10 ms·

Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

292 points by DanHulton 14y ago

kenperkins 14y ago
Using eBay these days feels like playing World of Warcraft. If you're a high level eBay user, it's a fantastic place to move goods, but god forbid someone new signs up to buy or sell something. Just like what it must be like to sign up and play World of Warcraft for the first time.
- DanHulton 14y ago
  Yeah, there are all kinds of tools and procedures available to you but not made obvious, and all kinds of unwritten rules and guidelines to be aware of that you're never told about. Things you only learn because you get burnt once (or more). And this applies equally to WoW and eBay, definitely. At least in WoW you generally have a guild to let you know in advance what mistakes you're likely to make. On eBay, you're on your own.
  - robryan 14y ago
    Also rules change between regions, in AU eBay they encourage an email address on the listing for support. In the US the API will give you some abstract message about policies which you have to go away and guess yourself what it might be (turned out to be the email address)
- akkartik 14y ago
  At the risk of going off-topic, this is yet another example of regulatory capture at work: as systems evolve they often forget to cater to outsiders. Codebases exhibit a similar dynamic. Open source projects need to track how long ago their newest regular contributor joined. I think they'll find the results illuminating.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Eh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lucky, but selling stuff on eBay (which I have done a grand total of three times during four years or so) always seems to work out for me. In summer I sold my year old iPad 2 with a broken glass cover (otherwise fully functional, the 32GB/3G model) for €349 (someone bid €350 but told me after the auction that they thought the iPad was not broken – I was already writing off the sale at that point but the next bidder happily paid and left a very positive review). That’s just crazy! I thought I could get €100 or so tops, not half the original retail price! Selling a camera and an iPod went similarly well. It probably goes wrong sometimes, though probably in a small minority of cases. And really, those $2 for listing the product really aren’t the end of the world. (Also, eBay has since forever been very explicit about those fees and that they have to be paid regardless of what happens. There is no way you can miss that when putting a product on there.)
  - DanHulton 14y ago
    I mentioned it below, but just to reply specifically here: eBay is very specific about fees that have to be paid regardless of sale, that's cool. I'd understand it totally if the auction just failed to be successful or if I'd backed out or whatever. But when you fail that hard to provide a good product or service and people ask you for a refund, you give it to them. I've done it cheerfully for accounts up to a hundred dollars in fees even. This is just two bucks, and it's more the principle of the thing than the actual money anyhow. I didn't just not sell my phone, I wasted weeks of time trying to fight their system to do it, and lost probably a good hundred dollars of resale value due to timing.
  - megablast 14y ago
    If you do sell broken stuff, mention it in the TITLE of the ad. It is very annoying having to go through an entire listing to find out it is broken. I have had no problems selling and buying on ebay, in Australia and the UK. Maybe US is worse?
    - arrrg 14y ago
      Don't accuse me of something I didn't do. I very clearly marked the iPad as broken in its title. It was also categorized as such. I tried it out: When you search for iPads you have to explicitly mark a checkbox to even make broken iPads (including mine) appear in the search. I'm still somewhat mystified how someone looking for a intact iPad could even have stumbled across my iPad. You have to be pretty explicit about wanting to see broken stuff on eBay. (Resolving that issue, by the way, was actually a bit annoying. The mistaken buyer wrote me an e-mail, pleading me to not give her a negative review and asking for cancelling the sale. At that point you have to ask them to tell eBay that they mistakenly bought the product, otherwise you won't get your fees back. Offering the product to a lower bidder, however, is very painless and it did all work out in the end.)
- Adirael 14y ago
  Have you played World of Warcraft? Is easier than ever to get into it from scratch. Cheaper (all expansions minus the last
CJefferson 14y ago
I recently tried to sell a Samsung Galaxy Tab on eBay, and had a similar experience. The second chance buyer, on the second listing, was the first person who was actually willing to buy the product and at that point the procedure went smoothly. However, it should not take until the second buyer of the second listing, and if it is going to take that long ebay should indeed make it easier to get to someone who will actually buy my item.
robryan 14y ago
eBay has listing fees, of course you are going to be up for them regardless. Personally I would just set a reasonable price buy it now with immediate PayPal payment required, no need to waste your time then with anyone who hasn't already sent money your way.
- DanHulton 14y ago
  Actually, if your auction doesn't sell, you can get most of your fees refunded. There are, however, some fees that they don't refund, for whatever reason, and those are what are leftover here. And honestly, I don't fault them for that part specifically. I used their service which has fees as advertised, okay cool. But what wasn't advertised was the incredible anti-seller bias, the terrible scammers I'd have to fight, and the absolutely awful customer service I'd have to endure. Normally when a company fails to provide a product that hard, you can ask for your money back and get it.
- domness 14y ago
  I've had a number of attempts at adding a "Buy it now" and some scammer from Nigeria (every time) ends up "buying it" and sending phishing emails. Only to have to wait again to put it up for sale after a few days.
  - chockablock 14y ago
    Had same problem, but not since I started requiring immediate payment.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    Does that work with immediate PayPal required? How do they get around that req?
jser 14y ago
Same experience. I've also heard from many that after the sale, the buyer complains about an issue to PayPal and is able to get their money back.
benguild 14y ago
Yup, I've been writing about how eBay's gone to shit on my blog. Furthermore, between PayPal and eBay's fees, it's like 10% of your sale price now! … Better just to sell via Amazon and use their fulfillment service.
- nym 14y ago
  Pretty sure you can still get charged back with Amazon.
  - brigade 14y ago
    Of course you can. But for now, scammers seem to be relatively rare compared to eBay. And maybe, just maybe Amazon has better dispute resolution and anti-scammer policies than eBay/Paypal.
purge 14y ago
Same experience here. Once I found the 'block other countries and people with zero feedback' option I sold a few phones successfully at a good price (don't even try selling without setting that option). A few weeks ago I attempted to sell an iPhone 4S. The first buyer pulled out with some pathetic excuse about his amplifier breaking. I re-listed and the second buyer didn't pay with some equally unlikely excuse about his daughter accidentally buying it. eBay doesn't penalise non-paying buyers anywhere near enough, It's a huge waste of everybody's time, especially with time-sensitive sales.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
