Slashdot Mirror
Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?
prostoalex writes "The New York Times claims eBay can learn a lot from the early Sears catalogs, which promised unconditional returns (postage paid by Sears) in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described. Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
After being around this long, I have a hard time believing they're going anywhere soon. Their model can't be that bad.
The closest real life analogy would be the proprietor of an exhibition hall holding a flea market. If you buy something crappy at the flea market from Joe, the building's owners aren't the ones you have a problem with. All they did was rent space and maybe some tables to Joe so he could set up and sell his stuff.
If you can't deal with this, don't shop on ebay.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Yes.
Ebay is not a retailer. It is a marketplace.
Marketplaces do not need to be perfect, they only need to be better than the alternative.
Ebay is so much better than the real-world alternatives - small ads in newspapers - that people are happy to accept its flaws.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Well if another auction site comes along that doesn't use the borderline-fraud service that is PayPal and offers superior customer service, decades of business history dictates that eBay will surrender to it.
The hard part, as Slashdot proves every day with its uncensored comment system, is making people accountable for what they do online.
-JemThe changing policies are a sign of the times. Nowadays, what eBay does is considered OK. I find nothing wrong with what they do. I would not want to be at fault for some seller's junk, either. eBay still does what it did when it started - to use the old saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure"
42
As someone who runs a large and successful (but non-commercial) auction site myself, I have to ask the following question:
What exactly is ebay supposed to do about it?
Seriously - what can ebay do about problem buyers and sellers? If a buyer or seller flakes out on the other party it's the buyer's word against the seller's. Putting aside the massive amount of man hours that would be needed to mediate disputes, how in the hell can you ever know which person is being honest or if they're both being honest and it was the shipper's fault or someone else's fault? At best, you're just listening to two people's stories and judging which one sounds more believable. That's a pretty poor solution if you ask me.
I mean... I know people complain about ebay and they complain about my site too. But just what exactly do people think we CAN do?! I'm not inside either person's head and I am just a distant third party to the transaction. I give people a forum through which to post, buy and sell with each other. That's all there is to it. I don't know them personally, I dont' process their money and I don't ship their item. How is the auction owner supposed to keep tabs on every aspect of every transaction with all of these parameters that are out of their control?
I'd love an answer, but I'll be fucked if I know.
It always seemed odd to me that Ebay wanted nothing to do with the insurance/escrow and buyer/seller protection processes, and allowed third parties to fill in that gap, while Ebay relies on the auction fees and listing fees, and on their massive volume to make a profit. They definitely should have provided a way from the start for a guarantee, but what are they gonna do for those jets and houses that come up for sale? That's probably what they were thinking -- since they can't really refund the money from super-large purchases, it's not really fair for everyone else. However, they could charge some percentage of the final auction price to provide a "guarantee" of sorts, which would be great.
stuff |
Yes.
It's an auction marketplace, for crying out loud. "eBay" doesn't sell product. Comparison with Sears is apples & mushrooms.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I've bought plenty of stuff on eBay and sold odds and sods too. Like most people who've done more than a few trades, I've been caught out and I know that some people who've bought from me didn't read the item description properly.
However, how is this eBay's fault? Why should eBay be responsible for my failure to check out the items I'm buying or the buyer I'm buying from? Likewise, why should eBay care if my buyer didn't read the item description?
Nanny bloody society.
Nick.
A forum for buyers and sellers to get together. I don't see them as Sears, they are simply a conduit for a buyer to purchase something from one of the many "Sears" who sell on ebay. As a buyer, I do not think I am purchasing from ebay when I buy, thus, I make my own careful choices about who to buy from. As a seller, I don't represent myself as ebay, thus, I expect no trust benefit to come from the name association.
I've bought and sold a few things on ebay and on the net in general. Some deals have been better than others but I can't say that I've ever been burned.
plurvert
It obviously us working. If anything eBay seems to be growing in popularity. People who don't regularly purchase things online use eBay surprisingly. I wouldn't say its hard, but its unusual to not know at least 1 person that doesn't use eBay.
Look. Ebay *is* working. I don't care if it doesn't work in theory, it *does* and *is* working in practice. Yes, theres fraud, but theres fraud on the highstreet too (where there is also mugging, street robbery and car jacking).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
At least not for the expensive purchases, where saving money might really matter.
I bought my wife a present of her favorite bubble bath on e-bay. When it came, it was somebody else's favorite bubble bath. I got in touch with the sender, who apologized profusely and offered to send the right stuff. It never came. And, I never got my money back.
My friend, on the other hand, purchased a guitar on e-bay only to have it be in far worse condition than advertised. He never got his money back, either.
My conclusion is to never spring big bucks for anything on e-bay.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
"with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
Yes.
eBay is wildly popular, continues to grow in ways people don't expect. Go check out their stock growth. While I know that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good company, eBay has had solid returns for the last several years.
If eBay can get away with not providing things like buyer/seller resolution up to this point--I'm guessing they can get away with it for a while to come.
...promised unconditional returns (postage paid by Sears) in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described
So it was basically a free, rental-service for all goods? I can't see how that could be abused.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
I've sold some stuff on ebay and had two returns. One was a 4 disk set of the Alien movies, but the guy returned it about a month after buying it because of "dvd rot". Fair enough.
The second one however, was for an external camera for a mobile phone. They were selling retail for 75 at the time, but I got mine free with the phone. I sold it for 50 (most were going to 35) to a guy. I sent it out, then two weeks after he got it he said it didn't work. I had already tested it, but what can you do? Call the guy a liar? Well, I refunded his money and when I got the camera back, I plugged it in and it worked perfectly. What I think really happened was that he found out he paid too much and that the quality was crap and wanted to "return it to place of purchase for a full refund".
So after that episode, I simply put a disclaimer at the bottom that there will be no refunds and all sales are final. I try to be as honest with descriptions as possible so there *should* be no problems.
Sears makes money off of selling products in their catologs.
vs.
Ebay makes money off of people listing items to sell.
The big difference is that Ebay makes money even if the products don't sell, Ebay has both an excellant business model and a huge market share, plus their just plain usefull
hah! you mean eBay should be like the FAILED business models of UBid, etc. which carried the cost of storage & transactions itself? No, eBay would not survive; it is a forum for auctions, and the buyer & seller are responsible for their own ethics. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
Doesn't anyone read the comments about buyers and sellers? Isn't e-bay self policed by users sort of like...um, what was that site?
with sears you know who your buying from, and exactly what your getting (I'm not complaining about ebay, i use it everyday). However i recently bought a cell phon battery off of ebay, the guy i bought it from was a powerseller, and its been three months and still not battery. I cant file a complaint because paypal only responds to complaints about items that were bought less than a month ago. So really there's nothing i can do other than leave negative feedback, but that's not nearly as good as a refund.
E-Bay has this great ability to avoid the fraud scandals that have hit their community. They always do a great job of getting the public to buy into the fact that they are just a marketplace, and nothing more. I am glad to see some changes coming in the AUTO's area though. It really doesn't suprise me, as the cars I'm sure make them a pretty penny in fee's.
Ebay ir more a garage sale than a traditional store. On garace sales, all sells are final, as is. Don't like, don't buy.
It is riskier than any store, but you could get prices impossible to find anywhere else.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
is its very business model: I've always avoided buying things online (and also over the phone) because I dislike not having a real person in front of me to do business with. Buying something over the phone or over the internet is a socially deficient a transaction as it gets, and it deprives you of the all important face to talk to (or to punch) if you were scammed with your purchase.
And don't talk to me about eBay user ratings: these are a joke. These sorts of credentials are a joke even in real-life: as the saying goes, really good con artists can sell you a turd and make you say thank you and beg for more.
On the other hand, eBay brings sellers and buyers from the entire world together, and (more importantly), there's no lower price limit to what you can sell. So if I'm looking for Star Trek paraphernalia for example, I'm much more likely to find that miniature Klingon ship on eBay than from ads in the local newspaper.
So, several years ago, the choice was tough for me: avoid doing business with people online, or be able to find great things? So one day I took the plunge, opened a PayPal account and starting bidding on things. Net result: out of 50-so items I won, I never received 4, and PayPal still owes me $150 of *my* money they just don't want to let go of.
So FUCK EBAY!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
All the while, ebay offers something no bricks and motar person to person broker can offer. (Is there even such a business!?)
Feedback.
It's priceless. Any of the larger sellers have loads of honest feeback from purchasers. You can guage your own risk. It a model that works well when you understand it. Not only does it help the buyer, but it motivates the seller knowing that public feedback about the transaction will be left by the buyer.
