Do you like FREE stuff? Do you like your money refunded and get the product for free? Ebay is an open source scam arena open to anyone.
Why is that? Imagine you are the seller and one of your buyer sends you an email that he/she didn’t receive the item they’ve purchased. What are your options? Have you thought about that before you’ve became an Ebay seller?
I bet not!
Your options are, to refund the money! Nothing else. Why? Because Ebay, who also is the owner of Paypal will always part with the buyer, due to their buyer quality program. The sellers of items can’t even leave a negative feedback for a buyer, yet the buyers can leave all kinds of degrading rating for the sellers.
If your item is sold but the winning bidder has never responded, you have to go through weeks length of process to annul the auction just to get the ebay fee refunded. The buyer won’t even respond to your emails, because they know you can’t leave a negative feedback and can’t damage their reputation. So as the result the sellers loose money and time due to these scamsters.
The other scenario is and where the real scam is. You post an item to the winner using the postal service (standard or signed for delivery) and the buyer claims they had never received the item.
Of course the mail can get lost in the system and they often do. Even if you have a postal proof, it doesn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and here is why.
The post office can’t track it. They have no resources and you also have to give them your original receipt. In the UK the process can only be filed after 21 days has passed and allows them 3 months to investigate. Meaning, three months to missplace your original receipt. Which they usually do. (out of the several cases I had filed a missing package claim I had never ever received money nor response after my original receipt was submitted)
Even if you posted it requesting a signature at delivery, is not enough proof, because anyone could have signed for the post.
Here is my own experience. Through my company we get hundreds of postal packages through the mail every single week. Small packets as they call it in Britain. The post office sorts and collects them in big bins at the office and puts them in jute sacks when I collect them. The labels from the registered packets are pasted to a sheet of paper (the packets are already in the sacks) than I have to sign for all of them at once.
Every week I have several packets in the sacks that don’t belong to me. (Registered and standard). Now it’s up to me to be honest and either take them back to the post office or distribute them to their owners or keep them to myself.
If an ebay seller goes to the post office with their claim. They can tell them it was signed for, but can’t tell who signed for it. Since the package was sent to XYZ, it’s obvious to the post office that XYZ had signed for it, thus the packet is lost. Never will be found.
I am only one of the millions of customers of the post office. Imagine how many more packages gets “lost” every day.
So back to the subject. This is how the Ebay scam works. If an Ebay buyer receives the package, but makes a claim saying he didn’t receive it, Ebay will refund his money off of the seller’s Paypal or bank account. The seller is out of his merchandise and the buyer has the merchandise and his money too.
Talk about making money online!
No protection whatsoever!!!
All I can say is; USE EBAY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
If the buyer feedback rating was in place like used to, that would somewhat create more confidence in sellers. Nova days Ebay is running Free weekend listings, because they don’t have enough business and can’t show consistent growth to their investors. Trying to boost revenue with the pennies they gain with the extra listings.
Instead of re instating the buyer feedback system and support the sellers and not the buyers. Without sellers there are no buyers. But with plenty of items for sale the buyers will come. Ebay, or Cheap bay as many call it became the flea market of the internet. Buyers are flocking to it, but sellers are shying away because of the depressed selling prices. Quality control is lost and scams are increasing, which will lead to loosing even more sellers.
So, Do you want to become and Ebay seller?
Related articles
- Dealing with a Scam on eBay (beast4romtheeast.wordpress.com)
- Ebay: A great place for buyers, not for sellers! (insightfulme.wordpress.com)
- What To Do When You Get Scammed on eBay [Security] (lifehacker.com)
- The High Cost of Selling on Ebay (rubylane.com)
- Online Selling Alternatives to Ebay (computersight.com)
- Open Letter to PayPal: Do the Right Thing (herlein.com)
- Seriously? This Scam Still Happening On Ebay? (crunchgear.com)