xoail 14y ago
I tried selling my car on ebay motors and was a victim of spammers bidding on my car. I would get bids but within 2 days ebay would delete it automatically and email me saying bid was invalid. The whole bidding cycle went in vain so I re-listed again. This time I din't get any bids but I still ended up paying eBay $49 listing fees after numerous emails. eBay has become insane.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
vitiell0 14y ago
This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.
mindslight 14y ago
I don't get why the default action of most people is to feel compelled by whatever a company's accounting system tells them to do. Both this and that also-popular cable box story. There are two autonomous sides to every relationship. If you don't value your ability to use ebay again in the future at more than $2, give their customer service department a good-faith 15 minutes of your time to fulfill their elective processes. If you can't come to an agreement with that reasonable time expenditure, tell them to go screw.
- bduerst 14y ago
  The problem with that is that they can forward it to a collection agency, whom when told to screw off, replies by screwing with your credit score.
  - mindslight 14y ago
    So at that point you repudiate the debt again, this time to the collections agency. If they insist on unilaterally publicly claiming you owe money without any sort of actual proof, take them to court for slander. Clearly the buck stops somewhere, as I can't just call up a collection agency and tell them that bduerst owes me $1 for responding to his HN comment.
    - DanHulton 14y ago
      The fact that they only offer phone support is not a company doing its fair share to try to connect with me over problems. It's them putting up roadblocks to try to avoid having to deal with me. Given that, I don't feel I have the obligation to attempt to sit through their various roadblocks. It was honestly far easier and satisfying to just give them the two bucks and then report the facts of my experience onto the internet. Plus, with any luck someone thinking about selling on eBay in the future will run across this post, think twice, and be saved the trouble I was. So I feel pretty good about that too.
      - mindslight 14y ago
danek 14y ago
eBay is a great place for scammers to get free stuff! every few years, my girlfriend gives eBay another chance and tries selling something. Every single time, she gets scammed. Each time, the buyer claims he didn't receive the goods or received the wrong thing. eBay automatically sides with the buyer and immediately refunds their money. In cases where the buyer claims they received the wrong thing, they either fail to return it or return something different. Furthermore, sellers cannot give negative feedback to buyers so there is no concept of buyer reputation. On top of this, you will still be charged for the listing. Basically never use ebay.
- damncabbage 14y ago
  I've used eBay to buy and sell furniture locally with some success. This is, however, a very small niche that is starting to be better served by http://gumtree.com.au http://gumtree.com.au here.
  - damncabbage 14y ago
    ... And it's apparently owned by eBay. Nevermind. :(
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  I've never had that problem. Ship with delivery confirmation and insurance and you're safe.
jeffyee 14y ago
A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed. I sold some iTunes gift cards and provided the redemption code from the card after I received payment. We both left positive feedback for each other (he already had 18 feedback). A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse. Worse still, Paypal charged ME $50 more because of the chargeback! Despite my sending them the code (which they requested, and through ebays messaging system), I had to have delivery confirmation from a shipper to prove I sent it. Even though they have the messages proving the delivery/receipt, too bad for me. I tried calling paypal, and that got nowhere. They said something like "sorry, it will cost $200 to investigate the chargeback further, so it's probably not worth it". I told them I'd write it off to my not understanding their policy on "seller protection", but at least do something about the scammers account. Of course they said they couldn't, nor could the refund any of the fees. So now I'm out the $30 for my item, $50 more because paypal incurred a chargeback, plus ebay fees, plus the guy got positive feedback and went on to do this to other people! Totally incredulous. Instead of blogging about it though, I've decided to build a company to compete with ebay. Wish me luck =)
- DanHulton 14y ago
  If you ever launch it, let me know and I will do my utmost to promote it. If you'd launched already I would have happily sold my iPhone through you. There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.
  - shabble 14y ago
    > There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried. Oddly enough, that's been tried at least once: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pa...
    - UntitledNo4 14y ago
      Thanks for that. The last paragraph is pure genius.
jamesu 14y ago
I tried selling a Mac on eBay once. First attempt I got a time waster, second attempt I got a con artist, third attempt my account got suspended. eBay is great for buyers, a horrific minefield for sellers.
admiralpumpkin 14y ago
Solution Only use Buy It Now ever. Require Immediate Payment. Not only are the fees lower for Buy It Now than for auctions, but there's no way for buyers to game you. The listing will sit until someone actually pays you.
- TillE 14y ago
  As someone who uses eBay to buy specific out-of-print books, I vastly prefer the Buy It Now option, as long as the price is reasonable. I'm not really looking for incredible bargains, so auctions are just annoying. With some items you might not know how much they're worth, but it's easy enough to determine the going price of a used iPhone.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Speaking of buy it now, I find it moronic that the buy it now button disappears when even one bid has been entered for the item. This weekend I bid for an item, then 1 hour later decided that I wanted to pay the 10% extra for buy it now, discovered to my dismay that the buy it now option was gone, thought that the seller had manually removed it, got annoyed and retracted my bid, then saw the buy it now button come back (!) and then managed to buy it now. I have no idea why they'd make the behavior like this...
  - mcantor 14y ago
    It's to incentivize buyers to Buy It Now. If you know that Buy It Now disappears as soon as someone bids, then you're more likely to Buy It Now because if you don't Buy It Now, you can't buy it later; you can only bid on it later, and then you might not get it. So if you want it, eBay wants you to Buy It Now. Buy It Now.
    - jkubicek 14y ago
      I had no idea eBay worked like this. The whole strategy doesn't make much sense if buyers don't know about it.
    - unfed 14y ago
luke_s 14y ago
