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I sold a laptop on eBay once long, long ago. Someone did the "Buy it now" option but never paid. I'm trying to remember the exact situation (probably more than

I sold a laptop on eBay once long, long ago. Someone did the "Buy it now" option but never paid. I'm trying to remember the exact situation (probably more than 10 years ago), but I had exchanged messages with him several times and he always had an excuse to not pay. Then I noticed he was selling the exact same model of laptop so it was easy for me to realize that he had just "bought" my laptop to remove the listing so it wouldn't compete against his. I messaged ebay support to accuse him but they didn't do anything about it. Since he had made the order, eBay did show me his shipping information so I ordered a "glitter bomb" which was basically glitter in a tube with a spring. I got a very nasty accusatory email from him, but it was very vague. He wouldn't specify what he received, but that he was smart enough to not open it. That's how I knew he got the full effect. I just replied something to the effect of "You never paid me. Why would I send something to you?"

cozzyd 2y ago
I wonder if he was trying to resell your laptop and wasn't going to pay until he got an order for your laptop
- seattle_spring 2y ago
  That’s what I was thinking too. There are whole subreddits setup to work this kind of hustle. These people see nothing wrong with what they do, even going so far as to claim that they’re doing a service to the world. In my eyes, they’re bottom-feeding scum no better than scalpers, car salespeople, or MLM huns.
  - lalalali 2y ago
    …or financial assets arbitrage! (Not /s)
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    "Pure" flippers and drop shippers who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy and a great argument against equivalent financial products.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      >> buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy... Like grocery stores? Department stores? Costco? Buying in bulk and selling smaller lots to consumers over time is the definition of retail sales. If you want to eliminate middlemen and buy only from manufacturers, you better first know/learn chinese, japanese, french, german and spanish. And get a forklift. Most only ship product by the pallet.
      - jenscow 2y ago
        > who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing the ... I think they're saying that is the value added work, which they don't do.
        sandworm101 2y ago
        I dont think so. We might not like dealing with them, but even the most horrible of middlemen still provide liquidity to a market. Amazon got its start as a middleman for books, and was hated for what it did to the retail bookshops, but it did inject liquidity to the betterment of consumers.
        idiotsecant 2y ago
        I think you need to re-read the posts you're replying to. Everyone is specifically saying warehousers add value to the chain. Drop shippers do not.
      - wasmitnetzen 2y ago
        You might want to re-read that post you quoted, your snipped quote inverts the intended meaning.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    >no better than scalpers scalping is entirely rational, there is an item that you can acquire cheap and sell for a lot, that's the basis of every business that exists. yes, at your family home you can expect that people will leave you "your" cookie (actually, not my siblings) but bringing that ethos to the marketplace will lead to disappointment.
    - seattle_spring 2y ago
      > that's the basis of every business that exists No, it's really not. Someone who buys up all of the new PS5s with a script and then re-sells them on Ebay for 2x retails is providing no positive service. Same shit is happening even to publicly reservable campsites lately. I don't believe in Hell, but if there is one then there's definitely a spot reserved in the 7th layer for people who scalp.
- nfriedly 2y ago
  ebay charges something like a 12.5% commission. It's easily over $100 in fees to sell a decent laptop on ebay. So, the seller would have to be charging quite a bit more for that to work out.
  - Tepix 2y ago
    It's not commission free for private sales here in Germany.
anonu 2y ago
I cant believe ebay hasnt been disrupted yet...
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  eBay is interesting. It has consistently high profit margins, but no upward movement in revenue or profit, which peaked over a decade ago, and its returns heavily lag SP500. I’m guessing investors don’t see much opportunity for growth in the online auction business to make it worth dumping a bunch of money just to take market share from eBay.
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    eBay I think had their growth capped once you had Etsy, Amazon FBA, and other options on the field. Your average normie has no interest in the hassle of selling their used stuff (which has, if anything, got harder in my 25ish years using eBay), nor of buying random used staff from anonymous individual sellers. Etsy covers the arts & crafts coded goods (though much is now China dropship). Amazon allows the big merchants to sell to normies who just want to click "buy" without thinking about seller rating risk, when something will arrive, etc. Basically most people have no idea they are buying from not-Amazon, because it says amazon.com and that's good enough. eBay never had the smarts to create that user experience.
    - woleium 2y ago
      Amazon fulfillment, That’s the killer. Why bother with another marketplace when vertically integrated Amazon does it all
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        Because you're a used <pick niche> dealer or a dealer of something that is on the large end of what you can send in "normal" mail. Tires come to mind, even on Amazon very few of them are actually FBA.
  - 2y ago
ninkendo 2y ago
I had the exact experience selling an iMac on eBay about 10 years ago. Buyer clicked buy it now, my listing was removed, they never paid. They deleted their account shortly after (it was some .ru email address.) eBay had nothing to say other than “try again after X weeks”. Why, so it can just happen again? They admitted they have zero protection against it. I deleted my account and sold it on Amazon instead. How anyone puts up with eBay I have no idea.
- csh0 2y ago
  FWIW, eBay no longer works like this. When you put up a listing there’s now an option, enabled by default, to require payment at checkout. This situation may still occur if you are taking offers on an item. In that case the buyer has to pay within 48 hours of the offer being accepted or the listing will become eligible for re-posting.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Our national buy/sell platform (aquired by ebay twenty or so years ago) has a similar system now where they will handle the payments and exchange of currency on confirmation of reception of items etc, I believe it's very successful, but they had to do something because nobody was trusting the site anymore for trading anything valuable.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  I sold quite a few things on Amazon back in the day. Was great for getting things off my shelves collecting dust at a good price. At some point maybe ten years ago they started requiring very invasive identity validation to sell. My account from '98? and good selling karma does not matter apparently, not grandfathered in. Long story short, don't expect Amazon to be more reasonable than Ebay these days.
  - acac10 2y ago
    How is this equivalent?!? In fact, stronger seller identification is what makes the site safer for everyone. I think you're really missing the point of stronger identification on commercial sites. It should be done for sellers AND buyers alike. It would drastically decrease the number of bad transactions if people knew they were no longer shielded by anonymity.
rgovostes 2y ago
Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor. Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
- nosioptar 2y ago
  EBay doesn't care about fraud unless they think you're going to file a charge back with your card issuer, then they're pretty quickto protect their bottom line. I do know for a fact that eBay can kick a seller off very quickly though. I bought a NES shaped raspberry pi a few years back as a gift. The day I got the item, I went to leave the seller glowing feedback, only to find his account was axed (he included NES roms on the SD card).
  - WXLCKNO 2y ago
    I'm banned from eBay since about 2010. Sold a cellphone which my sister shipped without requiring signature, guy just said he never received it. My sister was working at a Telco so we just confirmed that he had actually received it because he put a SIM card into it, proof and everything eBay didn't care. I withdrew the money from my PayPal account before they could claw it back. PayPal still works for me but eBay is amazingly impressive at immediately banning any new account I tried created since then.
    - veunes 2y ago
      Situations like these really annoy me. And the platform's complete disregard is infuriating.
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        when ebay was "invented", i remember reading articles talking about how amazing it was that it actually worked, total strangers would send each other goods and money across the internet. the incredulity was that everybody imagined that there would be more scammers out there than honest people, but there weren't. but what is ebay supposed to do about people who claim they sent things vs people who claim they didn't receive things?
veunes 2y ago
It’s a shame eBay didn’t help out at all
wood_spirit 2y ago
“Then I noticed he was selling the exact same model of laptop so it was easy for me to realize that he had just "bought" my laptop to remove the listing so it wouldn't compete against his” If he got the laptop but didn’t pay, then he is probably selling it. If he didn’t get the laptop, then he was trying to sell it on (for a profit) before he even got it from you?
panick21_ 2y ago
Just 'buy' his and also don't pay. And the resell the one he has.

