump 8y ago
      Including shipping when sorting by price Actually, they give search results preference to items with "free shipping" (their so-called "Fast and Free" cobrand) regardless of final price to the consumer.
ianamartin 8y ago
The fake ui for an ad seems like a pretty red herring. I’m not saying you’re wrong. That just seems like flimsy evidence. I mean, maybe they use a fake UI in the ad because it’s so good. On a completely different note: the internet of commerce things has always felt like some sick mashup EvE Online and game of thrones. Not only is scamming and awful behavior allowed, it is encouraged by the way rules are enforced. The net is dark and full of terrors

cm2187 8y ago

Agree with all of your points plus the UI is massively inconsistent, not just in term of format, but different pages will give you different message count or items sold count, or one page will tell you you received a message and the message page will show nothing, it looks like something quickly hacked together in php in the old days. And I am not even talking about consistency between browser and iOS UI in term of information available. Hadn’t use ebay for a long time and bought and sold a dozen items last month. Had to deal with scammers twice. One fake account winning an auction I was selling then failing to pay, forcing me to relist (I assume the scam is that a fraction of the users will ship before payment). Another fake account bidding seconds before the end on an auction I was bidding for a large amount, revealing everyone’s max bid limit, then cancelling the bid, and bidding £1 below my max bid limit to max me out (all within seconds). Unimpressed by ebay’ support reaction: “it is probably a new user who isn’t familiar with how ebay works”. Seriously? I even wondered if ebay wasn’t behind that fake account, then I thought that any decent programmer with access to the back end would do something more subtle than that to max out transaction prices, then I thought: but if it is the same guys who designed the rest of the website...

DrScump 8y ago
...revealing everyone’s max bid limit, then cancelling the bid It's deliberate and common. This is why I, as most sellers, do only fixed-price listings anymore.
- cm2187 8y ago
  That makes sense but in my case the auction is also a price discovery thing. In the end I sold for about twice what I thought I could get from these items.
  - DrScump 8y ago
    You can list for a high-end price and use the "best offer" feature to capture lower offers.
- foobar1962 8y ago

Jaruzel 8y ago

This is anecdotal, because it's only my experience from being a long time eBay user (buying and selling). 1 Buying on ebay is nice and safe because eBay protects the buyer and will almost always rule in the buyers favour. 2. Selling on eBay is fraught with problems: The Seller is not protected from scams at all. It's easy for a buyer to buy something, and they can flag to eBay that their account was compromised. Because eBay own PayPal they then just yank back the payment until the issue is resolved, and there's nothing a Seller can do about it. See point #1 3. If you are just having a clear-out and want 'some money' for old stuff you no longer want, then yeah it's still worth putting stuff on eBay. You may not get top-dollar for what you sell but at least stuff doesn't end up in landfill. 4. Trying to sell on eBay as a new business is a complete no-no these days. The big powersellers are so entrenched that for most product lines they dominate the search results. eBay now lets you 'boost' your items for an extra fee, which is basically a scam to paper over their broken ranking systems. 5. If you are a new 'business' seller, you are limited to a set number of items up for auction at any one time, which severely limits your ability to get exposure in listings. This is a crazy policy. It is like buying shop premises in a mall, but only being allowed to stock up one shelf inside the shop for 6 months. It's just not a viable start-up situation. 6. If you want to sell as a business, doing that via Amazon is a much better bet these days. Depending on how much you want to pay you can either just list your item and manage everything else yourself, or send a palette of your stock to Amazon and let them deal with everything for you ('fullfilled by Amazon'). tbh, I've not doing this in practice yet, as my current stock doesn't qualify, but it certainly seems more new-business friendly than eBay.

DrScump 8y ago
Because eBay own PayPal Not anymore.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  Good point, forgot about that. tbh, nothing changed after the spin off. eBay still seem to have direct control over how your paypal account gets/loses funds.
  - 8y ago

yaegers 8y ago

Same here. Although it's been a very long time since I bought on eBay as well. Now that I make some serious money, I'd rather buy from Amazon. Not the marketplace either. Just plain old Amazon. Where I know I am dealing with a company should problems come up and not some kid in their parents basement. As far as selling goes, I come to know that all the buyer has to do is complain to eBay they never got the goods. How do they proof that? As far as I know they don't. They just write a colorful mail to eBay claiming nothing arrived and they sent the money via paypal and just as easy, the payment gets reversed.

orbitingpluto 8y ago

In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. Obtaining refunds is an easy process but frustrating. Many of the sellers will have rankings that make them seem trustworthy only to disappear completely. And we can also lay blame on the western hemisphere. Canada and USA postal systems bear the brunt of the costs of "free" delivery. They will give these packages low priority. Packages will languish for months and when items finally arrive, it can be difficult to arrange payment with the seller after a refund.