It's a system that works quite well, regarless of a lack of a bricks and motar parallel.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
What really cheeses me off about businesses that benefit from a network effect (like ebay) is that once they have their customers "locked in" there is no incentive for them to improve their business because it is very hard for competitors to challenge them.
On a sidenote, check out New Zealand's version of ebay. The interface is so much cleaner and easier to use. I'm surprised how e-bay can have such a crap, ugly interface and continue to operate as a successful company.
We've got some nice feature offerd by the Swiss Post :
By sending goods per "Nachnahme" (pay upon reception), both the seller and the buyer are respectively guaranteed to get paid or get delivered.
But it sounds like eBay.ch is a little fuzzier than ricardo.ch, though. More traffic but also more noise.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
That's simply a false statement:
see here.
I't maybe not all you could have hoped for, but it's something.
PayPal does a reasonable seller authentication, arguably the safest method to pay for your auction.
Why do article submitters find it necessary to include false statements??
As a long time seller, since 1997, eBay still allows anyone with a public e-mail account the ability to sign up unchecked. At least force them to enter a credit card or bank account number. ... but eBay won't do that since they profit on fraud. When a buyer with a 0 rating wins an expensive item and doesn't pay, the seller can only recoup listing fees and not the final auction fees. What a load of shit!
The end result is driving away the good sellers to category specific forums. If you want to list a musical instrument go to Harmony-Central.com, a telescope go to Astromart.com, computer equipment go to the AMD or Intel forums.
I always thought of eBay as more of a venue than a store, sometimes it's a con's back alley and sometimes it's a friend's showroom. Either way the blindfold isn't removed when your package arrives, as described. (Or it's removed when you're alone in this metaphorical place and you start to wonder if anyone is still around.) I think people might be asking too much. I've only won about 35 auctions on eBay in four years, and I haven't been ripped off because I try really hard to research everything before bidding.
I mean, it's a bit like expecting the guy who owns the parking lot to pay for your broken flea market merchandise.
In most cases one can get a better price and full CC protection with regular eShops (Hint: froogle.google.com)
1) People selling links to pyramid sites instead of products
2) Small groups of bidders buying things off each other to boost their ratings and add favourable comments before proceeding to rip off real buyers
3) People blatantly selling pirated software
4) Vendors promising to ship goods at cut-price rates from far-eastern countries - yeah, right 5) No facility to report plainly dishonest sales to eBay
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I meant, "...isn't removed until your package...". Proofreading. Pssh!
And the submitter is asking if the business model is sustainable?
Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?
Personally, I don't really think so. The question is basically: "Is an auction worse than a catalog?" and I strongly believe that the actual goods being sold and the quality thereof notwithstanding, an interactive, free-market, user-centric laissez faire, laissez passer community (capitalism) is not only not worse, but is in fact much better, than any single centralised catalog (central planning), let it be early Sears or otherwise.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I personally have had a bad experience with an ebayer recently... Luckilly I only lost 45 ukp.
I wanted a 802.11g card with a specific chipset (PrismGT), so having found a seller on ebay I bid and won the auction. The description of the item in the auction was very specific, quoting the modeul number, etc.
3 weeks later (nice speedy delivery... not) I received a package, which I paid import duty on since the seller was in the states, only to discover that I had been sent an 802.11*B* card worth under 15ukp (and completely useless to me). So I tried to contact the seller to resolve the problem - the seller ignored all my emails. I opened a SquareTrade complaint which the seller ignored. The seller's account had been suspended by ebay shortly after the transaction so they obviously had complaints against him.
However, the auction was paid for over PayPal and had a "PayPal buyer protection" icon on it, so I thought that I was safe... Wrong! I logged a complaint at PayPal, expecting them to refund my money and they said that the seller sending an incorrect item isn't covered by the protection.
So what it comes down to is that if the seller had sent me what I ordered but it wasn't quite as shiny as it was described, I would've been covered, but since the seller sent me something completely different to what I ordered they won't cover me at all.
IMHO the buyer protection scheme isn't worth anything and in the future I will be treating auctions covered by the buyer protection policy with the same suspicion as the unprotected auctions. As far as I could tell from the policy terms, I was covered, but PayPal (who are part of ebay) just weaseled out of it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
For example, make it impossible to list auction that requires unverified money transfer-90% are fraud.
You are incorrect. eBay and Yahoo auctions DO REQUIRE credit card registrations (now) - but that doesn't prevent anyone from multiple registrations. eBay DOES NOT profit from fraud either. It's bad public relations and turns people away. eBay DOES NOT collect ANY fees from an auction that you state you were not paid for. This is why they have the area in the "Non Paying Bidder" section for you to fill out:
Did you receive any money from the buyer: Yes ______ (amount) OR No
eBay then sends a confirmation email to that buyer where they have the opportunity to say yes they DID send money or no they didn't didn't send money. Not responding goes in favor of the seller.
Unauthenticated buyers is usually a SELLER scam and not a buyer scam. Many con artist sellers register their own bidding email addresses as well and schill bid in their own auctions - jacking up the price.
There isn't really a way beyond honesty that this "multiple" registration could be prevented other than by fingerprint. Which actually isn't a bad idea.
Since the post office and UPS receive so much business from eBay - I would think it would be a nice service to provide at both for a fingerprint scan that could authenticate email and registrations on websites like ebay.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
What usually happens in most of the "paypal problems" is this:
Person x puts money into paypal (with credit card usually)
Person x then pays person y.
Person y then (for the sake of this example) takes the money out of Paypal (e.g. to their own credit card/bank account) and sends the goods.
For whatever reasons, person x then decides to do a chargeback for the credit card (for example, if they dont get the goods, the goods are faulty or whatever else). Credit card company asks Paypal to pay back money. Paypal then freezes account of person y so that they can take back the money to pay the credit card company. If person y has transfered the money to someone else on paypal, even more accounts may be frozen until things are sorted out. But if (as in the example above), person y has taken the money out of paypal alltogether, thats when paypal will go to bank accounts, credit cards or whatever they can to get the money back from person y.
What we need is a new service similar to Paypal but:
A.backed by an existing bricks and mortar bank (to provide security and confidence that there is real money in a vault somewhere to back up your virtual dollars)
B.complying 100% with banking regulations
C.provides more ways to put money into your "e-account" (i.e. ways that DONT allow the service to take money from your bank account or your credit card without you specificly making a transaction)
D.provides a better way to handle disputes than "freezing the accounts of anyone who might be remotly involved and moving money around without permission"
E.operates worldwide so that everyone can use it (like PayCrud)
F.would not allow other services to touch the account without permission (so you could have a PayCrud account to pay people who only accept payment that way and have it linked to this account so that if something goes wrong, PayCrud cant touch it). Ideally, you would need to specificly authorized a direct debit (be it once off or recurring) before it was valid.
Course, even if such a service was set up, Ebay would probobly "prohibit" people from using it (to force more people to use PayCrud which they own)
6. No credit or bank verification for new users
7. No option to prevent excessive negative or foreign users from bidding
8. No reimbursement of final auction fees if bidder doesn't pay
Eventhough Paypal doesn't like it and tells you that you can't - you CAN make a chargeback that is successful 99% of the time.
That is of course if you fund your transactions with credit cards which should ALWAYS do!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
As in "We don't need no stinkin' rules" libertarians. Anyway, an iteresting test to see if libertarian rules and principles work in practice. I.e., can an unregulated market in effect regulate itself?
Every system is open to abuse of some kind (even well established banking systems - think phishing). eBay are at least taking some steps to protect the people that use its service (which is the only thing they sell - a service). AFAIK new users are required to provide a credit-card number, both to authenticate age and as an incentive not to rip people off. And some amount of user disgression is required - buying an expensive item off someone with low/negative feedback is a no-no, whereas you can be fairly confident buying something expensive off someone with lots of positive feedback that has sold similar items in the past. I've bought lots of things off eBay (including a widescreen TV) with no problems whatsoever. But I have been very careful to check feedback and use some judgement.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Ebay's has two very big problems. It has grown beyond the ability to effectively police itself. Also, it has integrated way too many things into the eBay system. It's hard to maintain "We're just a 'marketplace," since eBay collects fees from paypal and ebay for processing the auction and processing the payment. It would be very easy for a judge (especially in a tort crazy state like Mississippi) to levy a judgement against eBay/paypal. What irks/scares me, is the fact that eBay and Paypal share ALL of your personal information with each other. They can cross check your bank account numbers, credit card numbers and your personal info. Plus, since paypal requires so much personal info (way more than a bank does), I shudder at the possibility of my accounts on ebay and/or paypal getting hijacked, or Paypal getting hacked. I guess what is scary, is the fact that eBay has more info on it's sellers and buyers, than most banks do on their customers. Plus Paypal outsources their "customer service" department to India. Lastly, if anyone has never been to www.paypalsucks.com or www.paypalwarning.com it's surely an eye opener. Paypal has always been, and will always be the achilles heel for eBay. The overzealous "limiting" of accounts, lack of true "seller protection," and the good old "Your account access has been limited, check back with us in ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DAYS, and you might get your money out of your paypal account."
