Question about Ebay practices

[IowaDiscGolf]

What do you folks think of sellers who adamantly refuse to leave you your feedback until you - the buyer - have left yours for them? I think it is completely appropriate for the seller to leave positive feedback instantly for the buyer who pays right away.

Feedback has just become a power tool. Leave me good feedback or I'll leave you bad feedback, even if you paid 2 seconds after auction's end.

This irritates me to no end.

Also, what makes people charge upwards of $5 shipping for a single disc? Will such an expensively-shipped disc arrive lovingly packed in bubble wrap and a cubic yard of styrofoam peanuts?

[garublador]

What do you folks think of sellers who adamantly refuse to leave you your feedback until you - the buyer - have left yours for them? I think it is completely appropriate for the seller to leave positive feedback instantly for the buyer who pays right away.

I don't think either should have to leave feedback until the transaction is ended. The seller shouldn't have to leave feedback until they know you got the item and are happy with it. What else prevents a buyer from paying right away and getting the good feedback and then causing all kinds of a ruckus claiming they didn't get the item or that it's not the right one and being really difficult to deal with? The buyer is the first one to know that everything went smoothly.

[ericdmb]

I don't leave any feedback (as a buyer) until I have the disc (or product) in hand. I think that is fair.

[bigs348]

I think as soon as your pay, you've done your part. The seller doesn't need to leave feedback immediately, but they should only really base it off of that criteria. As a buyer, I don't leave feedback until I've received the disc, obviously.

[Blake_T]

there are actually a lot of buyers who scam sellers, which forces sellers to conduct conservative practices.

lying about receiving the item, contacting paypal even though they actually received it, etc.

a local guitar store told me a story of them shipping a guitar off , the person receiving the package, asking the UPS driver to wait for a minute, opening the box, taking the guitar out of the case, putting the empty case back into the box, giving the box back to the UPS driver, "refusing the shipment" and filing an item not received grievance.

paypal/ebay sided with the buyer and refunded the money and the store got an empty case back.

[Glock23]

there are actually a lot of buyers who scam sellers, which forces sellers to conduct conservative practices.

lying about receiving the item, contacting paypal even though they actually received it, etc.

a local guitar store told me a story of them shipping a guitar off , the person receiving the package, asking the UPS driver to wait for a minute, opening the box, taking the guitar out of the case, putting the empty case back into the box, giving the box back to the UPS driver, "refusing the shipment" and filing an item not received grievance.

paypal/ebay sided with the buyer and refunded the money and the store got an empty case back.

I had a very similar experiance. Becuase of this I no longer accept paypal. They person even took a photo of them with the item, and sent it to me just out of spite.

[TexasOutlaw]

there are actually a lot of buyers who scam sellers, which forces sellers to conduct conservative practices.

lying about receiving the item, contacting paypal even though they actually received it, etc.

a local guitar store told me a story of them shipping a guitar off , the person receiving the package, asking the UPS driver to wait for a minute, opening the box, taking the guitar out of the case, putting the empty case back into the box, giving the box back to the UPS driver, "refusing the shipment" and filing an item not received grievance.

paypal/ebay sided with the buyer and refunded the money and the store got an empty case back.

At what point does law enforcement come into play? I never mess with E bay due to seeing friends get defective/broken merchandise which is never fixed. But the shipping also eats your lunch. I understand it costs money to ship, but personally, I can't pay a shipping charge of half of the cost of a product.

I had a very similar experiance. Becuase of this I no longer accept paypal. They person even took a photo of them with the item, and sent it to me just out of spite.

[Blake_T]

the outrageous shipping rates are because of how ebay's fees work.

listing fee + percentage of winning auction price.

if a seller has two choices
a) sell a $50 item for $50 with $3 shipping, they will lose $50 * percentage.
b) sell a $50 item for $3 with $50 shipping, they will lose $3 * percentage as well as have a cheaper listing fee.

it makes sense to gouge on shipping.

[swel304]

Some of the sellers are just out to scam money on shipping. I buy alot of books on ebay. If you look through book auctions you wills see some crazy deals for books like buy it now for .01 if you look close at the fine print they will charge insane amounts for shippping like 13$/pound . Its sellers like this that are out to dupe people then intimidating them into paying with the threat of a bad feedback. Somone with less than 100 feedbacks can have thier feedback percentage severly damaged with one feedback, while the scamer has so many feedbacks one bad one wont change one tenth of a percent.

That said, there are some legitimate reasons for high shipping costs on ebay. #1 ebay's final value fee is way more than it should be. #2 If you accept paypal payments there is another portion of the final value gone. #3 aside from those fees you had to pay to list the item in the first place (if you add this up just 1-3 are already half of the 5$ shipping fee for a 9.99$ item and the seller hasnt even got it in the mail yet) #4 bubble mailers and other packing materials arent free #5 postal fee's are nearly as bad as the ebay raping. Then you have to think that for some of these powersellers they are actually running an ebay buissiness where they are paying people to work for them doing things like packaging and shipping, if they dont charge some kind of handleing fee added to the shipping fee they are cutting into the profit from the actual item which is usually already cut to absolute minimum anyway just so they can compete with prices.Of course you could get it cheaper if you go to walmart and buy it, you are paying extra to be able to shop in your underware.