spiralx 8y ago
> In the last two years, I've found that about 1 in 4 of my purchases from China will never arrive. I tend to use AliExpress for buying things directly from China. It's not always the easiest site to use if you want to make complex queries, but I've only had three packages out of a couple of hundred purchases not arrive - one the seller resent, the other two I flagged as not having arrived and got my money back pretty quickly - the site keeps your payment in it's own escrow service, only releasing it to the seller when you confirm receipt.
icebraining 8y ago
Can't say that's my experience, buying from the EU. They can take a while, but I've only had a no-show once.
ballenf 8y ago
I wonder if there's anything unique about your situation or just a lot of bad luck. Are you buying generally higher-end items? What does the tracking reveal in terms of where in the process the item disappeared? In the US or China? Or was it just never tendered for delivery? I've bought a lot of stuff from China on ali and ebay, but no single item over $30 in value. So far I'm at 100% in terms of delivered items. A lot of crushed packaging, but no damaged items. Maybe 95% in terms of on-time delivery.
- orbitingpluto 8y ago
  I have had good experiences with items that cost over $50. They tend to arrive quickly. For instance, a tray of CPUs was shipped to me in less than 36 hours for $10 total shipping. For me, it is the inexpensive items with free shipping that seem to be the most risky. I also probably bid on auctions rather than fixed prices items more than the average person.

bitL 8y ago

I've sold quite a few older "premium" things (>$1000) over eBay and didn't have any issues so far. Things I did no longer need like older computers, GPUs, drones, cameras, synths etc. I however always took photos of the package in the final stages of wrapping up, showing what exactly I shipped (together with serial numbers if available), including when it was ready for shipping in case anything scam-like arose. Maybe the price level guaranteed nobody wanted to commit that much money for scam?

stirlo 8y ago
You've just been lucky so far. All those photos, serial numbers and the likes will mean almost zero to ebay if a buyer ever raises a dispute.
stevekemp 8y ago
>Maybe the price level guaranteed nobody wanted to commit that much money for scam? I think you've just been lucky, after all the whole point of buyer-scams is that they buy something, then raise a complaint and get a refund. The end result is that the buyer has your item, and has their money returned. Sure they might need some available money, but they don't lose out.

setquk 8y ago

It’s not that bad. I sell a lot of stuff and have had no problems with scammers other than a couple of people doing a buy it now and then wanting stuff shipped to Lagos etc and payment via money order. You just cancel the sale and relist then. The real risks are couriers in my experience. eBay success: 1. Avoid GSP 2. Sell only inside your region 3. Mark and photograph everything sold and keep the serial numbers. 4. If there’s any risk of something packing up, sell it spares or repair. Doesn’t affect the final value. 5. If someone pulls one just cancel the sale and move on. 6. If someone picks up from you take a signature. 7. If you do a buy it now, tick the immediate payment box.

DrScump 8y ago
If someone picks up from you take a signature. Why? It offers you no seller protection whatsoever. Even a photo of the person picking it up wouldn't qualify. If you do a buy it now, tick the immediate payment box If it's ship-only, yes.
- setquk 8y ago
  ebay seller protection is pointless either way as the decisions are arbitrary. The receipt offers you protection as in if you have to take the buyer to small claims court or defend yourself then you are covered for transfer of goods. If you're a private seller, selling items under $20/£25 it's not worth arguing. Unless you're selling volume, don't even sell the items just throw them away or give them to someone. Also run a mule bank account. All money in and out goes through an empty account which you transfer in and out of paypal. Never link a card to it. No arbitrary charges or refunds can be taken then. If ebay have a problem with you they can come to your door and do it via official legal paths. They usually hire a debt collector here in the UK who will fuck off instantly if you file an SAR with them and ask for court documents (I had a run in with them a few years back after they didn't receive a fees payment I made due to a system problem) But honestly there are so few problems out there really.
pjc50 8y ago
> If there’s any risk of something packing up, sell it spares or repair. Doesn’t affect the final value. This is rather surprising, as I'd expect this to halve the prices of items.

jjeaff 8y ago

I use eBay frequently as a seller and buyer. If I don't need it fast, and I want it cheaper, I'll use eBay. As a seller, I have very rarely had issues with buyers. I always sell via buy it now and I usually am able to get a price comparable to what I would have gotten on Amazon. I find that Amazon is not ideal for one off, used items. eBay tends to be better.

robocat 8y ago

> Nothing about their site has changed in 20 years, and they're waiting to die, like Yahoo. I'm from NZ and I suspect our local equivalent (TradeMe) has the same systemic problems: * Horrific UI flaws. * Adverts. Everywhere. It's like they don't want me to use the site. * A new version of the UI for mobile browsers (a replacement for the broken mobile browser version), that breaks all their links within emails * Automated emails sent at 4 o'clock in the morning (I complained and was told it was so they could use their servers efficiently). * Please please let me filter for NZ only - so I can choose not to have drop shipped items if I want it this week... I also use eBay.com.au and it is sweet to use in comparison to our local TradeMe, but TradeMe is the incumbent that everyone uses...

blattimwind 8y ago
Somehow eBay's core business seems to be trying to force me to use something not-eBay. The horrendous UI, unresponsive servers, bids being lost like every other auction, the easiest features like watchlist being outright broken 50 % of the time, watching items randomly not working, random 500/"oops" errors, broken search, tons and tons of ads (THIS IS A PAID SITE FFS) and so on make me think that they don't want to make money. UX wise; I don't think it's possible to do worse than "Your bid of X has been submitted" followed by "This auction has ended. Sold for X-1.". Don't expect users to come back soon if you keep doing this to them!
H1Supreme 8y ago
> Automated emails sent at 4 o'clock in the morning Turn off your e-mail notifications during sleeping hours? Pretty certain we all get e-mails at all hours of the day.