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
In fact, eBay does work with a third party mediation company, SquareTrade to help buyers and sellers resolve conflicts. It's one of the services listed on eBay's services page.
Granted, like in most mediations this does not guarantee a favourable outcome. But if you feel you have been defrauded of something, most credit card companies protect the buyer anyway.
... is the jerk-worthy quality of the lingerie section.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I've been an eBay buyer/seller for approximately 6 years and at no time have I ever been ripped off with no goods or money arriving. On the contrary, the users (myself included) I have dealt with have literally bent over backwards to gain positive feedback for themselves. I only wish eBay let you reopen old accounts as within the last year, because of inactivity, I have had a 50+ positive feedback account closed... oh well
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
your part c? netbank, as in www.netbank.com will allow deposits from paypal, rejects withdrwals initiated by paypal..
no minimum balance, free checks, free billpay (with a caveat, if you stop using billpay, they charge you) open an account, fund with a low limit credit card and withdraw to netbank.. you can still get your token two deposits recorded to have the bank account 'verified'
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
During a certain blizzard in the 70's, the local Sears sold all of it's stock of chain saws so homeowners could clear the storm debris. After the clean up, most of the chain saws, used, were returned. Sears took it in the neck on that one.
Excelent article! Will read again! A++++++++++++++++++++++
I took the plunge awhile ago - I needed test equipment for a small company, and I just didn't have the funds to get proper SMT rework gear new, refurbised, or otherwise. I bought several thousand dollars of items from ebay - most of them under $500, and haven't had a single problem with equipment or buyers. You can spot many of the suspicious ads if you look, and if something bothers you, pass it up.
One scam I hate is the shipping.. $5 items that fit in a courier pak costing $15 to ship? Please. Ebay needs to do something about that.
I've used Ebay exensively for car parts as well, and most people have been very plesant to deal with. I don't bid if something seems amiss, though. Even if I took a few hits, I'd still come out way ahead - I saved over $10,000 on the test gear I got, even after recalibration.
..don't panic
PayPal has essentially positioned itself as the electronic equivalent of a cash transaction and you have the same protection of a cash transaction. That is, not very much.
Regular credit card purchase are different in that the credit card companies have more options such as reverse charging the merchant or charging high interest rates to cover losses.
What's common is both business models don't have them left holding the bag.
That's a Big Difference.
eBay is basically the crap you don't want or need anymore or the stuff you stole that you're trying to get rid of. So we all lower our own expectations accordinginly.
Kinda like TigerDirect.com which is the last refuge for old/used/returned/opened equipment sold as new or something quite like that and you wouldn't really know it's crap until you read the fine print.
Anyway, eBay would be a lot better without PayPal which is really just a polite way to steal from you. They take a system that basically works well; credit card sales, and they insinuate themselves into the middle of each transaction in order to suck a few more dollars out of you. Which truly sucks.
Ah well you people made eBay what it is today. Enjoy.
- my take on ebay? never gamble more than you're willing to lose... - my days are over w/ebay and paypal... the preset limit allowed by paypal for credit card purchases was fine while it lasted, but after you hit the limit, you must allow paypal to link to one of your bank accounts... - you'd have to be insane to allow any company to link into your bank account! - until true credit card protection is provided for ebay purchases, the ebay/paypal method is doomed, as THERE IS NO PROTECTION AGAINST FRAUD!
I have always had bad feelings about Squaretrade.
Paying to have negative feedback removed?
If a negative is truly worthy of being removed eBay HAS TO REMOVE IT. Now - the catch is - what you think should be removed and what actually SHOULD be removed are different.
Either way, Squaretrade makes no mention that eBay will remove MOST negatives (that should be removed) on their own without going through the process of Squaretrade.
I have not had a successful Squaretrade case to EVER work out. (me: ADZOOX = 7 years on eBay & 8 Squaretrade mediations) It really just ends up a place where the other party who was typically unreasonable to begin with, posts endless diatribe and rants.
I have always believed that when profits/cash flow were low at Squaretrade, that THEY may have influence over buyers & sellers that have PAID to have feedback removed in the past. See this Journal Entry I made concerning the topic.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
You do have buyer protection. Fund your purchases with a credit card and make a chargeback if not satisfied or you don't get what was stated.
Paypal/ebay is a publicly traded company - YOU are an idiot if you think they just outright steal money from you.
The protection against fraud = don't get involved in a scam.
How do you do that? Be a careful consumer who does his homework.
Really? Gee, thanks. That's something both the general public - millions of whom around the world check it out daily - and the people who run eBay will find interesting.
Next week: Microsoft - Will Windows ever catch on?
I guess it's a bit like credit cards - the credit companies don't deny cards to people with crappy credit, because they can still make money from them - they just give them worse rates etc.
eBay certainly needs to do something about buyer assurance, else they're losing sales and screwing their shareholders.
I'd think a starting point might be to self-insure against claims with premiums paid out of sellers fees, which could vary according to sellers "credit ratings" (feedback, and claims against them). If they wanted to they could externally reinsure against most of the risk. There has to be a sweet spot where you make more money by providing a safe marketplace, thereby attracting more customers, while still letting sellers with less than perfect records participate.
One thing with trademe.co.nz is that you are expected to transfer money between real NZ bank accounts. I don't think a bank account number provides much protection, but it is definitely not as dodgy as paypal.
:)
And I have done over 100 trades on trademe in the last 2 years. Buying and selling games, computer parts, books, small appliances, etc. Never had a bad trade at all. Maybe kiwis are just more honest
The dynamic duo of Paypal and EBay is probably the biggest source of continuous online scams around. EBay's policies for rectifying a fraudulent sale are absolutely ridiculous. We once put on a multiple item sale and a user whose account was hacked bid on all of them. We were out something like $150 on multiple transaction fees.
Did EBay do anything when we reported it? NOPE!
And Paypal payments are not protected despite any reassuring sounds they make. We used to sell on EBay but have stopped, in part because of the risk of getting scammed big-time and not being able to have anything done, either by Paypal or EBay.
For those of you considering setting up shop online, DON'T EVEN CONSIDER Paypal. They don't have any security features like the physical 3 digit code on most credit cards nowadays, and their policy of freeze-account-first, ask questions later is a joke
The reporter entirely fails to grasp the most fundamental truth about eBay: eBay was started because Pierre Omidyar believed existing channels for sales transactions among individuals were entirely lacking. And it grew tremendously because he was absolutely right. The last thing in the world eBay wants to do is mimic existing systems. The point of eBay is to let an evolutionary process work things out. This is how PayPal came into existence, which has turned out to be a whole other solution that was only necessitated and made possible by eBay's choice to not address any but the most basic needs of their constituents; this is the whole point of why eBay works as it does. They don't presume to think they have all the answers as to what will work best, and instead trust the user base to help sort it out.
Also worth noting is that ordering from a catalog a hundred years ago is nothing like these days, with lesser amounts of technical information, practically no standards, and nothing but hand-drawn pictures to go by for illustrations. These days, you can be a lot more certain of what you're buying than you were then, and there is no longer any need to overcome the resistance to ordering sight unseen, as was the case then.
Oh, one other thing. The NYT reporter should have a look at what has become of Sears these days when considering how wise it would be to emulate them.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
No store in their right mind these days or a deep pockets will promise unconditional returns in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described. The only store that even comes close to offering that is Wal-Mart. (Yes, you can return anything to Walmart. It's essentially a free rental service.)
Regardless, Ebay is not distributing anything. They are simply providing the means for a selelr to get in touch with a large number of potential buyers. Consider it as a very popular classifieds section. Should your local newspaper refund you if you buy a used car through that classifieds that turned out to be a lemon?
Regarding fraud, there is a little fraud on Ebay. It's also mostly restricted to high-price items, specifically laptops.
