Need some eBay advice...

[mintcollector]

Okay here is the issue. I sell a lot of small, but interesting collectibles and yard sale/flea market finds on ebay. This helps me pay for my addictive high grade PMG paper money habit ()! Anyway, I made a large purchase on eBay and all is well and the seller and I both left each other feedback. I have also made several other high end purchases (mind you, by high end I mean, between $500-$3000 per purchase). These purchases are all visible in my feedback profile.

 

Now as of late, a lot of buyers (my buyers) are asking for ridiculous favors from me on eBay. I have one buyer who claims I should refund all of her purchase price of a $0.99 cent pez because she claims it should have been sent priority mail (the auction description states first class mail and that is how it was sent). I have another buyer who claims he won't send an item back to me, but now wants a partial refund (I offered a full refund). And the list goes on and on. I have a 99.5% positive feedback rating on eBay and know these issues are not my fault, so I did some detective work. After communicating with my buyers, I have discovered that one of my buyers who wants a partial refund believes "I can afford it because of the amount of items I buy on eBay." Another states that I must be rich because of all the purchases I make and can afford to take a small loss to help them out in their time of need. This is utterly ridiculous! Time of need! Any of these buyers want to pay any of my college loans? I don't mean to rant and rave, but has anyone else encountered this kind of behavior? Would it be best to use one account for buying and one account for selling?

 

Also can you have two eBay accounts linked to one PayPal account? (Please answer as I really want to try this if possible). Please help if you can, as I am at witts end spending my weekends dealing with crazy eBay buyers. I NEVER had this problem before and I am by no means RICH! In fact, I make well below what a person what my education should be making thanks to the economy.

 

Again, I do apologize for the rant, but I am lost in a sea of frustration!

 

PS Thanks for reading!

 

Sincerely yours,

 

mintcollector

[GW]

i'm interested in reading the responses,

i've been thinking of selling on e-bay,

but don't know how, and dont want to deal with people.

 

i know that e-bay has some "Community - Discussion Forums".

personnaly, i would list the items as "no returns"

and hope for positive feedback

 

[mintcollector]

Unfortunately, eBay only allows sellers to post positive feedback; therefore, buyers can make demands and threaten negative feedback with little recourse from eBay. Even though threatening negative feedback is against eBay's policies, it is hard to prove and in most cases (thanks to eBay's offshore call center) nearly impossible to convince their staff that anyone violated the user agreement.

 

Personally, eBay's discussion forums are hit and miss. Thankfully most people buy and sell on eBay and know what it is like; but unfortunately, some of these people also know how to 'manipulate' sellers because they know all the loopholes of eBay and PayPal. These are the buyers to avoid and they always have 100% positive feedback because they use one account for buying and one account for sellingt! This is flaw in eBay's design.

 

It is a no win situation and eBay is the only winner as their fees are extremely high in regards to the service (or non service) they provide. It is sad really. The company went down hill and is now governed by management that only cares about the bottomline (in my opinion). This is not a successful way to run a business, in my opinion.

[JIM F.]

I've never had any issues selling on Ebay, but on the other hand the items I have sold were items sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars. If you are dealing with a "flea market" type buyer at a 99 cent price point, then that is a different type of buyer (apparently).

 

I would think it is easier to just throw away (or donate) items that are of very low value, but that's just my 2 cents worth.

 

 

[mintcollector]

I am starting to agree with you, as it is no longer worth the hassle. I have too many buyers trying to take advantage of me. I hope these buyers learn their lesson, as soon ebay will become a place where only more expensive items are bought and sold...and that is fine by me!

 

Oh well...

[JIM F.]

I don't know what type of items you are selling, but you might want to think about bundling them together so that the selling price helps to weeds out the problem buyers.

 

 

[Bruceswar]

As a power seller I refuse to list low dollar items.

 

2 Simple reasons

 

 

1 I have better things to do with my time than list any item worth under $15.00

 

2 It keeps the headaches like this away. It takes me the same amount of time to list a $2000.00 item as it does a $30.00 item. I would rather list the former.

 

BTW you are not the only one dealing with e-bay insufficiently_thoughtful_persons. We have all have them. I block some from ever bidding with me again.

