Fleabay rant!

[jeff kushner]

Just venting here and letting others know "the easy way" rather than the "hard way"

I have been an eBay member for 13 years. Early on, I bought around 2K of items per month...for 4-5 years as I restored bikes & built a motorcycle collection. I have ONLY used paypal for making and receiving payments.

A couple of week ago, Kerry and I cleaned up one of the bikes and I posted in on fleabay. I don't play games with reserves so I set MY price as the floor and let it go to bidding. It sold but the guy didn't pay, I relisted it and it sold again, for a few hundred more. The buyer had 24 hrs to make his deposit.

He did pay his deposit and instantly I get 2 emails from Fleabay. The first simply wants to confirm the SS # I gave them a couple years ago.

The second DEMANDS a bank account # to pay me....there is no paypal option. They state in order to release "my" funds, they need this. Keep in mind that paypal already sends out Tax statements for $$ earned by selling.

LMAO...really? AFTER the sale you are going to try to bend me over? Well, this certainly won't be happening! Yes, my paypal account is bank-linked but I trust Peter Theil much more than fleabay with banking info.....LOL

I have never let someone use "money" as bait to get me to do something. They didn't tell me this ahead of time but chose to wait till he made his deposit & to hold his "money" hostage? Wow.....how childish.....they should give it back to him....lol


I wrote the buyer in Australia a nice note, explaining the situation and I apologized to him since it wasn't his fault. I also cancelled the sale so he would get his deposit returned by eBay and that it would be listed on Craigslist at 4AM and I simply walked away.

I listed the bike at 4AM yesterday, it was sold by 11am.

Happily ever after.................

 

[SeverusBites]

eBay is out for eBay, no one else. I feel that the usefulness of the site is much diminished from the earlier days.

I also feel that essentially every advantage is to the seller, since sellers are what generate money- buyers are a free, endless, inexhaustible resource so they don't matter. Like in this case, the buyer got screwed out of the auction he won because of eBay policy.

But I'm not surprised they try to strongarm everyone. In the early days of Amazon you could list used stuff sort of like eBay. I listed an AV receiver for a couple hundred bucks and it sold.

Then Amazon informed me that for sales in certain high risk categories, they would hold the funds for a month. Wait, what? They said that time was needed to see if the item was legit or something, I said wait, that guy can just say he isn't satisfied and I don't get my money? "Oh no, Sir, the money is yours, he can't reverse the sale, it's just a holding period.

WTF? I was livid. I called their "service center" in Bangladesh I'd guess, and a supernaturally patient but totally disconnected person listened to my 30 minute rant about "Would you accept it if your boss held your pay for a month, just to "be sure people were happy with your service"? "Of course not Sir, but blah blah blah."

I did get the money but it was the last thought I ever had of selling anything on Amazon.

 

[Blackdog1714]

Small purchases -Ebay yes! Real money no way EBAY! THey are like dealing with the USPS 🤣

 

[jeff kushner]

When I buy stuff, especially used vintage parts, ebay has no equal........a worldwide audience for used stuff.

My anger is only b/c they played games......but their own rules will allow me to get creative as well

I can make ebay useful to me as I use them to point to where my stuff is really for sale.........

In other words, you can list a bike for $180,000.00............everybody will look at it b/c of the high price, to see if you are nuts mostly....but in your posting, you can have subtle language that lets the smart ones know this stuff is for sale at real prices : "here at this place"


Of course if anyone wants to pay the 180K, sell it! Then open a new temporary bank account and send fleabay the # and get paid LMAO

As the greedy need more and more "money", more and more bad behavior ensues......

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Like you, I also bought truckloads of motorcycle parts from Ebay. Several per month if not weekly.
I only bought. Never sold and I was not using PAYPAL.
One day out of the blue they required me to use an EBAY credit card instead of the low interest one I had been using for years. I'd reached some sort of "limit" with Ebay because I had spent over $10,000.00.
I never did apply for their card.
And I've never gone back to Ebay.
Whenever I need a used part I can't find anywhere else, I get my wife to order it.
Otherwise I'm all Amazon Prime.

 

[Tom]

I HATE this sort of thing. Hate it with a passion. Shady BS business practices...

I'll never do business with Best Buy again because they wouldn't let me return an item WITH the receipt in the allotted time frame unless I let them swipe my driver's license into their "very secure" system. No thanks.

Thanks for the warning. I've never used eBay, and now never will.

 

[jeff kushner]

they required me to use an EBAY credit card

I had never heard of that one Z but it's prob b/c I used paypal and not a CC but it doesn't surprise me a bit. I just can't stand being led......or forced like Best buy tried to do to Tom.

It used to burn me when they wrote my DL # on my checks.....all cashiers were instructed to do so yet it was an illegal act!(you can't put forms of ID together with bank info)


My buyer showed up early with non-sequential, large denomination bills, I made a new friend and he got his Kaw first triple project!

I actually held the bike overnight for him b/c he couldn't make it Tuesday......my gut told me that he was an honest guy so I turned down the other offers and made a deal with him. My gut was right and it went like clockwork.

Craiglist charged me 5 bucks and I deleted the listing 7hrs after I posted it, once I had a deal in place.


Bumps in the road of life....eBay in their greed, presented me with an opportunity to successfully negotiate a few little bumps........

 

[SeverusBites]

I thought you only had to pay for hooker ads on CL when they were allowed. . . Vehicles too?

eBay is really fine to buy from, 99.9% of just purchasing little things is fine. It's the big purchases where things get squirrelly.

For example, I bought a 25$ dollar incubator, basically destroyed it though idiocy (I figured this out later, at first I thought it was just broken. It actually works fine now) but told the eBay seller that the item was defective. They quickly agreed to send another, no hassle. No need to return the dud. Now I have two.

My point being, if you want to buy cheap import stuff, you can't beat eBay and if you want rare, used old stuff, you really can't beat it, like Jeff said.

If you want to buy new stuff and have an ironclad, no hassle return experience, buy from Amazon.

Selling on eBay can be a hassle but I have to admit, I've worldwide-yard-saled a few items that sold well on eBay but would never have found a local buyer.

 

[Jan A]

I thought you only had to pay for hooker ads on CL when they were allowed. . . Vehicles too?

eBay is really fine to buy from, 99.9% of just purchasing little things is fine. It's the big purchases where things get squirrelly.

For example, I bought a 25$ dollar incubator, basically destroyed it though idiocy (I figured this out later, at first I thought it was just broken. It actually works fine now) but told the eBay seller that the item was defective. They quickly agreed to send another, no hassle. No need to return the dud. Now I have two.

My point being, if you want to buy cheap import stuff, you can't beat eBay and if you want rare, used old stuff, you really can't beat it, like Jeff said.

If you want to buy new stuff and have an ironclad, no hassle return experience, buy from Amazon.

Selling on eBay can be a hassle but I have to admit, I've worldwide-yard-saled a few items that sold well on eBay but would never have found a local buyer.

I used to love Ebay. And then some of the sellers were also coming over from Amazon or Ali Baba or other big sites & the seller's businesses seemed to come out of Amazon or Overstock, so to me, it lost its uniqueness. I rarely visit Ebay these days.