And these frauds are very easy to recognize. Seller only wants payment by Western Union or money order? Selling from Indonesia or Nigeria? Most definitely a scam.
But there's scams all over the place. I bought a used car when I was 18 from a local seller. The car ran for 4 days and had a cracked engine block.
I found out later about the lemon law, but at the time there was nothing I could do. At least on Ebay, you do have a few things you can do. Feedback does help. Most honest sellers aren't going to rip off one person out of every 100. Scamming isn't profitiable unless its done on a large scale or with large transactions, and it's easier to do the former than the latter.
So, uif you're buying something from Ebay, check the feedback. Generally look for at least +50, and 98% positive, also primarilty looking at the last month or so of feedback.
Paypalsucks.com is a scam as well.
Go to the site. Notice the banner ads? They are for competing services to paypal. PAYPAL'S COMPETITION sponsor the site!!
I feel MUCH safer with Paypal than I do with my bank. eBay depends greatly on good press. The days where "bad press" news items come out about eBay - the stock usually takes a 2-3 point hit. Paypal/ebay have stockholder's to please and analysts to appease with tight security. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than average? A resounding: YES!
Read this article on my website about Paypal and PayPalSucks.com where I corresponded with the webmaster.
What is most ironic - is that scammers use paypalsucks.com as a way to say they aren't a scammer! Saying:
"I don't use Paypal - see this website for why"
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
If you live in the USA, pay extra for postal insurance and pay your eBay purchases with a postal money order. If the USPS screws up and loses your package, you get your money back. If the seller rips you off, file a complaint with the USPS. You may be out of money (I don't think so -- not sure -- anyone knows for sure?) but the seller now has to deal with the Federal Government collecting consumer fraud complaints on them. Enough complaints of fraud and the seller may as well leave the USA and probably never return -- the USPS Postal Inspectors will be after them for sure....
I've used postal money orders with extra postal insurance for all my eBay purchases and never been burned once. However, I had to 'yell' politely but firmly at one seller to make a transaction good (maybe English wasn't the seller's native language....).
You forgot to mention that you'll have to buy a Mac if you want to participate (at least for the first year) legally. I've heard the DVDJon is working on a way to let Linux user's bid, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I've gotten good deals. I've gotten ripped off. Money-wise I figure it's equaled out. But I have gotten the obscure stuff I wanted. That's the bottom line that can keep ebay going.
But I've been lucky too. Like the jerk who shipped my scsi controller in a plain brown envelope. Damned if I'm not still using it now years later.
I haven't had any trouble.
I have wandered in with damaged and defective Sears screwdrivers and gotten replacements with no receipt and issues.
My wife orders clothes and if it doens't fit returns it without any problems.
The staff is generally a step above much of the competition, both in knowledge, and customer service.
Yes it could be abused.
However most people are a little honest and won't be using it as a free rental service.
The other thing is that buying it with no worries if it isn't quite right will encourage you to buy items you might not have.
If you intended to use it as a free rental service, once you get it home and like it, you might even keep it.
Occasionally there are people banned from stores or disallowed returns because of abuse, but it is rare.
One of the great uses for small country households was to use the Sears and Robuck catalog for various purposes as it was a great deal of free paper..
meh
Is Ebay better then newspaper classifieds or a flea market?
If I get ripped off at a yard sale, I can't blame the newspaper.
If I get ripped off at a flea market, it isn't the building owner who is responsible, it is the seller.
You can't even begin to compare these two they are different models
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Amazon.com now acts as a broker for lots of third party sellers, and is probably now e-Bay's biggest competition. Amazon does involve itself in mediation between buyers and sellers, does kick consistently dishonest sellers off the site, and does provide a guarantee to buyers in the event that they cannot get a refund from the seller. I think their practice is exemplary on this matter. (I have never had a problem with a seller, however. Everything I have bought via a third party on Amazon has been exactly as described when I received it).
If the price is good, I'm too suspicious to risk it. And it goes without saying that if the price isn't good I won't buy it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A year or two ago, I could actually find things on ebay that I was looking for. Hell, no matter what it was, I could find it.
Now, any search just turns up a million hits for people who aren't using ebay for what it was good for, but are instead using it to sell ultra-low quality crap they bought in large volumes.
searching is rougher too - I go to look for anyone with weights for sale in upstate NY, and have to go through a billion diet pill and video things just to find the one item that almost is what I was looking for.
Do I buy it? No...the fact that ebay has a rep for scammers and ripoffs now does help make that decision, too. More and more, that's their rep.
I wish there was a way to filter out professional ebayers...
this makes sense seeing as ebays only question is "did you get anything" not did you get what you ordered. did you get anything. stinks for the guy who buys a car, and gets sent a paperclip. not sure how they would pay for the returns though, seems like that would be far more than they belive, most sales on ebay are broken/defective in some way. just my $0.02
Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
If you run a payment processing business like PayPal, what percentage of fraudulent transactions or frozen accounts is acceptable?
If regular credit cards like VISA consider 0.5% to be average now, then you do the math.
Take that and consider the percentage of transactions involving the movement of cash (rather than credit card charge) between consumers and you can see why there are so many complaints.
Given the sheer number of participants, I'm amazed at how well they are doing.
The New York Times is a publicly traded company which sells advertising and subscriptions. They actually get about twice as much revenue from advertising as they do from subscriptions.
Let's dig into the New York Times finances. I start at www.sec.gov, click on Edgar filings, search for "New York Times", and grab the 10-K, the most recent annual filing.
New York Times 10-K
For the year ended 2003-12-28, their revenus was $3.2 billion. Here's a breakdown:
100% $3.2 billion total revenue
66% $2.1 billion advertising
27% $0.9 billion circulation
07% $0.2 billion other
Advertising revenue is up about 3.5% from 2002, but advertising volume, the number of inches of ads, dropped 3.8% from 2002 to 2003. The Times has been selling fewer ads but charging more for them.
Summary: the primary business line of the New York Times company is selling ads. Internet companies such as eBay are cutting into that ad business. And that's why the New York Times has been trash-talking Google and eBay lately.
I was not trying to single you out; I just noticed yours first :)
As a birthday present I recently received a copy of Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a punctuation guide I found to be almost hysterically funny.
As engineers, programmers and other professionals that deal with the unforgiving literalism of computers and other modern technology, I am continually amazed at our inattentiveness to detial with regard to writing. Seems to me that we would pride ourselves on thoughtful, well-written and precise language.
Then again, we also are the ones that come up with jewels like "PC Load Letter" and these other messages.
>> Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?
As a former out-house owner, I have to say, "Yup". You can't wipe your ass with eBay.
Apples aren't near as easy to peel as oranges...
I have the unfortunate ability to see both sides of an issue, leading to me losing every argument I've ever been in. So here's my take.
All of my transactions on eBay have been efficient and hassle free, even when buying big-ticket items (like a trombone). My dad, however, got burned once and will never use eBay again. So it is in eBay's best interest to make sure that sellers' and buyers' disputes are resolved amicably. And I can't see why they haven't been involved because they (and PayPal) have records of the transactions.
However, I can see that eBay is merely a vector for the transactions, and that they don't have any fault in letting asshats get money out of unsuspecting people. And eBay, being a publicly traded company, has an obligation to its investors to make as much money as possible. Enforcement or arbitration would seriously eat into profits
So a risk/benefit analysis is in order; see if it's more profitable to create a safe environment for both buyers and sellers, or to ignore it and avoid the cost of that service. Or wait for it to get so bad that the government regulates it and everyone ends up paying for their laziness and greed, like a lot of companies.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
See there is a step that you have to take here...
In this scenario, if you are the buyer (person x) and the seller (person y) screws you over - here is what I understand, or at least I have seen many people explaining this on the internet:
You have to make a commitment to PayPal to use their protection, not your credit card's protection. You have to go through PayPal's dispute resolution (or whatever they call it), through their 800 numbers and emailing them. You can't (well you can, but many folks have stated that they have had problems with collection agencies when they have done that without working with PayPal first...) charge back the item on your credit card. Or, in other words, you should never have to charge back your credit card when you use PayPal. PayPal will take care of any complaints you have for you, and according to some customers, their word is final in this matter. So you shouldn't plan on using any protection that you have with your credit card company when you use PayPal. This is my understanding, anyway. I am not saying that PayPal's complaint resolution system doesn't work, but my point is that it's there and when you use PayPal that is what you have to use first, not your credit card protection. Some people have stated that in effect, you are essentially waiving any protections that you have with your CC company when you use PayPal, because PayPal has their own complaint resolution system.
