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When it rains...

Terry Yager

Veteran Member
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
8,763
Location
Saginaw, MI, USA 48601
What is it about eBay? I have been dealing on there for several years with no bad experiences until now. All of a sudden, I have 3 non-paying bidders, 2 non-shipping sellers, and one who shipped the wrong item, and hasn't responded to my emails to that effect--all in the same week? Is it the full moon, or what?

--T
 
I agree. I used to buy and sell on eBay a lot... but, I think it's just gotten so big that they can't, or won't, patrol it anymore... complaints usually go unanswered from the eBay staff. I slowed down buying when I bought what I thought was a decent laptop on there, and it turned out to be a complete piece of junk... then bought a 'new' laptop battery which turned out to be used, then a Duron cpu which I never did receive... that was all within a month's time. When I was selling on there, I always went out of my way to describe items honestly, and would always (even though I didn't have to) refund the person's money if they were disatisfied.

eBay is a fairly risky thing these days, I rarely bid on anything anymore. not only the bad sellers and bidders, but when you search for computer stuff these days you get hundreds of hits from people selling 'way special, god-like boot disks' or 'top secret information on buying laptops below wholesale', etc... mostly spam ads

that's one of the reasons I wish more people would support sites like
http://ave13co.com/
sure, you're not gonna find the little old lady who only used her Kaypro to write letters for church, selling the whole thing for 10 dollars, but at least if the auction were connected directly to the vintage computer community, you could trust people a little more.
 
I just keep a strict limit on how much I'll spend on eBay for an item. Very rare is it that I'll bid over $20.00 for anything. I try not to bid any more than I can afford to lose, like any other form of gambling. BTW, all of the above problems were eventually worked out, with only one negative experience. One of the non-paying bidders left me a negative feedback in retaliation for reporting him to eBay. Kinda sucks that even deadbeat bidders are allowed to leave feedback like that.

--T
 
The last ebay auction I won was for a computer cleaning kit that wa s suposed to be new and was opened with a key piece missing (the door that holds the batteries in a mini vac). I told the seller about this and she refunded my money+shipping and told me to keep the gear (had a floppy head cleaner and some other usefull stuff).

Besides that and a broken monitor last year (got a refund) I have not had any serious problem that was not resolved fast and to my liking.

I think my rating is 61 positive (purchases) over the last 2 years or so mostly the last year. Ebay is still good to me.
 
Terry Yager said:
One of the non-paying bidders left me a negative feedback in retaliation for reporting him to eBay. Kinda sucks that even deadbeat bidders are allowed to leave feedback like that.

I had a seller leave me a negative after I'd given her a negative. I reported her to eBay (don't remember exactly how) and they bounced her from eBay and deleted my negative.
 
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