Angostura 8y ago

I sell quite a lot, but only on a Buyer collect basis and I always make it clear that the buyer can inspect and then pay cash if satisfied.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

Interesting that the public perception of trust has degraded so much as a seller. I've been a member since 2003 and buy small bits and bobs on there most weeks and go through phases of occasionally selling things maybe a couple of times a year when I need space / money - most recently an old computer and some guitar pedals. I've only ever had a problem as a seller twice in all those years - one scammer insisting the cheque was in the post and demanding that I send the item immediately (and leaving bad feedback when I didn't) and another reporting the items being faulty despite being (incredibly cheap) untested vintage electronics for spares. Neither time was I left out of pocket and I'd more than happily sell stuff on there again. But I have heard the horror stories and appreciate that I may have just been incredibly lucky. That said, a few years back I did trip some kind of threshold and was automatically upgraded to a business account, which means that my "business" (aka home) address now appears prominently on all my listings. Apparently ebay have no way to downgrade it again and have asked me to just create a new account - throwing away 15 years' worth of positive feedback in the process...

dec0dedab0de 8y ago
a few years back I did trip some kind of threshold and was automatically upgraded to a business account, which means that my "business" (aka home) address now appears prominently on all my listings. Apparently ebay have no way to downgrade it again and have asked me to just create a new account - throwing away 15 years' worth of positive feedback in the process... Did they reach out to you? Did they threaten to ban your account for not listing as much as before? I cant imagine going through the effort to do a clean up of accounts, but not have a way to fix them. Not even a manual one.
e40 8y ago
My impression is that if you sell something of higher value, the scammers come out in droves. I tried to sell a DSLR through them, and the same scammer kept winning the auction and it took weeks to get out from under that bogus bid. I ended up selling on craigslist. Yeah, I had a few scammers, but they are easier to identify on CL, IMO.
- 8y ago

rusk 8y ago

> I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet Amazon's site is quite flawed as well. It's a lot better but not by much. Etsy seems a better proposition but for whatever reason they limit the types of stuff that they sell. Facebook seems to be coming on the scene now though their offering is more like classifieds than auction.

blattimwind 8y ago
> Amazon's site is quite flawed as well. It's a lot better but not by much. Amazon's UX is far from perfect but the site at least works. eBay's site is so completely dysfunctional I'm almost surprised that people still manage to complete a significant amount of transactions on there.
- rusk 8y ago
  In my experience, Ebay is "just good enough" to do the buying I've been doing recently. It's not good but it does "work". Amazon is an altogether more structured and reassuring experience, but you don't have all the stuff you get on Ebay.

imgabe 8y ago

I've sold a few things on eBay and never gotten scammed. Maybe it's just random luck, but it's nowhere near the 100% scam-rate that posts like this lead you to believe.

brokenmachine 8y ago
Me too. I've sold maybe 30 items from $50-$1000 in value and not been scammed yet.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Key word here is "yet"

pavs 8y ago

I have never used eBay to buy anything. Though visited the site several times to look up random items. Regarding "Collections", I just visited their websites out of curiosity and looks like it's right on the front page and very prominent unless I am missing something.

rconti 8y ago

I've been using eBay since ~99. Bought and sold probably 50 or 100 things over that time; so I'm hardly a power user, but I've never come close to being scammed. You have to keep your wits about you, sure, but it generally works pretty well. It helps that I'm generally selling personal stuff I don't need/want anymore, so the risk is relatively low (I've only had a couple of expensive sales where I sold things worth over $1500). On the other hand, if I was a store where profit margins were king and a scam could really hurt me, I'd probably have a better system and better intuition about scams as well.

IOT_Apprentice 8y ago

Your comments regarding change in 20 years is rather over the top. I used to work at eBay and there has been massive change to the platform both internally and on the UI front. There were major changes rolled live to site in terms of search, mobile and web/desktop. Behind the scenes, there was movement from in-house to open source technology in a major way. Movement from 30k windows servers, to linux cloud (w/250K VMs on openshift), to docker to kubernetes. Moves on the client facing code from new implementations in java(raptor), then to node.js and more. eBay has embraced open source and also open sources many of their solutions as well.

jonhendry18 8y ago

"I'm surprised Amazon or even etsy hasn't been able to destroy them yet" About 8 years ago I used Amazon to sell a bunch of my old books. Worked great. Last year I tried to start doing it again, and it's a giant pain. Yesterday I tried setting up a new account and they aren't letting me add anything for sale to inventory because of some supposed undescribed problem with my credit card (which works fine for purchases). So.. Amazon has its own problems.