By using PayPal, you are making a commitment to them, that you will use their complaint resolution, which, obviously, works for many folks, but sometimes, apparently, has disastrous results to the sellers, from individuals who claim they never recieved things that they actually did, or individuals who claim that they didn't recieve what they expected. But then again, the credit card companies don't have the most wonderful setup for merchants either; the merchants might very well still be out the merchandise, not to mention being out the money from a stolen card, etc... Sellers carry a lot of risk, both with PayPal, and with the credit card companies as well.
Also, there are now all these "Ebay hacks" and "get rich selling stuff on Ebay" how-tos everywhere. So obviously, a lot of what you are seeing on there now is not really a "good" deal - it's someone trying to get rich.
I think there are some niches where Ebay can really do excellent things, and where it will always be useful, but trying to move it into the mainstream, I think, is the wrong idea.
Could you imagine having feedback like that about yourself from every job you ever had, from every supervisor who ever didn't like you or treat you fair? Having to resolve any difference that you have with someone in two lines of text? I think it's a bubble that's going to burst, as more and more people try to use it to get rich, instead of using it in a more positive way, as a way to exchange things in a fair marketplace setting, a way to bring people together that have things to share with one another, interesting things, unusual things, things that you can't get anywhere else. I think Ebay should try to return to its roots, so to speak, because it's a great idea that can really bring people together. I don't think that it's a way to "get rich", I don't think that it should be used in that way. I also think it might be a good idea to make sure sellers state whether or not something is drop ship or 3rd party item they don't personally own, etc... I think the zero inventory concept is a bad idea to begin with, and it's probably even a worse idea when it's an auction.
No authentication? Just as though you were buying anywhere else, you should check the seller's feedback rating, and only buy from sellers you feel comfortable buying from. Some sellers have successfully carried out thousands of auctions on eBay, and it's not in their best interest to piss off their buyers. True, there are some jerks out there, but being careful will help you avoid them.
Seriously, it is not hard to tell the scam artists from the honest retailers on e-bay. I suspect that most gripes come from people trying to get a deal that is "too good to be true".
It is pointless to compare shopping on e-bay with going to a bricks and mortar retailer like Best Buy.
E-bay is the wild west. The onus is on the buyer to look at feedback ratings, look at what elese the guys sells, and make an educated guess about the risk factor involved.
If you decide to pay $250 for new super pentium4 notebook with lots of free software from a guy with no history called "ebaydood675", then you pretty much assume that it will never arrive.
Sure there are scam artists on e-bay. There are also guys who go door to door selling aluminum siding, but I don't insist that the city should roll up the sidewalks to keep them away from my house.
Instead of blaming e-bay or Pay-Pal (who, sure, don't really do anything if you do get ripped off) take some responsibility for your own decisions.
Three Squirrels
I see very few 'bargains'. Granted I might be looking at
only a narrow subset of ebay (pc related stuff), but it seems
to me most of this stuff is going near or even sometimes over
what identical product from a reputable online or retail
outlet would charge.
Ah yes, a large corporation is profiting. Call in the cavalry! They must be partaking in uncouth business practics...!
:p
:)
Or not.
I've been a member of eBay since early 1998. I've seen the company grow beyond anything I'd ever expected... and it changes OFTEN. Even today, the terms and agreements are constantly being rewritten, because eBay seems to be a company that learns from its mistakes.
Does anyone else remember when the feedback forum used to be a free-for-all? Until a few years ago, you didn't even have to have proof of a completed auction before you could leave feedback for someone! That, of course, has been fixed, and better user verification has been implemented, and lots of other things have been fixed... and will surely continue to be fixed.
Some great insight can be found here - http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html -- You can read about scams that the community is aware of, sometimes you can read about interesting...idiots being scammed... it's a great way to learn how not to be by the example of others.
Remember, the best defense is knowledge. I still boast a 100% feedback rating, and I've bought and sold many high-dollar items. I'll be back here to eat my hat the day I get burned, but as long as I extensively research the sellers I'm buying stuff from (for example, looking at the seller's bidding and selling history, both past and present) I feel it may be a while.
Corruption will exist anywhere if you look hard enough. In a community with millions of users and tens of millions of auctions running at any given time, it won't be hard to find. Such is life.
[an error occured while processing this directive]
is photos of shiny items with a reflection of naked people in them.
Anyone who goes to a flea market and expects the same kind of guarantees as a retailer is being unrealistic.
Proverbs 21:19
With Ebay's acquisition of PayPal they do offer buyer protection if you pay through PayPal. I had a friend that bought WiFi card through EBay that ended up being a broken piece of junk and the seller refused to do anything about it. Although it was not painless he was able to get his money back from PayPal. Once they refunded the money PayPal had him ship the broke card directly to them.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Now, if my CD writer dies, I just go buy another one, and I'm out only a few $10 bills. I don't care (as much) about quality. If my CD writer works for two years, I'm happy.
Also, look at WalMart. They don't usually stock high quality items -- they go for the lowest prices possible (watch out for falling prices). Their whole business model is based on having the lowest price anywhere. This is very appealing to most consumers.
At ebay, you can often find good deals. Sure, the items are used, and since most things made today are made as cheaply as possible, it might fall apart.
I think as long as ebay realizes they are a "low price leader" like WalMart, they will continue to have success.
--
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
Go to the site. Notice the banner ads? They are for competing services to paypal.
Well, think about it. Who else is going to advertise on a site complaining about PayPal? McDonald's? Ford? Wal*Mart? This is no different from Microsoft advertising on Slashdot.
Sure, it seemed a little fishy at first, since the only ads coming up were all for YowCow.com (some auction site, from the looks of it). But after awhile, a merchant bank's ad came up. Oh, and, according to whois, PayPalSucks.com is run by a guy in Arizona; YowCow is based in Australia. Not likely they're the same people. So it's not like PayPal's competitors put up the site, they just recognize a target audience when they see one.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I saw a table selling nothing but Childrens Games on CD's that had obviously been stolen from the outside of Cereal Boxes. The CD's even had printed on them not for retail sale or something like that. Only $10 each. I think I told about 15 people that he stole them from Cereal boxes. I don't know what happened after that, but the other people seemed like they would take care of it. :o)
Western Union, a popular Sears payment system, was never a wholly owned ripoff subsidiary.
--
make install -not war
Having been ripped off once myself and getting no satisfaction from eBay at all, not even any confirmation that they ever suspended the guys account and hearing some pretty bad stories from others I can say they really need to police themselfs better. I've never read the sellers agreement that (I'm sure) ebay makes the sellers agree to but I think a case could be made that eBay is acting as the sellers agent no different than an auctioneer or auction house like Christies and that in case of fraud that they should make every effort to set things right. (insurance aside)
Another problem that eBay seriously needs to address is sellers having friends or relatives bid up their items to force the price up. I have no idea how you would catch people doing this but I've heard that it's a serious problem and from what I see I can't help but wonder about it. I used to bid on and occasionally get DVD's on eBay but over the last year and a half I've seen people consistently bidding up DVD's to within a buck or two of the full retail price and then add shipping to that (these days usually $3 to 5$). For gods sake you could buy it for that at Buy.Com, or wait a couple months from the release date and get it from Half.com for less than that, or BlockBuster frequently sells used DVD's two for $20 (of course no guarantee that you'll get what you're looking for but I've had pretty good luck) which amounts to $10.60 each here in NJ... how often can you get a really good movie for that on eBay? (very rarely, if ever)
The NYT article itself suggests the solution to this problem -- competition. It also mentions the dynamics of net monocultures that suppress competitors.
If and when a viable ebay competitor arises (big if), then it can compete by offering more generous warantee and guarantee terms. Ebay will respond if they feel the pressure.
Until then, ebay will have to measure the soundness of their policies by their success. They must indeed be doing something right.
and all who is records are accurate?
Yowcow is an auction payment service.
There's also ads for iKobo - another auction payment service
Microsoft advertises on slashdot because it has one of the highest hit totals on the net and is focused at computer geeks - and for no other reason. Your comparison is a weak one.
McDonald's and Ford etc wouldn't advertise on a site like Paypalsucks.com because its content is fanatical, rude, ridiculous, and in large, ficticious.
You do know that accepting credit cards has never been a cost-free process? The transaction processors typically lop 2-5% at least off the top of the purchase price, with some nominal minimum charge to process each transaction. This why some gas stations still have up old price boards with separate columns for cash and credit purchases and the local 7-11 has a $5 minimum if you want to use your plastic to pay.
