Too much power to the buyer

[fetzerveeble]

No doubt there'd be many posts like this.  Sorry.

So recently I've put up a few items as I begin to clear out a house.  I've been frustrated with selling on eBay before and thought I'll test the water first to see what's changed, for better or worse.

Seems to be just the same; disappointing.  The buyer still has too much immunity.

I sold a set of bedside draws.  Sent a message immediately after the auction end with contact info for local pickup.  Advised of times when I would be at the house for collection and they could select a time to suit them.  Heard nothing back.  I set cash as an option for payment so I didn't send an invoice straight away.  I have found in the past that messages added to the invoice go unnoticed because the invoice is so poorly formatted.  Anyway, I waited 3 days for a reply.  I then sent the invoice and another separate message informing them that in 24 hours I would open a non paying bidder case unless I heard from them.  Nothing.

So the case has since been closed and all is well.  During that whole experience, I kept wondering if they were planning on leaving some negative feedback.  If they had, well from what I've read it's not easy to have that removed, and eBay prefers the buyer to leave a follow up feedback instead.  Can they still leave feedback?  I still have the option, except it can only be positive, and that would be a lie.

So it gets me thinking.  The buyer had 5 items for sale.  Should I outbid on all of them and not pay.  Leave 5 negative feedbacks which would push their score way down.  It might even spell the end for my account but who cares, it'll impact on them and that's the objective.

I've also got an item that was purchased from someone not local and ignored the condition where I said I needed to be provided with a day AND time for collection (they wanted it couriered) so I've requested to cancel the purchase but I have to wait for them to approve.  I'm sorry, it's my item in my possession, I don't need their approval to cancel an auction when they didn't meet the condition of purchase.  But eBay puts the control in their reach.

That item (portable air con) is about to be tossed into a skip I've had delivered to my back yard where I'll be throwing quite a lot of good items into.  Stuff that wouldn't get me more then a few hundred dollars but my need for selling was not to make money, but to pass on useful items cheaply.  I'm not going to waste my time with eBay if they think the buyer experience is more imporant then the seller experience.  One is just as important as the other.

And now, they want to penalize the seller with more fees if performance drops.  Performance that can be manipulated by buyers.

So well done eBay.  You just lost that tiny amount of final value fees from me that you could have gotten easily if you just let me leave negative feedback on a buyer.  After all, a seller will still likely want to sell an item to someone with a small number of negative feedbacks.  Instead, buyers like the first one I mentioned now have a non payer marked against them, and so what .. no one will know about it because they're protected.

Rant over.

[fetzerveeble]

Good advice. I admit I didn't give them a thought this time around. Last house I did exactly that for everything.

[egglesdtp · Accepted solution]

Great listing.

[springyzone]

A few things are striking me when I look at the ad.

First is I live in Vic too but have never heard of where this item is, so am thinking it must be rural, which means-smaller audience of possible buyers.

Two, it is fairly cheap, the ebay suggestions showing under it are all substantially dearer & your unit looks to be more modern & better than some of them, so it's not price that is the problem. In fact if you doubled the price, people being people, they'd probably think it was a more desirable item & better quality.

Three, the ad is very clear but also slightly.. I don't know if confrontational is the right word.. but as if you maybe you're fed up with time wasters (which is probably true).

If the house is near a fair sized town, you could still go the garage sale route & see how it works, though you'll need a few signs as well.

My experiences have made me cynical too. About a year ago I advertised (for a daughter) some garden mulch as free  & the phone rang non stop. When stuff is free, people are all over it, whereas if you charged even $1, I suspect they'd hold back sometimes. 

So if you have a garale sale but have a few items that are free, you might get a few more people coming out. They probably won't buy anything but at least a few things will be off your hands.

Then there are the op shops. That's where a lot of our stuff went after the garage sale.

[kitschkoven · Accepted solution]

Agreed about skewed towards the buyer. Does Ebay consider that *US* sellers are *THEIR* buyers?

I would say don't give up. Good luck, I hope your items sell. 🙂 Get money!! $$$

[fetzerveeble]

Baranduda is a suburb of Wodonga. So there's a decent population around me.

Very fed up. I agree the ad is direct, but there are too many humans these day that need things spelled out to them. The winner of that auction believed having it couriered would be cheap. I sent back a list of 5 similar items within 50kms of his location that would have been half the price of the air con + courier cost.

Baranduda has a yearly community based garage sale event in May. I don't have the time to wait for that. I need the house empty. I agree a garage sale would be a sensible thing but there's still just as much of a guarantee the items will sell as there is for eBay.

Everything is boxed in original boxes so the scavengers at the tip will latch onto the items which will end up in the tip shop.

I still don't understand why I have to wait for the buyer to agree with the cancellation even though they haven't paid yet.

If eBay was a government, surely it would be overthrown by now. heh

[aysel.r · Accepted solution]

ebay does not want you to know this, but they are not above the law. just because they hide behind uneducated people in the philipines who are behind a computer screen does not mean you can not get to them. dont even bother contacting ebay just contact the department of fair traiding and the financial industry ombudsman and you will balance the power in favor of the seller

[fetzerveeble]

Good advice. I'll remember that.