[mintcollector]

I agree with you Bruce, however, it does also depend on what you choose to deal in as well. I made a 'name' for myself on eBay selling video games and classic videos games as well. Unfortunately, $15 is the average price for these items. Therefore, I have to tolerate some of the issues that come along with the sale of such items.

 

Just today I got a nasty email from a buyer who was wondering where his $10 item is. I actually listed it for $15.00 and did him a FAVOR by accepting his offer of $10. What does this buyer do? Threaten me for the post office not delivering it within eBay's posted guidelines of 2-9 days for first class mail. Sadly, this 'buyer' has over 2,000+ positive feedbacks. I guess it doesn't matter what you do when you are a buyer, as you can only receive a positive feedbcak from a seller! This is a sad; sad indeed...

 

Some poeple on eBay continue to amaze me. Anyway, thank you for letting me vent and I hope I didn't take too much of your time with this reply!

 

Sincerely,

 

mintcollector

[GW]

what i learned from this topic:

 

sell items that are expensive.

send priority mail or offer free shipping.

eBay is the only winner as their fees are extremely high

if possible, have two eBay accounts linked to one PayPal account

people go crazy if they spend more on shipping than the item.

e-bays fees will nickel and dime you. they can be 10% or higher

 

for reference:

EBAY AND PAYPAL FEE CALCULATOR

http://www.newlifeauctions.com/calc.html

 

Ebay fees that i know of:

 

Insertion Fee

Reserve Fee

Buy It Now Fee

Listing Upgrade Fees

PayPal Fee

photo fee

Featured First Fee (most expensive 20%)

 

i may never sell anything on e-bay.

 

thanks

 

[thehumantorch]

I believe it is possible to have 2 ebay accounts linked to your paypal account.

It would be wise to create two ebay accounts; one for buying and one for selling.

 

Removing the ability to neg a buyer has shifted tranaction power to the buyer and

some buyers use that advantage to feedback blackmail sellers.

[mintcollector]

Lots of great advice. Thank you GW, for that link. It seems very useful for me. Also, thehumantorch, I appreciate your help, as that may be the way to go. I am sick of having my eBay account held hostage by some crazy, uneducated buyer that thinks I can afford to take a loss on everything I sell.

 

Thanks again!

 

Sincerely,

 

mintcollector

[cjones81-migration]

I'm done with FeeBay. They charge you a fee on every little thing. By the time ebay takes their part, the profit margin is very slim to a loss.. Like if you sell book filler coins and sell the coins at their redbook value $2.50 then if you add in the fees, feebay will take ($0.90) then the buyer gets made about how you over charged them.

 

Just last week, i sold 5 barber dimes starting at $4.50 with a buy it now price set at $8.50. Well one person bids and another, by the time the auction ended it was over $23 for 5 coins. The buyer got the coins and boy was he mad at me. i over charged him? how did i do that? you bidded on them!

 

The coins wasn't worth as much as he bought them for and wanted a refund!

 

Don't these people check these things before they buy them?

 

I'm having a auction site built similar to eBay as i type this dedicated to only coins, paper money, supplies, anything that has to do with this hobby.

 

I Will never charge 1 cent for

 

* Auction Listing (setup)

* Images Upload

* Buy Now

* Final Value Fee

* Make Offer

* Relisting

* End of Auction

* Reserve Price

 

The only fees i will charge are for 'Specialty Listings'

 

* Home Page Featured

* Highlighted item

* Category Featured

* Additional Category

* Media Upload (Videos, Doesn’t include images)

* Bold Item

 

So, if you don't care to make the listing stand out from the rest or don't need to be featured on the home page. Then you don't pay, not one red cent, even if you list 2000000 items or your items sells for 20 zillion dollars, we don't take a cut.

 

On top of that, We're giving new sellers a voucher that gives you 100% Fee Reductions on the specialty listing. This voucher is good for up to 50 uses, that means you can list up to 50 different items on the homepage for free.

 

I'm not looking to make money, if i make enough every month to cover the server fee, i would be happy.

 

The site is 90% complete

 

Lmao, That's how sick i am of feebay