@wan303win wrote:
I've been an ebay member since the 1990's.
I've seen many changes in ebay policy in that time...changes mostly for the benefit of the firm, not too many for the buyers & sellers.
The opening of these info forums could basically be a good idea, if you were allowed to name & shame crooked sellers & buyers, or show the item numbers to which you are referring, however, I've found this is not allowed. Legal reasons I guess.
As I'm recently retired & have lots of time on my hands nowadays, I've been following these boards quite a bit in the past few months.
By having these forums, the main purpose by ebay management appears to be to get members to answer questions that should be referred to ebay to respond to &/or clarify. Must save the boss a lot of staff = more money for management.
Most requests for info appear to be answered by the same group of people, who have an astounding knowledge of the rules & regulations applicable to buying & selling, I've never delved into that side of things, I'm interested only in staying within the law. I note there is a moderator who never appears to buy or sell anything, so I assume they are employed by ebay. (I did ask them that question, but never received a yes or no).
It's a shame that what started out as a great avenue for buying & selling, has just become a cash cow for those in control.
Just thought I'd address the opening post, as well.
It's unfortunate that the forum has declined in the last couple of years, it's been through quite a few incarnations, I've seen 4 since I started posting here, and it was always a vibrant, thriving community, even through all the dramas....until the last couple of years, as participation has declined rapidly (particularly since the link is no longer front and centre on everyone's page, so it can take some digging to find it). For what it's worth, I would love to see more members here, briefly or permanently - this thing works best when you have all sorts of people, from all walks of life, sharing their opinions and perspectives - part of the reason I am here is to have my own opinions challenged and to learn more.
These kinds of forums (i.e. ones that are attached to business services, products etc) are in fact expressly intended to be a free (to eBay) help centre. Most operators (including Lithium) market themselves as a way to engage and build a community, and also as a way to save a bunch of money on help centre staff, which is one of the reasons why I don't really understand why eBay started hiding the link. It's especially frustrating as it's too common for eBay CS to provide incorrect information, often to the detriment of other members. eBay CS also won't advise members of the recourse they may have available to them outside of eBay (eg in order for an eBay CS to tell a member they can report a fraudulent buyer - who has received their money back via a bogus MBG request - to somewhere like ACORN, they would first have to acknowledge that the claim could have been fraudulent).
I think some of the rules are disappointing, for sure. There used to be a long-running thread that was maintained by some very dedicated members expressly for detecting and reporting hijacked accounts, and to help members who had been caught out by scam listings. Their collective efforts and knowledge was invaluable, so it was very disappointing when eBay put a stop to it, and it became almost impossible to provide information about sellers and listings.
The problem eBay has (as I see it), is that they have made their shareholders the primary responsibility, and they are in a position whereby they don't really need to compete for sellers, so they compete for buyers...this neglects their actual customers in a lot of ways, and because of their #1 priority, often results in insincere lip service to both buyers and sellers. One can only hope they'll realise this mistake before it's too late.