I wanted to provide somewhat of a counterpoint – I have been using e-bay (Australia) for about 7 years. I sell all kinds of stuff ranging from a broken bookcase for $1, which I didn’t want to haul to the tip, all the way up to a boat for $950. I also run a small business selling items via a website and my e-bay account [1][2]. Overall I’ve found my e-bay experience to be very positive. I’ve only had one person who I suspected of scamming me, when they claimed they didn’t receive the item I posted. The vast majority of users are just normal people looking to pick up a bargain. It helps that some of my items are pick up only and that I am not selling electronics. Every few years an article like this pops up and I get concerned and start looking at other places to sell my products. What I inevitably find is that no other auction site has the users base that e-bay does, so my items inevitably don’t sell, or the price is significantly lower than what I would get on e-bay. It’s possible to build a better experience than e-bay, but up until now nobody has managed to do it. Finally, I think what the writer of the article was looking for was an ‘unpaid item dispute’. He needed to open once against the original bidder, and if they didn’t don’t pay within a certain time limit, and then I believe e-bay will refund the fees. E-bay also records unpaid item disputes against buyers and will limit what they can do. [3] [1] - http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp [2] - http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/ http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/ [3] - http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html
- DanHulton 14y ago
  OP here. Glad eBay is working out for you! Honestly, there are a lot of tools and useful techniques for sellers to get a positive experience, but they're just hidden or you only seem to learn them after you've gotten burned already. As a seller who hasn't been on eBay for many years though, it's just a very harsh experience filled with hidden pitfalls. And I was able to submit unpaid item disputes successfully for the majority of the oustanding fees or I'd have been on the hook for closer to $70. However, there was a final $2 that they refused to refund because certain selling fees are un-refundable for some reason, and that's what I got stuck with in the end.
  - excerionsforte 14y ago
latchkey 14y ago
The author mentions Kijiji ... which eBay owns.
tlb 14y ago
Coming into a market as a new seller is always hard. The established merchants have already figured out who the thieves are, so the thieves generally target the new sellers. The established merchants don't want new sellers there, so they elbow them out in various ways. Your experience would also be bad the first few times selling at a flea market or a street corner. Only with a fair bit of experience can you get your profit margin above zero.
jkubicek 14y ago
Scammers, confusing auction settings, limited integration with paypal despite owning them, terrible invoice generation, image uploads that don't work without Flash, etc. I despise eBay. That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing label for you, plus deduct shipping charges from your payout. Scammers are mildly annoying, but they waste very little of your time and don't cost you any money. I've sold a few iPhones and an iPad on Amazon and it has been great. I'll never sell items anywhere else if I can possibly help it. Edit: in addition to the iPhones/iPad, I've sold a few games and other electronics on Amazon. Out of maybe 10 sales, two were "bought" by scammers. Amazon sends me an email saying that someone purchased my item, but they may be a fraudulent account. Do not send anything until Amazon confirms that they are valid. It's such an easy, friendly process.
- DanHulton 14y ago
  I never even knew you could. Guess I'll check that out. Thanks!
- mayneack 14y ago
  I believe you can also sell electronics TO Amazon. Probably at a reduced price, but I got several hundred dollars in amazon credit (equal to cash for my personal use) for an iPhone once. It was absurdly easy.
- davedx 14y ago
  Yep, I sold a load of books through Amazon a while ago, made a decent amount from them.
  - thibaut_barrere 14y ago
    Seconded - I sold between 200 and 300 of my old books on MarketPlace a while back. I reached the point where I wrote a little (Shoes) Ruby app that uses a barcode reader and a headless browser to automate the selling :-)
- 14y ago
FPSDavid 14y ago
I was pretty frustrated when I sold my iPhone 4 when the 4S launched, had a winning bidder, who then never paid or contacted me. Couldn't leave negative feedback on them at all, and they continue to bid on stuff they don't intend on actually paying for, with sellers none the wiser that the bidder is a shitty person.
xm1994 14y ago
I've been a long time eBay user and have also had issues over the past year with a couple of unpaid items and having to relist. The annoying part was not being able to give the buyer negative feedback, allowing him/her to waste someone else's time. What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?
kghose 14y ago
In real auctions, when you bid you can not renege (otherwise the whole thing would fall apart). So why does eBay allow a bidder to bid and then not buy? That's ridiculous.
napierzaza 14y ago
Also if a seller tells you to keep waiting or that they resent the item you didn't receive, NEVER let it go past 45 days. Because after 45 days you can't even leave negative feedback on the seller much less try to fight their scam. Even if you do go to the trouble of getting into their system (which filters auctions older than 45 days) you will get a canned response of NO.
sarah2079 14y ago
So a big part of the problem seems to be that sellers can no longer give buyers bad feedback when it is appropriate. Does anyone know the motivation for this rule change? I can't think of a type of fraud that this would prevent, but it seems like they must have been targeting something when making this change.
- randomnewacct 14y ago
  Buyers were afraid to leave honest feedback on sellers, due to the threat of retaliatory feedback. Some listings actually came close to extorting positive feedback, with high volume sellers bluntly saying things like, "You can't hurt us, we already have over 10000 positive feedbacks, so do as we say."
ShabbyDoo 14y ago
Why doesn't eBay provide better ways for buyers to increase the belief of sellers that they will follow-thru on their obligations? I'm thinking of something along the lines of "earnest money" requirements common for real estate transactions. Could eBay require buyers to put 10% of their maximum bid in escrow via Paypal? If a buyer flaked out, he would lose his 10% to the seller as compensation for the time wasted. To implement such a scheme, eBay could at first offer sellers the opportunity to discount items won by buyers who made escrow deposits. Those buyers who didn't want to play along could bid as they do today albeit at an economic disadvantage. Eventually, eBay could allow sellers to require escrow. Even as a buyer, I would be happier if escrow was required because I would be less worried about shill bidders and others who run-up prices with no intention of paying. Of course, this scheme requires that all parties trust eBay/Paypal to act responsibly -- something the comments in this thread suggest is far from a given.
sbierwagen 14y ago
I just sold a variable autotransformer on ebay. "Just", as in, two hours ago. Went fairly well, but my god ebay's integration with UPS is a complete clusterfuck. It was far, far easier to manually create a shipment on ups.com than trying to get ebay and UPS to communicate.
