3 cheers for Ebay

[3415len]

eBay’s decision to make tracking compulsory has reduced claims from buyers to a trickle , stopped the scammers in there tracks WELL DONE EBAY.

NOW LET’S CLEAN UP THE SELLERS WHO CLAIM THEY ARE LOCATED IN AUSTRALIA

Many overseas sellers have multiple sites selling exactly the same product from the same city or town within Australia, once they get to many negatives they just shut that one down  and open up another.

Most items are shipped directly from Overseas , that’s fine as long as the Buyer knows that , sometimes the buyer has to wait more than a month to get there product.  EBAY SELLER GOING ON 20 YEARS

[mytreechange]

I don't disagree about the overseas sellers as such, but there's very little chance eBay will do anything about them.

As far as tracking being compulsory, it's not, although sellers can receive defects for not uploading valid tracking to those items sent via a tracked method.  

Untracked letter is still an option, so tracking is not compulsory for all items.

[sandypebbles]

If you have been using eBay for 20 years you would know

The estimated delivery date is shown to buyers before they buy, so they are well aware how long they will be waiting for the product to arrive

Where the seller is registered is shown on their feedback page, so they buyer is aware, if they care about how they are buying from and can be bothered looking

Is there a point to your yelling at other members here?

Most of whom are already very well aware of the things you are yelling about

[sugar249]

With 20 years experience and you still don't have the facts.

Tracking is not compulsory.  Even if you yell your cheers.

It is easy to see who is chinese, so why ban them,  

So whats the point of your rant accept to highlight that you can yell.

[springyzone]

You're not wrong about the deceptiveness of some sellers.

It's a constant complaint on these boards.

It would help a lot (or at least a little bit) if seller registration location was there in the main ad, along with supposed item location.

It's not hard to find as such, but many buyers don't even reealise item and seller location are not one and the same thing.

The estimated date of delivery is there in the main ad though and if buyers just opened a claim for items not received if that date passes, they would be better off. So many just don't read up the terms & conditions for help when things go wrong.

Ebay could do more to make the seller/item location more transparent & maybe one day they will, but at the moment they haven't. I guess it is money to them & they don't really care if we buy from an Australian seller or a seller elsewhere. So it isn't top of their priorities.

[davewil1964]

Springy, if buyers aren't checking country of registration there is a good chance they aren't checking feedback either.

Which is why this occurs.

Australians are seen as easy marks as they go for lowest price without doing any due diligence.

Yes, countess, I know you have said this many times, more elegantly. Maybe neither eloquence nor blunt speech will clear the $ signs in some buyers' eyes.

[springyzone]

Dave, I agree with you. I'd say a sizeable chunk of the people browsing ebay do not go further than the actual ad.

That is not all down to greed. Many just genuinely don't realise that the actual comments are there, available to read. 

So they may see seller name and a number after it but they assume a % score of, eg 97% is pretty good.

That's if they see the seller name at all. I have browsed ebay on my phone in the past (not that recently) and the one thing I noticed was I could see the item price, location and estimated arrival date easily but I remember thinking-who is the seller? It wasn't immediately obvious.

I also think it never occurs to a lot of casual buyers that the seller & item location are not the same thing.

So some of it is definitely down to buyers not doing much of an investigation & some of it is down to what features ebay chooses to highlight. It is always going to be item, price etc as they are in the business of promoting sales.

I don't know what the answer is. It is easy for us to say-be more diligent. But newbies often miss things even when they think they are being cautious.

All I know is it is best for any site to make things as easy & as clear as they possibly can. 

[*sons_n_daughters*]

It's possible that buyers who use a computer, rather than the app, don't realise that it's now a 2 step process to get to the feedback page. First you click on the number, which then takes you to the bottom of the ad page, and you see the last 3 feedback given, then you have to click see all feedback to go to the actual feedback page. I don't know what ebay were thinking when they brought that in. It's extremely annoying. I know it's only an extra click of the mouse, but it's annoying and pointless. Buyers may not be bothered to do that extra click.

I've finally got Mr S&D to check the feedback page. He was looking at something yesterday and the feedback page said China, but the location said somewhere in Melbourne. The ETA was Feb 9-12. We're in regional NSW. It wasn't the cheapest, but he went ahead and bought it. It was only something like $18. I said if it doesn't arrive on time, open a dispute. Which he'll get me to do. We use Parcel Collect for all parcels and I've not received a notification of a parcel coming yet. It's now the 8th. They have a one day handling time.

[love_of_cars]

The tracking may have helped but now it's Australia Post which is the problem.  I've had a few parcels over the past few weeks which simply show as 'Pending' in status, with no tracking history, and the recipient has received them.

As well, there's been a few parcels which have ended up going to entirely different countries (eg. places in Europe) when being sent to the US.

And also, I've had a couple of parcels take three months to get to the US, suggesting they were sent by sea, which AP were entitled to do due to congestion / flight cancellation back in the recent 'dark days' even though I paid for air mail.

And to top it off, the AP customer service people insist that 'Standard' international parcel sending doesn't include tracking once handed over to the other country's postal service, yet tracking usually shows them going to local sorting stations and the suburb where it ended up.

So it's becoming very much still open to scamming!

[cam-2793]

I reckon there would even be a few who don't even read the ad. Just the title and the photos. People have no attention span or ability to delay gratification any more.