@ereal666 wrote:
Ebay also now also allowing far too much "junk" to be sold, and some of it is clearly fraudulent.I have had two items delivered this week which were junk, with one being a complete fraud.
All out of China.
EG: Listed tail light for Mercedes, "guaranteed to fit model".
Item arrived, looks same, start to fit and find that although the ends fit, the middle is actually 5mm too thick, and thus could NEVER be fitted without modifying the vehicle.
I cannot be the first to complain that this item is a dud.
They suggest post back, but once item fitment has started, cannot be removed without breaking item to extract it (because fitment clips are single use).
Yes, there is junk on eBay. Yes, there are fraudulent items on eBay. eBay is not the seller, but rather it is an electronic distribution platform (EDP) - an online marketplace on which sellers sell items under eBay's terms and conditions.
eBay don't police each listing. There are without question some fraudulent sellers. Quite a lot of the advice given on the Buying board here is to help buyers who've bought something where fraud of some sort is involved. eBay have an Avoiding seller fraud page, but even though eBay talks about zero tolerance for fraud, that's sheer flimflam. They don't put in the resources to properly deal with fraud; they don't have processes in place for proper investigation; and perhaps the most obvious problem is that eBay don't have the ability and authority to address fraud in most cases with sellers registered in China (because of China's very different approach and legislation concerning IP).
That means that buyers must be diligent in checking for the warning signs of a fraudulent listing. (See this post for details.)
@ereal666 wrote:
Ebay does not allow negative feedback, so naturally ALL sellers get reasonable ratings.
Have you perhaps confused allowable feedback for buyers with allowable feedback in general? Buyers can certainly give negative feedback. The last negative feedback you gave to a seller was more than a year ago, so it's possible that you haven't tried to leave a negative in the interim but have heard that sellers can't give negative feedback... To clarify, buyers on eBay can only have positive feedback now (if they are only buyers), because sellers can only give positive feedback or no feedback. Buyers, however, can still give positive, neutral, negative or no feedback.
Spoiler
seller returned payment advising through pay pal, no communication to buyer Seller: {seller's eBay ID} (
)
seller returned payment advising through pay pal, no communication to buyer Seller: {seller's eBay ID} () Hence, "ALL sellers get reasonable ratings" is very much not the case.
@ereal666 wrote:Finding that better to go for sellers away from Ebay and deal directly with real businesses.
That's certainly an option. As long as you exercise due diligence in buying from individual businesses, and pay by credit card or via PayPal, you have some good protection in the event of a problem, addressed in the allowed timeframes. For the record, I buy from a number of online businesses all over the world; I look for good quality, good service, good range, and am usually more than satisfied.
@ereal666 wrote:
Any wonder Amazon is picking up business.
Amazon globally is astonishingly successful, but their Australian store is astonishingly underwhelming. They have neither the range nor the prices to tempt me with anything so far, in stark contract to amazon.com, amazon.co.uk., amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.fr, amazon.de, etc. (Well, amazon.es has a smaller range than I'd hoped, but así es la vida.)
While it's possible that amazon.com.au will balloon - and I know that some are predicting that it will do so within about... what? 7 or so years? - so far it has failed to impress and it hasn't made the anticipated dint in Australian retail shops, thank God. I do know that the very last thing I want is for shops owned by Australians, run by Australians, etc., to become chalk powder under the foot of Amazon.