ameen 14y ago
I had a similar, yet worse experience compared to this, and had my account suspended (an account from 2006!!) for not paying (after listing) when I didn't get a proper payment page. The UX is totally confusing as well, and I paid $6 with hopes that my account would be reinstated, but to no avail. Ebay is a dinosaur and deserves to die a horrible death, it doesn't do what it says - make it easier to sell & buy. Gumroad and others in this space are the future.
clarky07 14y ago
This is ridiculous. They tell you ahead of time it cost money to list the item. Then they charge a % of the sale. He still had an auction. Surely he knew it was at least possible to have an auction fail. I just sold my 4s when I got my 5 for 350 and had no problems at all. He got a bit unlucky, they refunded everything but the listing fee, and he gets really pissed at them over 2 bucks? eBay has to balance buyer vs. seller needs and that is not easy. Without the buyers you wouldn't have the market to sell it. Take the refund and try again or sell it on Craigslist. I bet you have more scammers there. (I tried Craigslist first and then settled for eBay after being asked to mail the phone to an overseas cousin 5 times)
srik 14y ago
A valid (but unchecked) point made in the comments from that post - >... if you had actually sold it there, you’d have to pay the Ebay final value fee of like 5%. Then the Paypal transaction fee of like 7%. Then if you want the money the Paypal withdrawal fee of another like 6%. Wait, why am I paying the same company 3 times for 1 transaction?
soult 14y ago
The fact that you can't leave negative feedback as a seller caught me off guard too. I understand that there are scammers on Ebay, that's just the way it is. But Ebay cares so little bit about its sellers, that it takes away their only defense. This just makes me just mad, especially since you have to pay all kinds of fees to list an auction. Story time: I sold some eletronics to a guy in Italy. After it arrived, he accused me (in a Google Translate-based English message since he didn't speak German, despite bidding on an article with German description) that I sent a defective item and requested part of his money back. I explained to him that I tested it before sending, and that I would (despite not being required to) offer a full refund, but only if he sent the item back. If it turned out to be really defective, I even offered to pay all shipping costs. The buyer then messaged me again, saying that it miracously worked after he "repaired" it, and since I did not send him a refund, he left me negative feedback. I tried to contact him twice, asking why he decided to keep the item but still give negative feedback, but he never responded. Only then I tried to give him negative feedback too, but to my surprise Ebay does not allow that. Had I known that before, I would have never ever even used Ebay. Anyway, I contacted Ebay support, but they said that they do not want to remove the feedback, even though their FAQ states they can remove feedback in situations like this.
ck2 14y ago
I hate ebay/paypal just as much as most people but: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&Query=2528&Domain=Refund_Request&From=1468585&format=1 http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&#38... Solved, done. Your $2 will return to you. If your buyer agreed to cancel your transaction or didn't respond, you'll receive a credit to your seller's account for the final value fee within 7-10 business days of closing the case. If you want a refund for your credit, see Requesting a refund of your eBay credit balance. http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.h... Granted it's buried in their help system, but it's there.
- makomk 14y ago
  That's just for the Final Value Fee. He did that already, or he'd have been on the hook for more like $50 (eBay charges through the nose in fees, particularly for consumer electronics).
cleer 14y ago
I had a surprisingly similar experience from the other side. I purchased an iPhone 4 off of eBay and realized after receiving it that it was locked to the wrong carrier. I reviewed the auction and confirmed that the seller had listed an unconditional return policy (which I had specifically looked for while scanning auctions just in case ). The seller ended up refusing to honor the return policy and taunted me to contact eBay with it, who then simply refused to enforce the return policy. I was thankful in this situation that sellers can't leave negative feedback because I was able to leave negative feedback without anxiety over possible retaliation, but I can see how it'd be really annoying if I were a seller dealing with a dishonest buyer.
susanhi 14y ago
I've had better success with eBay after using their buyer requirements option. It lets you ban users who do not meet your requirements from bidding. As a result, my last batch of sales (3 computers and a few other items) had all of the bidders paying immediately upon completion of auction. Whereas my previous batch of sales when I did not know about this option, I had 3 time wasters who never posted payment.
zakshay 14y ago
This is a timely thread for me. I've been working on an idea called Auctionful - http://www.auctionful.com http://www.auctionful.com . Its still in an early stage - but you can signup and use it if you want. * It lets people run auctions on their website. * It ensures that the seller gets paid for the winning bid. The payment details are stored in a credit card vault when the bid is made. * It uses the seller's account Stripe account to manage all payments. * It verifies the seller's phone and email. And in cause of disputes, both parties are expected to resolve it themselves. I've been incorporating feedback I've gotten so far to change the product, so feel free to comment on it.
guynamedloren 14y ago
Way to go, adsense: http://grab.by/hdEo http://grab.by/hdEo
GigabyteCoin 14y ago
As for all of the second chance auctions being "ignored", I think it's common practice for 99% of ebayers to completely abandon the idea of winning a particular item (and moving on to another) the very second that they notice they have been outbid. "Oh, well!" is what most of them say.
- megablast 14y ago
  I get suspicious of second change emails. Why did the original buyer not want it? What did they find out? It is probably from having my scam detector turned up to high, because of stories just like this. And also bidding on multiple items at once.
  - DanHulton 14y ago
    Ugh, I never even thought of that. It would be nice to have received a "no thanks" from even one of them from the I think six I sent out though. Not so say that I think they "owe" me that, but it would have done a lot to dissuade me from suspecting that most of the bids on my item were fraudulent.
troels 14y ago
You could always sell through specialised phone recyclers, such as gazelle.com. You won't get the same price for it, but you won't get the hassle either.
marban 14y ago
I launched http://www.flipso.com http://www.flipso.com together with Idealab the other week, mostly because of experiences like these.
DanHulton 14y ago
As an update, eBay reached out to me and returned my money as a site credit, with a long personally-written letter. Which is, ultimately, not all that cool honestly. I'll be writing a follow-up about it, but the tl;dr is that it shouldn't take a popular internet rant to get things like this resolved.

