
Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it. - DanHulton
http://blog.danhulton.com/2012/11/01/fine-ebay-heres-your-two-dollars-i-hope-you-choke-on-it/
======
jeffyee
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 =)

~~~
wbharding
Bonanza.com (the site I've been building for about four years now) has become
one of the largest non-eBay marketplaces by scooping up sellers like you & the
OP. We're now up to 25,000 active sellers and 4 million listings by virtue of
having seller-friendly policies.

Admittedly, there is enough gray area in marketplace transactions where
determining "right and wrong" can sometimes prove difficult. But I like to
think that we start from a neutral POV, rather than the "buyer is always
right" mentality that eBay has increasingly gravitated toward.

~~~
callmeed
You run Bonanza? Cool, I have a bill for you.

2 years ago I caught a lady selling handbags (that she didn't really have)
from your site. I caught her because she was having people pay through an
account with our service (nextproof.com).

Guess who had to eat the chargeback fees? _I did_

Guess who had to call other people, inform them the handbag they ordered as a
Christmas gift was bogus, then listen to them cry? _I did_

All that to say, if you (or anyone else) has a successful marketplace, shady
folks will swarm to you and you will _have no choice_ but to figure out buyer
and seller protection policies.

~~~
mcantor
Wow. It never occurred to me that when you provide a service like that,
someone could use it to literally ruin Christmas.

That is heavy.

~~~
mertd
Don't make critical purchases from random people on the Internet? We should
never blame the victim, nevertheless everyone should be thaught a basic level
of "Internet street smarts".

------
jkubicek
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.

~~~
davedx
Yep, I sold a load of books through Amazon a while ago, made a decent amount
from them.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
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 :-)

------
luke_s
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>

[2] - <http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/>

[3] - <http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html>

~~~
damncabbage
<http://gumtree.com.au> is on the rise for things like your bookcase, but I
agree, the market on eBay is much larger.

~~~
Adirael
That's eBay's property too.

~~~
damncabbage
Really? Ouch. :(

------
soult
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
I hate ebay/paypal just as much as most people but:

[http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&...](http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&Query=2528&Domain=Refund_Request&From=1468585&format=1)

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/cancel-transaction-
process.h...](http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.html)

Granted it's buried in their help system, but it's there.

~~~
makomk
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).

------
xoail
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.

------
purge
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.

------
danek
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
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> here.

~~~
damncabbage
... And it's apparently owned by eBay. Nevermind. :(

------
srik
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?

------
kenperkins
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.

~~~
arrrg
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.)

~~~
megablast
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
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.)

------
admiralpumpkin
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.

~~~
hkmurakami
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
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
I had no idea eBay worked like this. The whole strategy doesn't make much
sense if buyers don't know about it.

------
DanHulton
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.

------
benguild
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
Pretty sure you can still get charged back with Amazon.

~~~
brigade
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.

------
jamesu
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.

------
vitiell0
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.

------
tlb
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.

------
cleer
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.

------
ameen
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.

------
CJefferson
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.

------
jser
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.

------
ShabbyDoo
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.

------
FPSDavid
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.

------
sarah2079
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
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."

------
GigabyteCoin
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
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
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.

------
clarky07
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)

------
latchkey
The author mentions Kijiji ... which eBay owns.

------
mindslight
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
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
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
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
The choice you made was between the two options they gave you. Either outcome
is part of their system, and perfectly fine by them. There was also third
option wherein you notify them that the debt is invalid because no services
were rendered, and that it is not your responsibility to convince their
systems and processes of that fact.

~~~
mcantor
This is true, but who has the time and energy to fight every stupid Kafkaesque
battle like this?

~~~
mindslight
You're right, I would have been better off making this point in the Comcast
thread instead of the $2 ebay one. :P

------
troels
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.

------
susanhi
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.

------
xm1994
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?

------
sbierwagen
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.

------
kghose
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.

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

------
robryan
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.

~~~
domness
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
Had same problem, but not since I started requiring immediate payment.

------
guynamedloren
Way to go, adsense: <http://grab.by/hdEo>

------
zakshay
This is a timely thread for me. I've been working on an idea called Auctionful
- <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.