cozzyd 2y ago

I wonder if he was trying to resell your laptop and wasn't going to pay until he got an order for your laptop

seattle_spring 2y ago
That’s what I was thinking too. There are whole subreddits setup to work this kind of hustle. These people see nothing wrong with what they do, even going so far as to claim that they’re doing a service to the world. In my eyes, they’re bottom-feeding scum no better than scalpers, car salespeople, or MLM huns.
- lalalali 2y ago
  …or financial assets arbitrage! (Not /s)
- potato3732842 2y ago
  "Pure" flippers and drop shippers who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy and a great argument against equivalent financial products.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    >> buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy... Like grocery stores? Department stores? Costco? Buying in bulk and selling smaller lots to consumers over time is the definition of retail sales. If you want to eliminate middlemen and buy only from manufacturers, you better first know/learn chinese, japanese, french, german and spanish. And get a forklift. Most only ship product by the pallet.
    - jenscow 2y ago
      > who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing the ... I think they're saying that is the value added work, which they don't do.
      - sandworm101 2y ago
        I dont think so. We might not like dealing with them, but even the most horrible of middlemen still provide liquidity to a market. Amazon got its start as a middleman for books, and was hated for what it did to the retail bookshops, but it did inject liquidity to the betterment of consumers.
        idiotsecant 2y ago
        I think you need to re-read the posts you're replying to. Everyone is specifically saying warehousers add value to the chain. Drop shippers do not.
    - wasmitnetzen 2y ago
      You might want to re-read that post you quoted, your snipped quote inverts the intended meaning.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >no better than scalpers scalping is entirely rational, there is an item that you can acquire cheap and sell for a lot, that's the basis of every business that exists. yes, at your family home you can expect that people will leave you "your" cookie (actually, not my siblings) but bringing that ethos to the marketplace will lead to disappointment.
  - seattle_spring 2y ago
    > that's the basis of every business that exists No, it's really not. Someone who buys up all of the new PS5s with a script and then re-sells them on Ebay for 2x retails is providing no positive service. Same shit is happening even to publicly reservable campsites lately. I don't believe in Hell, but if there is one then there's definitely a spot reserved in the 7th layer for people who scalp.
nfriedly 2y ago
ebay charges something like a 12.5% commission. It's easily over $100 in fees to sell a decent laptop on ebay. So, the seller would have to be charging quite a bit more for that to work out.
- Tepix 2y ago
  It's not commission free for private sales here in Germany.