292 points by DanHulton 14y ago

Using eBay these days feels like playing World of Warcraft. If you're a high level eBay user, it's a fantastic place to move goods, but god forbid someone new signs up to buy or sell something. Just like what it must be like to sign up and play World of Warcraft for the first time.

DanHulton 14y ago
Yeah, there are all kinds of tools and procedures available to you but not made obvious, and all kinds of unwritten rules and guidelines to be aware of that you're never told about. Things you only learn because you get burnt once (or more). And this applies equally to WoW and eBay, definitely. At least in WoW you generally have a guild to let you know in advance what mistakes you're likely to make. On eBay, you're on your own.
- robryan 14y ago
  Also rules change between regions, in AU eBay they encourage an email address on the listing for support. In the US the API will give you some abstract message about policies which you have to go away and guess yourself what it might be (turned out to be the email address)
akkartik 14y ago
At the risk of going off-topic, this is yet another example of regulatory capture at work: as systems evolve they often forget to cater to outsiders. Codebases exhibit a similar dynamic. Open source projects need to track how long ago their newest regular contributor joined. I think they'll find the results illuminating.
arrrg 14y ago
Eh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lucky, but selling stuff on eBay (which I have done a grand total of three times during four years or so) always seems to work out for me. In summer I sold my year old iPad 2 with a broken glass cover (otherwise fully functional, the 32GB/3G model) for €349 (someone bid €350 but told me after the auction that they thought the iPad was not broken – I was already writing off the sale at that point but the next bidder happily paid and left a very positive review). That’s just crazy! I thought I could get €100 or so tops, not half the original retail price! Selling a camera and an iPod went similarly well. It probably goes wrong sometimes, though probably in a small minority of cases. And really, those $2 for listing the product really aren’t the end of the world. (Also, eBay has since forever been very explicit about those fees and that they have to be paid regardless of what happens. There is no way you can miss that when putting a product on there.)
- DanHulton 14y ago
  I mentioned it below, but just to reply specifically here: eBay is very specific about fees that have to be paid regardless of sale, that's cool. I'd understand it totally if the auction just failed to be successful or if I'd backed out or whatever. But when you fail that hard to provide a good product or service and people ask you for a refund, you give it to them. I've done it cheerfully for accounts up to a hundred dollars in fees even. This is just two bucks, and it's more the principle of the thing than the actual money anyhow. I didn't just not sell my phone, I wasted weeks of time trying to fight their system to do it, and lost probably a good hundred dollars of resale value due to timing.
- megablast 14y ago
  If you do sell broken stuff, mention it in the TITLE of the ad. It is very annoying having to go through an entire listing to find out it is broken. I have had no problems selling and buying on ebay, in Australia and the UK. Maybe US is worse?
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Don't accuse me of something I didn't do. I very clearly marked the iPad as broken in its title. It was also categorized as such. I tried it out: When you search for iPads you have to explicitly mark a checkbox to even make broken iPads (including mine) appear in the search. I'm still somewhat mystified how someone looking for a intact iPad could even have stumbled across my iPad. You have to be pretty explicit about wanting to see broken stuff on eBay. (Resolving that issue, by the way, was actually a bit annoying. The mistaken buyer wrote me an e-mail, pleading me to not give her a negative review and asking for cancelling the sale. At that point you have to ask them to tell eBay that they mistakenly bought the product, otherwise you won't get your fees back. Offering the product to a lower bidder, however, is very painless and it did all work out in the end.)
Adirael 14y ago
Have you played World of Warcraft? Is easier than ever to get into it from scratch. Cheaper (all expansions minus the last

CJefferson 14y ago

I recently tried to sell a Samsung Galaxy Tab on eBay, and had a similar experience. The second chance buyer, on the second listing, was the first person who was actually willing to buy the product and at that point the procedure went smoothly. However, it should not take until the second buyer of the second listing, and if it is going to take that long ebay should indeed make it easier to get to someone who will actually buy my item.

robryan 14y ago

eBay has listing fees, of course you are going to be up for them regardless. Personally I would just set a reasonable price buy it now with immediate PayPal payment required, no need to waste your time then with anyone who hasn't already sent money your way.

DanHulton 14y ago
Actually, if your auction doesn't sell, you can get most of your fees refunded. There are, however, some fees that they don't refund, for whatever reason, and those are what are leftover here. And honestly, I don't fault them for that part specifically. I used their service which has fees as advertised, okay cool. But what wasn't advertised was the incredible anti-seller bias, the terrible scammers I'd have to fight, and the absolutely awful customer service I'd have to endure. Normally when a company fails to provide a product that hard, you can ask for your money back and get it.
domness 14y ago
I've had a number of attempts at adding a "Buy it now" and some scammer from Nigeria (every time) ends up "buying it" and sending phishing emails. Only to have to wait again to put it up for sale after a few days.
- chockablock 14y ago
  Had same problem, but not since I started requiring immediate payment.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Does that work with immediate PayPal required? How do they get around that req?

jser 14y ago

Same experience. I've also heard from many that after the sale, the buyer complains about an issue to PayPal and is able to get their money back.

benguild 14y ago

Yup, I've been writing about how eBay's gone to shit on my blog. Furthermore, between PayPal and eBay's fees, it's like 10% of your sale price now! … Better just to sell via Amazon and use their fulfillment service.

nym 14y ago
Pretty sure you can still get charged back with Amazon.
- brigade 14y ago
  Of course you can. But for now, scammers seem to be relatively rare compared to eBay. And maybe, just maybe Amazon has better dispute resolution and anti-scammer policies than eBay/Paypal.

purge 14y ago

Same experience here. Once I found the 'block other countries and people with zero feedback' option I sold a few phones successfully at a good price (don't even try selling without setting that option). A few weeks ago I attempted to sell an iPhone 4S. The first buyer pulled out with some pathetic excuse about his amplifier breaking. I re-listed and the second buyer didn't pay with some equally unlikely excuse about his daughter accidentally buying it. eBay doesn't penalise non-paying buyers anywhere near enough, It's a huge waste of everybody's time, especially with time-sensitive sales.