Now all physical-stores just suck it up and charge the same regardless of payment method because the cost of accepting credit cards is balanced by the protection they offer the seller. At least for real-world transactions, once the processor's computer system approves the transaction, the seller is guaranteed to receive the money, barring cases of fraud. No bounced checks, no fake money, no spending money sorting/counting/depositing the money you took in (at the fast food place I once worked, labor costs to set up and count out the register tills probably amounted to 1.5% of the days gross sales + commercial banking fees). Its only on Ebay and similar services do some people think accepting payment should always be free.
Paypal exists to provide an equivalent service to individuals. Processing credit card payments and otherwise maintaining their service costs them money, which they recover by charging transaction fees to people who want to accept credit card payments (checking account only is still free). Don't bash Paypal when you should be bashing the credit card issuers/processors.
People need to understand that eBay is not a store. eBay is a place where people can sell off their stuff. On average, this is just some guy/girl who occasionally has something they want to sell, and would usually put out an ad in the newspaper's classifieds or post something on the campus bulletin boards (a real bulletin board as in staples or thumbtacks, yes they do exist). When you sell something via the classifieds or a garage/yard sale, pretty much all sales are final. Sellers/buyers don't think about returns because they both know the item is 'as is' and for the most part, the item is probably used.
When you buy off eBay, you aren't buying from eBay; you're buying that World War II memoribilia form a 60 year old man in Florida, or some old lamp from a 35 year old housewife in Washington.
Well, this was the intended use for eBay.
Now we have the people who buy new items through closeouts or wholesale and resell them on eBay. These are the people who caused eBay to turn into a quasi-online store, because they are the ones who get into details like Terms of Sale, return policies, warranties, etc.
I don't think the original founders of eBay expected people to start making their primary income from eBay sales, but that's what's happening now. I think eBay is fine as it is. They provide the infrastructure to facilitate the online buying and selling of goods between private parties. Let them deal with flak if anything happens in the transaction.
On eBay it has always been 'buyer beware', and it will remain that way.
Why wouldn't a slightly modified system work? Because as it stands now there is a decent enough balance between sellers and buyers to allow for an expectation of trust, swing it either way and one side will abuse the other. Making it too easy to withold payment, or return items, and buyers will either say they never got the items, say they unconditionally hate the items, or just plain don't like the items. Make buying too easy and people will bid and not pay.
Sure you can get ripped on ebay. But you can just as easily get ripped at the mall if you don't know the ropes. Three main ways to protect yourself. 1) If it seems too good to be true, it is! don't buy a $2000 laptop from anyone for $50 unless you don't care about the $50. 2)Always buy shipping insurance! it keeps you and the seller both protected. I'm amazed people will spend $600 and neglect the $5 insurance. 3)Don't pay cash. There's no trail and you'll be hosed if you are getting ripped off.
Hooptie
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Even though eBay is the defacto marketplace for selling personal items online, bad service or lack of accountability will eventually erode its business. No business regardless of size or market share is immune from disatisfied customers, especially in such a liquid communal market as eBay - word travels fast.
It's been my experience, and I can see this in my friends who've used eBay that there's a lifespan to using eBay which pretty much follows the bell curve. The steps are basically:
1. Initial awe and amazement
2. Lots of impulse purchases
3. "Hey, I can make great money selling crap"
4. "Hey, I can make great money beating the system"
5. A couple bad experiences either buying or selling
7. Losing interest in buying
8. No items left to sell/effort too large for profits
9. Disillusionment with high eBay fees
10. One really bad experience buying (less so selling)
11. Beginning to hate eBay's policies
12. Realizing anything you want costs more on eBay
13. Almost never using eBay
It's pretty clear to me where the curve starts plunging downward - whenever there's a need to use eBay or PayPal feedback/protection/or dispute resolution.
Eventually eBay will run out of customers to cycle through and another competitor will snap them up. Likely they'll just target experienced eBayers and provide them with a dispute resolution service that introduces accountability. If eBay wants to fix the curve they should do the same for themselves and keep their users for the long term.
I've only had one problem and that was resolved quickly and satisfactorily. I bought a used camera and the shutter did not work. I got a prompt and courteous refund including the postage.
My feedback rating of 156 (The difference between that and the 171 is due to multiple auctions with the same buyer/seller), 100% good represents about a 50/50 mix of sales and purchases.
Of course there are people who experience problems. Given the huge number of buyers and sellers, there are bound to be some crooks, but like any flea market, buyer beware - just use common sense.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
A friend of mine sold something on eBay. The winning buyer didn't respond to email for 2 weeks, then left a negative feedback on my friend's otherwise spotless record, claiming that she "changed her mind" and told my friend about it, which was false.
So my friend is left with 100% record and non-reimbursable eBay fees.
Consider the potential audience on eBay (any loser in the world) and adjust your feedback threshhold accordingly (especially for volume sellers).
My expierence My expierence with ebay.
----- Roadracing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty.
"...and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
Of course it can be sustained. It's been in business for years. Is it not returning a profit? Ebay makes money from even the fraudulant sales....
But back to that quote up there. It says they have no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts? Then why do they shut down seller accounts when buyers complain to them?
"I bought this product at a mall and it turned out to be a TOTAL RIP-OFF. I am NEVER going to buy ANYTHING at a mall EVER AGAIN!"
If people ranted like that, you'd write them off as whackos. For some reason, when they say the same thing about eBay rather than a mall, we pay credence to them, even though everyone's expectations of eBay are lower than their expectations of a mall.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
How can you compare ebay to a sears catalog. Sears is one company selling to many users. Ebay is many sellers saling to many users. Each seller on ebay has there own refund, exhange, warrenty rules. Ebay is providing a easy connection between the buyers and seller, they are not responsible for each item on there site.
Rob
There is a great Russian expression that I can related to frequent eBay buyers. As the saying goes, people who buy on eBay usually want "i konfetku s'est, i na hui sest." In crude translation that means "one wants to eat a candy and get laid at the same time." People want to buy something for dirt cheap and make sure that they do not get ripped off.
Personally, I would not buy anything that cost more than $50 on Ebay. When you are getting something at a flea market, at least you can look at it. With Ebay you do not even know what you're getting until you actually get it. Then it is too late. Many of my friends bought expensive items, like telescopts and SCSI hard drives, through the auction to find out that they paid for what they really got. Why do that if there are safer alternatives?
First of all, there is Half.com that is owned by, surprise, Ebay. Purchases made through that site are protected up to $700; the company holds information about buyers' and sellers' accounts and can refund purchases without too many problems.
Then there is Craigslist.com. It is a free classifieds for many metropolitan areas. I live in Boston, I check out the Boston section of the site then I drive to see the actual goods sold by people in my area. If I like them, I buy them. No gimmicks have happend to me so far.
Finally, you can always use your credit card company in order to deal with bogus purchases. According to many user agreements you can refuse to pay a charge on your card if you receive goods that are damaged or were described differently when you were purchasing them. I haven't tried this method myself, but I've heard it works.
Well, good luck to those of you who like to bargain hunt. I'd rather over pay at a local store or on a flea market.
Unlike the Sears catalog at the time, Ebay business in not a new business model. Ebay is only an auction mediator, and the rules and regs concerning auctions are set (and have been for years). The Sears catalog, when it first came out, was attempting to calm people suspictions because buying products through the mail was a new idea. It never would have caught on if Sears didn't offer an unconditional garuntee of satisfaction.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Ebay can do something to encourage appropriate feedback. I recently left negative feedback for a new ebay user, a non-paying bidder. He retaliated with negative feedback, and was kicked off ebay days later. My ensuing auctions got _significantly_ less money, I estimate I lost $400 dollars.
What ebay could do is not count feedback by those who have more negative feedback than positive and are then kicked off ebay. Bad buyers/sellers are usually awful from the begining, and their early feedback shows this. Ebay users who are kicked off should not have the power to hurt other members, particularly in the weeks before ebay kicks them.
I think this would encourage ebay members to appropriately give negative feedback, particularly to new users, without worrying about retaliation.
Is it costs money. The reason most people buy on eBay is to save money. With escrow you have double shipping charges, since it has to be sent to escrow first, then to the buyer. You also have the cost of maintaining a warehouse and staff to hold the items while escrow is going on (which could be a coupld weeks in some cases). To top it all off, you need to make a profit or it's not really worth doing.