A good way to tell the two types of sellers apart is what they charge for combined shipping. A good seller will usually charge very little for anything past the first item (just enough to cover the addition ebay+paypal fees). scamers will not list the combined shipping rates and typically will not respond to questions about them.

I understand the argument for leaving feedback after payment is made. Some sellers do that. But overall, its just inviting some people to try to ruin your ebay seller reputation over little things or nothing at all, just for spite. Ive done quite a bit of selling on ebay and have had just about every scam tried on me at one time or another. In the end, holding feedback until it is left by the buyer first is one of the only protections a legit seller has. Paypal almost always sides with the buyer, because if word goes around that buyers are getting screwed people stop buying and ebay looses money.

[roadkill]

As a seller I usually leave feedback within 24 hours of receiving payment.

However if I have reason to believe I'm dealing with a con or some sort of loose cannon I may withhold feedback or in some rare cases not leave feedback at all.

If you're a high volume seller (I'm not) feedback can be a time consuming duty and therefore many may only submit feedback once a week and then submit a hundred or so at a time. This is understandable.

Unfortunately there is a percentage of buyers that are just looking for problems and will be anxious to trash a seller's feedback rating over next to nothing. Also there is fear of the retaliatory feedback as in a buyer doesn't pay for three weeks seller has to file a dispute, payment finally arrives 5 weeks after the sale and if the seller leaves negative feedback on the buyer often times the disgruntled buyer will fire back with baseless allegations.

There are good buyers. There are bad buyers. There are also good and bad sellers. You can't jump to conclusions or paint any group with a broad brush. I'd urge anyone who has a problem with an eBay transaction to contact the other party and give them a chance to make things right before crucifying anyone. If they refuse to be reasonable or don't hold up their end then you do what you gotta do in a professional manner.

Blake correctly pointed out why some sellers sell stuff for a song only to make up the price in shipping. We sellers get nickel and dimed to death by all the fees. I personally don't jack up the price of shipping but I do understand why others might and after some consideration on the subject I don't have a problem with it as long as the shipping costs are made known before the conclusion of the auction. Who submits a bid without first calculating the total cost of the item being sold? If an item costs you $100 why does it matter to you if it's $1 plus $99 shipping or $90 and $10 shipping?

[swel304]

the outrageous shipping rates are because of how ebay's fees work.

listing fee + percentage of winning auction price.

if a seller has two choices
a) sell a $50 item for $50 with $3 shipping, they will lose $50 * percentage.
b) sell a $50 item for $3 with $50 shipping, they will lose $3 * percentage as well as have a cheaper listing fee.

it makes sense to gouge on shipping.

Ebay has actually started a thing to stop sellers from doing this. Using buyers as "shipping police" they want people to report auctions where the shipping seems overpriced. In turn ebay will perform some "investigation" and determine if the seller is gougeing on shipping cost and warn/fine/ban or whatever they feel is appropriate. basically, it makes the consumer feel justice is being served, when it is actually just making sure ebay gets the highest profit possible and in the long run, driving prices up even more because its harder for sellers to avoid the hefty ebay tax.

bottom line, READ EVERYTHING. be aware of what you are agreeing to befor you bid or buy it now. If you feel it is overpriced, you dont have to buy it.

[Blake_T]

people selling are out to make money. people buying are out to save money.

based upon my experiences with the internet, most people aren't observant to read everything in auctions, but it baffles me that people don't look at and consider the posted shipping rates before buying.

when i look at some of the power sellers, they are selling like $20 items for $5 BIN w/ $13 shipping. when i browse their negative feedback i read all these "overcharged for shipping" feedbacks.

if i was a seller i would probably respond "was stupid enough to buy it when the shipping rates were posted."

ebay's rates are a service fee. paying for the service to sell stuff to people wanting to buy stuff that wouldn't have found you otherwise. they also get high spots on google searches that would normally cost $50+ a month in advertising fees. i agree they gouge you any way they can, but people still choose to sell/buy there.

paypal isn't too awful in that their rates are only marginally higher than what it would cost if you had an actual merchant account to take credit cards.

half.com at least has levelled shipping rates, but it's another way that ebay gouges money (especially on the way they handle shipping costs). however, if you are willing to pay $3.25 for what is actually $1.22 in media mail postage fees for a book/cd/movie/video game, at least it's uniform.

[swel304]

if i was a seller i would probably respond "was stupid enough to buy it when the shipping rates were posted."