vitiell0 14y ago

This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face. Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.

xoail 14y ago

I tried selling my car on ebay motors and was a victim of spammers bidding on my car. I would get bids but within 2 days ebay would delete it automatically and email me saying bid was invalid. The whole bidding cycle went in vain so I re-listed again. This time I din't get any bids but I still ended up paying eBay $49 listing fees after numerous emails. eBay has become insane.

vitiell0 14y ago

mindslight 14y ago

I don't get why the default action of most people is to feel compelled by whatever a company's accounting system tells them to do. Both this and that also-popular cable box story. There are two autonomous sides to every relationship. If you don't value your ability to use ebay again in the future at more than $2, give their customer service department a good-faith 15 minutes of your time to fulfill their elective processes. If you can't come to an agreement with that reasonable time expenditure, tell them to go screw.

bduerst 14y ago
The problem with that is that they can forward it to a collection agency, whom when told to screw off, replies by screwing with your credit score.
- mindslight 14y ago
  So at that point you repudiate the debt again, this time to the collections agency. If they insist on unilaterally publicly claiming you owe money without any sort of actual proof, take them to court for slander. Clearly the buck stops somewhere, as I can't just call up a collection agency and tell them that bduerst owes me $1 for responding to his HN comment.
  - DanHulton 14y ago
    The fact that they only offer phone support is not a company doing its fair share to try to connect with me over problems. It's them putting up roadblocks to try to avoid having to deal with me. Given that, I don't feel I have the obligation to attempt to sit through their various roadblocks. It was honestly far easier and satisfying to just give them the two bucks and then report the facts of my experience onto the internet. Plus, with any luck someone thinking about selling on eBay in the future will run across this post, think twice, and be saved the trouble I was. So I feel pretty good about that too.
    - mindslight 14y ago

danek 14y ago

eBay is a great place for scammers to get free stuff! every few years, my girlfriend gives eBay another chance and tries selling something. Every single time, she gets scammed. Each time, the buyer claims he didn't receive the goods or received the wrong thing. eBay automatically sides with the buyer and immediately refunds their money. In cases where the buyer claims they received the wrong thing, they either fail to return it or return something different. Furthermore, sellers cannot give negative feedback to buyers so there is no concept of buyer reputation. On top of this, you will still be charged for the listing. Basically never use ebay.

damncabbage 14y ago
I've used eBay to buy and sell furniture locally with some success. This is, however, a very small niche that is starting to be better served by http://gumtree.com.au http://gumtree.com.au here.
- damncabbage 14y ago
  ... And it's apparently owned by eBay. Nevermind. :(
anigbrowl 14y ago
I've never had that problem. Ship with delivery confirmation and insurance and you're safe.

jeffyee 14y ago

A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed. I sold some iTunes gift cards and provided the redemption code from the card after I received payment. We both left positive feedback for each other (he already had 18 feedback). A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse. Worse still, Paypal charged ME $50 more because of the chargeback! Despite my sending them the code (which they requested, and through ebays messaging system), I had to have delivery confirmation from a shipper to prove I sent it. Even though they have the messages proving the delivery/receipt, too bad for me. I tried calling paypal, and that got nowhere. They said something like "sorry, it will cost $200 to investigate the chargeback further, so it's probably not worth it". I told them I'd write it off to my not understanding their policy on "seller protection", but at least do something about the scammers account. Of course they said they couldn't, nor could the refund any of the fees. So now I'm out the $30 for my item, $50 more because paypal incurred a chargeback, plus ebay fees, plus the guy got positive feedback and went on to do this to other people! Totally incredulous. Instead of blogging about it though, I've decided to build a company to compete with ebay. Wish me luck =)

DanHulton 14y ago
If you ever launch it, let me know and I will do my utmost to promote it. If you'd launched already I would have happily sold my iPhone through you. There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.
- shabble 14y ago
  > There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried. Oddly enough, that's been tried at least once: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pa...
  - UntitledNo4 14y ago
    Thanks for that. The last paragraph is pure genius.

jamesu 14y ago

I tried selling a Mac on eBay once. First attempt I got a time waster, second attempt I got a con artist, third attempt my account got suspended. eBay is great for buyers, a horrific minefield for sellers.

admiralpumpkin 14y ago

Solution Only use Buy It Now ever. Require Immediate Payment. Not only are the fees lower for Buy It Now than for auctions, but there's no way for buyers to game you. The listing will sit until someone actually pays you.

TillE 14y ago
As someone who uses eBay to buy specific out-of-print books, I vastly prefer the Buy It Now option, as long as the price is reasonable. I'm not really looking for incredible bargains, so auctions are just annoying. With some items you might not know how much they're worth, but it's easy enough to determine the going price of a used iPhone.
hkmurakami 14y ago
Speaking of buy it now, I find it moronic that the buy it now button disappears when even one bid has been entered for the item. This weekend I bid for an item, then 1 hour later decided that I wanted to pay the 10% extra for buy it now, discovered to my dismay that the buy it now option was gone, thought that the seller had manually removed it, got annoyed and retracted my bid, then saw the buy it now button come back (!) and then managed to buy it now. I have no idea why they'd make the behavior like this...
- mcantor 14y ago
  It's to incentivize buyers to Buy It Now. If you know that Buy It Now disappears as soon as someone bids, then you're more likely to Buy It Now because if you don't Buy It Now, you can't buy it later; you can only bid on it later, and then you might not get it. So if you want it, eBay wants you to Buy It Now. Buy It Now.
  - jkubicek 14y ago
    I had no idea eBay worked like this. The whole strategy doesn't make much sense if buyers don't know about it.
  - unfed 14y ago