anonu 2y ago

I cant believe ebay hasnt been disrupted yet...

lotsofpulp 2y ago
eBay is interesting. It has consistently high profit margins, but no upward movement in revenue or profit, which peaked over a decade ago, and its returns heavily lag SP500. I’m guessing investors don’t see much opportunity for growth in the online auction business to make it worth dumping a bunch of money just to take market share from eBay.
- steveBK123 2y ago
  eBay I think had their growth capped once you had Etsy, Amazon FBA, and other options on the field. Your average normie has no interest in the hassle of selling their used stuff (which has, if anything, got harder in my 25ish years using eBay), nor of buying random used staff from anonymous individual sellers. Etsy covers the arts & crafts coded goods (though much is now China dropship). Amazon allows the big merchants to sell to normies who just want to click "buy" without thinking about seller rating risk, when something will arrive, etc. Basically most people have no idea they are buying from not-Amazon, because it says amazon.com and that's good enough. eBay never had the smarts to create that user experience.
  - woleium 2y ago
    Amazon fulfillment, That’s the killer. Why bother with another marketplace when vertically integrated Amazon does it all
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      Because you're a used <pick niche> dealer or a dealer of something that is on the large end of what you can send in "normal" mail. Tires come to mind, even on Amazon very few of them are actually FBA.
- 2y ago

ninkendo 2y ago

I had the exact experience selling an iMac on eBay about 10 years ago. Buyer clicked buy it now, my listing was removed, they never paid. They deleted their account shortly after (it was some .ru email address.) eBay had nothing to say other than “try again after X weeks”. Why, so it can just happen again? They admitted they have zero protection against it. I deleted my account and sold it on Amazon instead. How anyone puts up with eBay I have no idea.

csh0 2y ago
FWIW, eBay no longer works like this. When you put up a listing there’s now an option, enabled by default, to require payment at checkout. This situation may still occur if you are taking offers on an item. In that case the buyer has to pay within 48 hours of the offer being accepted or the listing will become eligible for re-posting.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Our national buy/sell platform (aquired by ebay twenty or so years ago) has a similar system now where they will handle the payments and exchange of currency on confirmation of reception of items etc, I believe it's very successful, but they had to do something because nobody was trusting the site anymore for trading anything valuable.
mixmastamyk 2y ago
I sold quite a few things on Amazon back in the day. Was great for getting things off my shelves collecting dust at a good price. At some point maybe ten years ago they started requiring very invasive identity validation to sell. My account from '98? and good selling karma does not matter apparently, not grandfathered in. Long story short, don't expect Amazon to be more reasonable than Ebay these days.
- acac10 2y ago
  How is this equivalent?!? In fact, stronger seller identification is what makes the site safer for everyone. I think you're really missing the point of stronger identification on commercial sites. It should be done for sellers AND buyers alike. It would drastically decrease the number of bad transactions if people knew they were no longer shielded by anonymity.

rgovostes 2y ago

Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor. Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

nosioptar 2y ago
EBay doesn't care about fraud unless they think you're going to file a charge back with your card issuer, then they're pretty quickto protect their bottom line. I do know for a fact that eBay can kick a seller off very quickly though. I bought a NES shaped raspberry pi a few years back as a gift. The day I got the item, I went to leave the seller glowing feedback, only to find his account was axed (he included NES roms on the SD card).
- WXLCKNO 2y ago
  I'm banned from eBay since about 2010. Sold a cellphone which my sister shipped without requiring signature, guy just said he never received it. My sister was working at a Telco so we just confirmed that he had actually received it because he put a SIM card into it, proof and everything eBay didn't care. I withdrew the money from my PayPal account before they could claw it back. PayPal still works for me but eBay is amazingly impressive at immediately banning any new account I tried created since then.
  - veunes 2y ago
    Situations like these really annoy me. And the platform's complete disregard is infuriating.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      when ebay was "invented", i remember reading articles talking about how amazing it was that it actually worked, total strangers would send each other goods and money across the internet. the incredulity was that everybody imagined that there would be more scammers out there than honest people, but there weren't. but what is ebay supposed to do about people who claim they sent things vs people who claim they didn't receive things?

veunes 2y ago

It’s a shame eBay didn’t help out at all

wood_spirit 2y ago

“Then I noticed he was selling the exact same model of laptop so it was easy for me to realize that he had just "bought" my laptop to remove the listing so it wouldn't compete against his” If he got the laptop but didn’t pay, then he is probably selling it. If he didn’t get the laptop, then he was trying to sell it on (for a profit) before he even got it from you?

panick21_ 2y ago

Just 'buy' his and also don't pay. And the resell the one he has.