Well for most items, the buyer just isn't going to find it worth it. Are you really going to drop $30-50 in escrow fees on a processor you bought for $100?
Even if you found the Sears catalog useless for purchases you could still wipe with it. Tried that with eBay and now I can't read my email...
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Personnaly, I don't see merit to the claims made in this article post. Sellers can be, (and are), authenticated, via third party sources such as Square Deal, etc. Secondly Ebay does get involved in Buyer/Seller conflicts. I am a power seller on Ebay. I am Authenticated by Ebay and by Square Deal. I have to have proof to back up my claims with them. If I don't perform to their standards, I lose my authentication and even risk my account being closed. I have been on both ends of 'conflicts' and Ebay involved themselves in ALL of them. It is true that a seller of a single item, who is only making a single sale is not authenticated, and does not have any transaction history that can be viewed by the buyer. But what is new about that in any business model? If you buy an item at your local mall from one of those pedestrian walkway carts, where is your recourse? Doesn't the same situation apply there? What about Garage sales? I think Ebay will be around as long as there are garage and Lawn sales, it's no different. I don't recall my mom, reviewing her 'business model' prior to her anual lawn sale. I think that this rattle of doom for Ebay is a bit overblown and probably comes from the mouth of someone who was ripped off, (due to their own reliance on someone else doing tthe homework that was theirs to do to begin with), and is now spouting off. It all boils down to the same thing that has been said for centuries, BUYER BEWARE. You are spending the dollars, if you are uncomfortable dealing with a seller, then don't send them money. It's that simply. You hold the money, therefore you hold the power.
Every now and then in an auction I would see a bunch of incremential bids, going just over my bud and then the bidder dropping out. In that case I always retract my own bid as you are probbaly going to get shafted. I've never had a negative comment from such a drop (though I don't do it often, and it's best if you drop your bid while a bid over yours is still active).
But, if a bidder just enters a bid close to yours without going over they probably just tried a couple of bids to see if they could get it, and finally reached their limit. They most likley would have paid, I don't mind bidders like that at all.
It's pretty hard to steel yourself to submit one number and let that be your only bid. But you're a lot better off if you do so, even if sometimes people do suddenly get a hankering for the item at the last moment and bid it up. A lot of people don't trust the system and will just do that anyway, so chances are you really had to pay at least $95 to get what you wanted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?
eBay Business Model in Slashspeak
1. Create website marketplace
2. Others go about their business
3. Profit!
4. ????
Um, you mean there's something after profit? Whoa. Never gotten that far before.
My local Best Buy charges a return fee for digital cameras now, for that very reason. Not sure about other things yet, I can still return DVD players no problem.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PayPal may have faults, but what options are there?
One is Western Union. You want to talk about theoretical rip-offs like PayPal, or practical rip-off's like WU?
I recently won two auctions where the sellers took MO or WU payments only. How does WU work for the buyer? You pay them a very large fee ($4 and up for larger amounts, for $140 it was $8 fee). Then WU writes an MO, and drops it in the mail. WOW! That sure was handy. Instead I opted to spend $.50 at a grocery store for an MO, then send payment next day air as I wanted the item back pretty quickly. Or I could have spent $.37 myself to send it in the mail, just like WU.
So WU is in reality the biggest rip-off on the planet. I will never bid on an auction again that supports them, letting the sellers know they missed out on a bid. So what are the options for quick payment other than PayPal?
If you take a few precautions, PayPal works just fine. As a seller, have money go into a bank account - then transfer that money to a different bank account where PayPal cannot reach.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This person is clearly misinformed, so I'll address these one by one.
but with no buyer protection,
Wrong On many listings, Paypal (an eBay company) offers up to $500 of buyer protection. They even display a protection logo on the search results page so the listings with coverage are easily identifiable. More info here.
no seller authentication,
Wrong eBay does have a voluntary seller authentication program. It is up to the buyer to decide if they want to purchase from a non-verified seller. More info here.
and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts,
Wrong eBay does work with dispute mediation providers. Their preferred provider is Square Trade.
no return policy,
Wrong Although eBay doesn't have a specific policy relating to returns, they do provide a space for sellers to state their return policy. Also, returns may be covered by the buyer protection policy, depending on the reason.
I've used eBay for over six years. The worst (and, really, only) problem to come up is my recent problem. I wanted to upgrade one of my PC's CPU's. (Grammar Nazis: deal with it.) A guy was offering an Athlon 1400 (1.4GHz) for sale. I asked him in e-mail what the front side bus speed was. He replied that it was 200MHz. So, I bought the chip. This is the fastest chip my motherboard can handle.
When I got the chip, however, I ultimately discovered that it was supposed to have a 266MHz FSB (or it was really a 1050MHz chip...). When I attempted to operate it at 1400MHz/200MHz FSB, the chip shattered.
Naturally, I was a little pissed.
Well, eBay has a policy for this sort of a situation, and that is that eBay will refund, less $25, the total amount of the bid, up to $175 total. So, for my $66.56 bid, eBay will refund $41.56. So far, so good.
To seller's credit, seller has never attempted to lie about the fact that he gave me false information in e-mail. This fact is in violation of sections 6.1 and 6.2(a) of the eBay User Agreement. Despite this fact, however, eBay's refund policy requires me to get a neutral third party to assert, on company letterhead, that the product does not meet the specifications that the seller provided. Riiiiiight... What neutral third party has any incentive to do this? Maybe if I offered said neutral third party the $41.56 I would collect in return... But then, wait, why bother?
Note that the requirement for a third party attestation is not described anywhere in the public policy. It is not until a complaint has been filed that the full requirements document is provided to the user -- and even then, the "company letterhead" requirement was not offered until I sent in a request for information to eBay's customer service.
So, going into the system, you consider that you'll only be out $25 plus shipping, which gives a warm, fuzzy feeling when using eBay. The truth is a little less warm, but a bit more fuzzy.
searching is rougher too - I go to look for anyone with weights for sale in upstate NY, and have to go through a billion diet pill and video things just to find the one item that almost is what I was looking for.
It sounds to me like you need to hone your research skills. Ebay's dominance in the market place means they have a lot more content that needs to be weighed through (no pun intended).
Ebay has an advanced searching system that allows you to build more complex queries to weed out what you're not looking for. Don't blame eBay if you don't know how to properly search for what you're looking for.
When you leave negative feedback, ebay gives you a warning screen. Heck, even when you leave NEUTRAL feedback, it does this. That's what's discouraging people from ruffling feathers. Furthermore it's completely impossible to write anything meaningful in the tiny space they give you to comment. I usually attempt to explain everything, but end up having to resort to SMS-language just to fit it in. People need to be encouraged to say things like "Seller shipped promptly but it would have been nice if he bothered to clean the item up a bit first, the lazy bastard, and the envelope wasn't even padded"... instead they have to resort to "OMGYAY Thanks!!" (ok, perhaps that's bit of an exaggeration)
Let's compare net worth. On the one hand, we have a cyncical analyst claiming that eBay can't be sustained.
On the other hand we have the founder and CEO of eBay.
Seems pretty damn sustainable to me.
I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip where he attends an economics class: "This diagram shows how it is that I have a mastery of economics, yet still dress like a flood victim."
--
It certainly has its issues, which have been discussed eloquently here. Another issue that pisses me off is that it has really killed some markets for certain goods, like guitars, music memorabilia, etc. It's hard to make money on an investment on something that is now fetching pennies on the dollar on Ebay. I know it's a supply/demand issue at heart, but still.
I've had a couple of people flake on me, not send payment and disappear. I've never had anything major happen to me. Ebay caught someone hacking into my account and attempting to sell a video camera through my account. It was a nice catch on their part.
However, getting my account back up and running was a fucking nightmare. Took me 2 weeks to be able to sell stuff again. Their customer feedback/support is about as archaic and customer UNfriendly as you can get. It's nearly impossible to find the right department to contact, and when they DO contact you back, they take 48 to respond.
I wonder if they use the same outsourced help as AOL....
I don't know why this was modded as funny. When I first clicked on comments I thought I was going to see nothing but a slew of "and in other news..." posts.
"And in other news, can Wal-Mart really stay in business without offering any service. People won't stand for no service, even if they only pay a fraction of what they'd pay elsewhere"
Something like that is what I expected. Just stating the obvious isn't funny, is it? Insightful, maybe.