luke_s 14y ago

I wanted to provide somewhat of a counterpoint – I have been using e-bay (Australia) for about 7 years. I sell all kinds of stuff ranging from a broken bookcase for $1, which I didn’t want to haul to the tip, all the way up to a boat for $950. I also run a small business selling items via a website and my e-bay account [1][2]. Overall I’ve found my e-bay experience to be very positive. I’ve only had one person who I suspected of scamming me, when they claimed they didn’t receive the item I posted. The vast majority of users are just normal people looking to pick up a bargain. It helps that some of my items are pick up only and that I am not selling electronics. Every few years an article like this pops up and I get concerned and start looking at other places to sell my products. What I inevitably find is that no other auction site has the users base that e-bay does, so my items inevitably don’t sell, or the price is significantly lower than what I would get on e-bay. It’s possible to build a better experience than e-bay, but up until now nobody has managed to do it. Finally, I think what the writer of the article was looking for was an ‘unpaid item dispute’. He needed to open once against the original bidder, and if they didn’t don’t pay within a certain time limit, and then I believe e-bay will refund the fees. E-bay also records unpaid item disputes against buyers and will limit what they can do. [3] [1] - http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp [2] - http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/ http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/ [3] - http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html

DanHulton 14y ago
OP here. Glad eBay is working out for you! Honestly, there are a lot of tools and useful techniques for sellers to get a positive experience, but they're just hidden or you only seem to learn them after you've gotten burned already. As a seller who hasn't been on eBay for many years though, it's just a very harsh experience filled with hidden pitfalls. And I was able to submit unpaid item disputes successfully for the majority of the oustanding fees or I'd have been on the hook for closer to $70. However, there was a final $2 that they refused to refund because certain selling fees are un-refundable for some reason, and that's what I got stuck with in the end.
- excerionsforte 14y ago

latchkey 14y ago

The author mentions Kijiji ... which eBay owns.

tlb 14y ago

Coming into a market as a new seller is always hard. The established merchants have already figured out who the thieves are, so the thieves generally target the new sellers. The established merchants don't want new sellers there, so they elbow them out in various ways. Your experience would also be bad the first few times selling at a flea market or a street corner. Only with a fair bit of experience can you get your profit margin above zero.

jkubicek 14y ago

Scammers, confusing auction settings, limited integration with paypal despite owning them, terrible invoice generation, image uploads that don't work without Flash, etc. I despise eBay. That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing label for you, plus deduct shipping charges from your payout. Scammers are mildly annoying, but they waste very little of your time and don't cost you any money. I've sold a few iPhones and an iPad on Amazon and it has been great. I'll never sell items anywhere else if I can possibly help it. Edit: in addition to the iPhones/iPad, I've sold a few games and other electronics on Amazon. Out of maybe 10 sales, two were "bought" by scammers. Amazon sends me an email saying that someone purchased my item, but they may be a fraudulent account. Do not send anything until Amazon confirms that they are valid. It's such an easy, friendly process.

DanHulton 14y ago
I never even knew you could. Guess I'll check that out. Thanks!
mayneack 14y ago
I believe you can also sell electronics TO Amazon. Probably at a reduced price, but I got several hundred dollars in amazon credit (equal to cash for my personal use) for an iPhone once. It was absurdly easy.
davedx 14y ago
Yep, I sold a load of books through Amazon a while ago, made a decent amount from them.
- thibaut_barrere 14y ago
  Seconded - I sold between 200 and 300 of my old books on MarketPlace a while back. I reached the point where I wrote a little (Shoes) Ruby app that uses a barcode reader and a headless browser to automate the selling :-)
14y ago

FPSDavid 14y ago

I was pretty frustrated when I sold my iPhone 4 when the 4S launched, had a winning bidder, who then never paid or contacted me. Couldn't leave negative feedback on them at all, and they continue to bid on stuff they don't intend on actually paying for, with sellers none the wiser that the bidder is a shitty person.

xm1994 14y ago

I've been a long time eBay user and have also had issues over the past year with a couple of unpaid items and having to relist. The annoying part was not being able to give the buyer negative feedback, allowing him/her to waste someone else's time. What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?

kghose 14y ago

In real auctions, when you bid you can not renege (otherwise the whole thing would fall apart). So why does eBay allow a bidder to bid and then not buy? That's ridiculous.

napierzaza 14y ago

Also if a seller tells you to keep waiting or that they resent the item you didn't receive, NEVER let it go past 45 days. Because after 45 days you can't even leave negative feedback on the seller much less try to fight their scam. Even if you do go to the trouble of getting into their system (which filters auctions older than 45 days) you will get a canned response of NO.

sarah2079 14y ago

So a big part of the problem seems to be that sellers can no longer give buyers bad feedback when it is appropriate. Does anyone know the motivation for this rule change? I can't think of a type of fraud that this would prevent, but it seems like they must have been targeting something when making this change.

randomnewacct 14y ago
Buyers were afraid to leave honest feedback on sellers, due to the threat of retaliatory feedback. Some listings actually came close to extorting positive feedback, with high volume sellers bluntly saying things like, "You can't hurt us, we already have over 10000 positive feedbacks, so do as we say."

ShabbyDoo 14y ago

Why doesn't eBay provide better ways for buyers to increase the belief of sellers that they will follow-thru on their obligations? I'm thinking of something along the lines of "earnest money" requirements common for real estate transactions. Could eBay require buyers to put 10% of their maximum bid in escrow via Paypal? If a buyer flaked out, he would lose his 10% to the seller as compensation for the time wasted. To implement such a scheme, eBay could at first offer sellers the opportunity to discount items won by buyers who made escrow deposits. Those buyers who didn't want to play along could bid as they do today albeit at an economic disadvantage. Eventually, eBay could allow sellers to require escrow. Even as a buyer, I would be happier if escrow was required because I would be less worried about shill bidders and others who run-up prices with no intention of paying. Of course, this scheme requires that all parties trust eBay/Paypal to act responsibly -- something the comments in this thread suggest is far from a given.

sbierwagen 14y ago

I just sold a variable autotransformer on ebay. "Just", as in, two hours ago. Went fairly well, but my god ebay's integration with UPS is a complete clusterfuck. It was far, far easier to manually create a shipment on ups.com than trying to get ebay and UPS to communicate.

