discussion How to spot a rip off on ebay Part 1

[Guest]

eBay misery

In my very limited experience of eBay, I have learned to avoid it like the plague. Last year after buying a couple of items from traders as 'buy it now' I found my inbox full of messages congratulating me on winning bids that I hadn't made. The idiot responsible had racked up £28k in stupid over the top bids which some naive sellers tried to hold me to. I eventually sorted it out by hours of emails and some tough talking. EBay were no help at all and only reacted at all when I instructed them to close the account saying that they could not do this for six months as it was the subject of dispute.

My advice don't go there at all.

 

[Guest]

One of the worst things about Ebay and Paypal - if you have money in your paypal account and then run into troubles with a buyer/seller, paypal can actually freeze your account. That means you have no access to the funds in there and no real means of easily contacting Paypal. It's not as if Paypal have a great customer support helpdesk working 24/7 and sufficient operators to deal with the huge number of complaints they get!

Also as Kevin mentioned, if all goes well with a transaction and positive feedback is left by both parties then all is well, however if anyone has an issue then it's impossible to actually leave negative feedback or else it will soon descend into a confrontation with the other member retaliating and just putting their side across and leaving comments like - "Paid for item but never received" even if they know full well that it was received and sent with proof of posting, recorded delivery etc.

I find it really annoying after leaving positive feedback where months later the buyer later leaves a disparaging remark for no apparent reason!

I once purchased a Mardave Ministock on Ebay but there was a problem with the item description as the title was missleading R12 / V1R etc - I contacted the seller on numerous occasions and although he was helpful he eventually offered a replacement item - as per the description but wanted to charge double for it! It then descended into him leaving negative feedback and later removing the feedback...