Each incoming mail order was opened and read, then assigned a bin number and a 45-minute time slot. Pull tickets, with bin numbers, were filled out for each item and sent by pneumatic tube to different departments all over the "plant", where stock pickers took the item off a shelf and sent the item to the order assembly bins via conveyor. There, this being pre-bar-code, people grabbed the items off the conveyor as it passed the appropriate bin, and dropped the item with pull ticket in the bin.
At the end of the time period for the current orders, all the filled bins were pulled and replaced with empty bins. The filled bins were sent off by conveyor to outgoing order processing, where the contents of the bin were checked against the original order, the appropriate bookkeeping operations were performed, and the order was shipped.
Note how this works. The information moves, in the form of pick slips, and the merchandise moves, but there's little searching for merchandise. The order picking people don't move very far. In any one area, the people in that area know where the items in their area are (and they're all numbered, of course) so they can quickly pick items and put them on their outgoing conveyor. Order binning involves no paperwork; it's just putting items with numbered tags in bins. Order final assembly and checking starts with all the merchandise and paperwork in one place, and the people doing that work on only one order at a time, so that's straightforward. Packing and shipping consists of putting the contents of a bin in a box and adding a label created at order final assembly.
In its day, the Sears, Roebuck center was considered a marvel of commerce.
Order fulfillment operations still work a lot like that. Barcoding and computers have substantially reduced the number of people involved, but everybody still has bins and timeslots.
"Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
Meh.. welcome to North American society where people flock like sheep to be controlled by big companies. Seriously.. the amount of bitching they receive on the subject probably still isn't enough to warrent their time to implement. And they probably don't care.. they are a multi billion dollar company.. when you get that big.. the numbers on dissatisfied customers don't matter until they swing up exponentially.. and in our society.. we just take it.
- Jimbob
Given a seller with a high enough ebay rating, why cant a buyer simply purchase a policy based on a combination of feedback & price. eBay wouldn't even need to inform the seller that this policy had been taken out.
It's just a numbers game and that's what insurance is all about. Insurance can also be a very high margin business and eBay could do really well by offering it.
Unfortunately eBay pander to their power sellers. They can essential pay (through squaretrade) to have negative feedback removed, which will happen if the buyer doesn't respond to squaretrade.
That of course means that feedback isn't all that accurate, so they might have to fix that before they start betting their money on it.
Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?
The market adjusts the price accordingly, and it sustains itself just fine! Or not! Online auction sites are not inalienable rights. Get lost.
... and use it to wipe your bum! So clearly, Sears catalogs are superior. ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As the PayPal Warning site, to which I linked in my original post in this thread, makes clear, PayPal is a real ripoff, not just price gouging. I am one among many thousands who had a transaction arbitrarily siezed, and my account "frozen", without any recourse to any government oversight or internal customer service process. They siezed thousands of my dollars, supposedly for "180 days", and unfroze the money after over 500 days, keeping the interest. That's theft, not just price gouging. And the lack of alternatives makes it worse: they're a true global banking monopoly, without accountability, making billions of dollars by abusing their power.
--
make install -not war
I miss it, but sustainable doesn't really apply to it any more. But ebay's here.
Sometimes to find out what works you have to just, well, see if it's working.
Let me check....
Yep, ebay's working.
-pyrrho
That's what I did when I had a problem with a transaction. They charged it back, I got my money back, and that was the last I ever heard about it. It could be that ebay or paypal would give you trouble if you did that often (I don't know) but it's only come up once in 4 years and 100 or more auctions.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
That, and I honestly don't pride myself on ebay searching ;) The searching/results aren't completely similar to searching in any other application, so I don't worry about it so much. Point is that I didn't used to need to do such things, and additionally the things I'm looking for are no longer there. Find a weight set in NY anywhere...lemme know when you do. Past the diet pills and videos, there's...professional ebayers selling bowflexes or whatnot. Not that unreasonable to expect someone within a group of millions upon millions of people to be selling a weight set...
Wow, that sounds a lot like craig's list...
My buddies who live in the big cities like San Fran, even mediums like Portland, use Craig's List all the time to co-ordinate sales and loans of everything from cd's to cars to bikes and computers etc...
Your Dutch online advertising site sounds like it works the same way Craig's List does... and on a primarily local basis...
I wonder if EBay has ever done any studies looking into Craig's List (and the like) and whether or not that sort of site has impacted eaby.
I know that I would (much) rather hit up Craig's List than Ebay... If I happen to be in a large city that has such a list...
At least a Sears Catalog has more than one useful purpose. It is too hard to wipe your ass with a web page (third paragraph for you who have never been outside the city)... or your monitor. It's an outhouse kind of thing.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
EBay is not the Sears catalog, eBay is the print shop that produces the catalog. Sellers are free to offer satisfaction guarantees. And generally they should, this is a key element of successful retailing. I almost always do, and my returns run less than 1 percent.
ebay doesn't police. the "community" of mainly sellers and some buyers police and report them to ebay but because ebay doesn't limit how many auctions a seller can list, a scammer can list thousands of auctions and so lots of people can get scammed. So how is the "community" supposed to police all those auctions that a few scammers are listing?
the only ebay does to verify a seller is to ask them to enter a credit card number. well, how does ebay know if the user is the actual user and not just a scammer using a stolen credit card number which is what's happening now and in the past? face it, there is NO REAL PROTECTION ON EBAY.
* weedshare.com 50% to artists, webjay.org iuma.com CDBaby.com Epitonic.com ampcast.com
Just wanted to point out that the doing something right link isn't the only thing you should look at. The dotcom world is full of impressive stock price graphs that reflect little more than the optimism of investors. The Key Statistics link and other links on the Yahoo page tell more of the story. For example, EBay made a profit of $1.75 Billion last year. To me THAT says they are doing something right.
weight/exercise equipment in New York
The above was searching on "weight" - I thought ebay would also ID plural matches, but it doesn't, so here is the search on weights. The trick is to add it to your favorite searches and ebay can automatically e-mail you if something shows up - and you can narrow the search. It's pretty user-friendly if you ask me. Tha above search also is just NY,NY - you can probably expand the search in the area, add more keywords, etc.
www.paypalsuck.com
Check it out, there are lots of complaints.
Also if you are in it for the money market fund rate which used to be awsome at 5% now it is hovering at 1% check out www.virtualbank.com a real FDIC insured bank with a 2.15% interest money market acount.
www.bankrate.com is where I found them.
We recently purchased a mower from Sears, the variable speed 6.75 Mph mowers with the lever that raises and lowers all wheels, the 3 in 1.. Well it doesn't start but about 4 times out of 10, just makes a wheezing noise, and its brand new.. The variable speed option, isn't variable, its a pully mechanism that merely turns drive on and off.. We've been trying forever to get through to Sears' customer support..
So I guess the concerc that Sears offers more support and better product than Ebay, is a matter of opinion.. I think that home depot probably offers a better mower in thix case, and we are seriously considering returning the mower for a refund.. That is the advantage of Sears over Ebay, but I'm sure its not a value-add they cherish. The advantage of Ebay is to get what you want even if its no longer being made. Sears will only sell you the best most current thing but doubt you will ever be abel to purchase a Sears Atari 2600 compatible video game system from them, on ebay anything is possible.
Remember Ebay is not an auction site, its a sales venue.. Its a bit more like a dynamic bazaar, and what you get is what you get.
Just say no to license servers!!
We called into Sears mower support dept. and one of their workers knows of the problem with the variable speed lever, and he knows its not variable speed, but says "they won't listen to me".. Imagine a drive belt with a pulley that expands the belt by pulling on it.. This is the variable speed.. Any mechanic will tell its not, in fact its obvious.. But in the sales rhetoric they will call it "variable speed".. We asked about the TORO's with the same variable speed drive lever, and he said "yeah that one has the same thing in it".. So Sears lies to its customers..
I wonder if Sears will ever employ a buyer/seller satisfaction statistic to determine which products are worthy of purchasing.. Much less allow these purchases online.. Note that to fix your mower you have to take it to the repair facility, or hire a representative to come out and fix it on site..
The mower was only 300 dollars..
Just say no to license servers!!
Moe: "I'm going to spend the night ogling the ladies of the Victoria's Secret Catalog."
(lie detector beeps)
Moe: "Uh I mean JC Penney's"
(lie detector beeps)
Moe: "OK, Sears."
(lie detector remains silent)
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Point being I could find such things near me on ebay a year or two ago...can't now because of all the hypnosis cd's and diet pills. Legit people, the real stuff that the original idea appealed to, are no longer the vast majority of participants.