ameen 14y ago

I had a similar, yet worse experience compared to this, and had my account suspended (an account from 2006!!) for not paying (after listing) when I didn't get a proper payment page. The UX is totally confusing as well, and I paid $6 with hopes that my account would be reinstated, but to no avail. Ebay is a dinosaur and deserves to die a horrible death, it doesn't do what it says - make it easier to sell & buy. Gumroad and others in this space are the future.

clarky07 14y ago

This is ridiculous. They tell you ahead of time it cost money to list the item. Then they charge a % of the sale. He still had an auction. Surely he knew it was at least possible to have an auction fail. I just sold my 4s when I got my 5 for 350 and had no problems at all. He got a bit unlucky, they refunded everything but the listing fee, and he gets really pissed at them over 2 bucks? eBay has to balance buyer vs. seller needs and that is not easy. Without the buyers you wouldn't have the market to sell it. Take the refund and try again or sell it on Craigslist. I bet you have more scammers there. (I tried Craigslist first and then settled for eBay after being asked to mail the phone to an overseas cousin 5 times)

srik 14y ago

A valid (but unchecked) point made in the comments from that post - >... if you had actually sold it there, you’d have to pay the Ebay final value fee of like 5%. Then the Paypal transaction fee of like 7%. Then if you want the money the Paypal withdrawal fee of another like 6%. Wait, why am I paying the same company 3 times for 1 transaction?

soult 14y ago

The fact that you can't leave negative feedback as a seller caught me off guard too. I understand that there are scammers on Ebay, that's just the way it is. But Ebay cares so little bit about its sellers, that it takes away their only defense. This just makes me just mad, especially since you have to pay all kinds of fees to list an auction. Story time: I sold some eletronics to a guy in Italy. After it arrived, he accused me (in a Google Translate-based English message since he didn't speak German, despite bidding on an article with German description) that I sent a defective item and requested part of his money back. I explained to him that I tested it before sending, and that I would (despite not being required to) offer a full refund, but only if he sent the item back. If it turned out to be really defective, I even offered to pay all shipping costs. The buyer then messaged me again, saying that it miracously worked after he "repaired" it, and since I did not send him a refund, he left me negative feedback. I tried to contact him twice, asking why he decided to keep the item but still give negative feedback, but he never responded. Only then I tried to give him negative feedback too, but to my surprise Ebay does not allow that. Had I known that before, I would have never ever even used Ebay. Anyway, I contacted Ebay support, but they said that they do not want to remove the feedback, even though their FAQ states they can remove feedback in situations like this.

ck2 14y ago

I hate ebay/paypal just as much as most people but: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&Query=2528&Domain=Refund_Request&From=1468585&format=1 http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&#38... Solved, done. Your $2 will return to you. If your buyer agreed to cancel your transaction or didn't respond, you'll receive a credit to your seller's account for the final value fee within 7-10 business days of closing the case. If you want a refund for your credit, see Requesting a refund of your eBay credit balance. http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.html http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.h... Granted it's buried in their help system, but it's there.

makomk 14y ago
That's just for the Final Value Fee. He did that already, or he'd have been on the hook for more like $50 (eBay charges through the nose in fees, particularly for consumer electronics).

cleer 14y ago

I had a surprisingly similar experience from the other side. I purchased an iPhone 4 off of eBay and realized after receiving it that it was locked to the wrong carrier. I reviewed the auction and confirmed that the seller had listed an unconditional return policy (which I had specifically looked for while scanning auctions just in case ). The seller ended up refusing to honor the return policy and taunted me to contact eBay with it, who then simply refused to enforce the return policy. I was thankful in this situation that sellers can't leave negative feedback because I was able to leave negative feedback without anxiety over possible retaliation, but I can see how it'd be really annoying if I were a seller dealing with a dishonest buyer.

susanhi 14y ago

I've had better success with eBay after using their buyer requirements option. It lets you ban users who do not meet your requirements from bidding. As a result, my last batch of sales (3 computers and a few other items) had all of the bidders paying immediately upon completion of auction. Whereas my previous batch of sales when I did not know about this option, I had 3 time wasters who never posted payment.

zakshay 14y ago

This is a timely thread for me. I've been working on an idea called Auctionful - http://www.auctionful.com http://www.auctionful.com . Its still in an early stage - but you can signup and use it if you want. * It lets people run auctions on their website. * It ensures that the seller gets paid for the winning bid. The payment details are stored in a credit card vault when the bid is made. * It uses the seller's account Stripe account to manage all payments. * It verifies the seller's phone and email. And in cause of disputes, both parties are expected to resolve it themselves. I've been incorporating feedback I've gotten so far to change the product, so feel free to comment on it.

guynamedloren 14y ago

Way to go, adsense: http://grab.by/hdEo http://grab.by/hdEo

GigabyteCoin 14y ago

As for all of the second chance auctions being "ignored", I think it's common practice for 99% of ebayers to completely abandon the idea of winning a particular item (and moving on to another) the very second that they notice they have been outbid. "Oh, well!" is what most of them say.

megablast 14y ago
I get suspicious of second change emails. Why did the original buyer not want it? What did they find out? It is probably from having my scam detector turned up to high, because of stories just like this. And also bidding on multiple items at once.
- DanHulton 14y ago
  Ugh, I never even thought of that. It would be nice to have received a "no thanks" from even one of them from the I think six I sent out though. Not so say that I think they "owe" me that, but it would have done a lot to dissuade me from suspecting that most of the bids on my item were fraudulent.

troels 14y ago

You could always sell through specialised phone recyclers, such as gazelle.com. You won't get the same price for it, but you won't get the hassle either.

marban 14y ago

I launched http://www.flipso.com http://www.flipso.com together with Idealab the other week, mostly because of experiences like these.

DanHulton 14y ago

As an update, eBay reached out to me and returned my money as a site credit, with a long personally-written letter. Which is, ultimately, not all that cool honestly. I'll be writing a follow-up about it, but the tl;dr is that it shouldn't take a popular internet rant to get things like this resolved.