Sellers who rip off buyers : eBay Guides

Even though my feedback at this point is only 14, I've won over 34 auctions and paid immediately (within minutes) of the close of the auction (except for one that I sent a money order to)  I've learned a lot of things from my mishaps and I hope these rules will make your travels safer!  (I'll add more later as the memory of them come back)

 

1) Seller feedback rating.  In one case, I ordered speakers from a seller here in Canada who had over 30 positive feedback and no negatives.  Had I checked, about 20 were from purchases of under $4 to build up the feedback.  (Now, they indicate seller/buyer feedback thankfully)  The other 10 or so were from buyers who used the Buy It Now option to get an incredible deal (as I had thought I'd done).  They'd given the buyer positive feedback before they even paid for the item!!  Fools, fools, fools who did nothing but make others feel more secure than they should have.  It ended with the seller being brought to court although I don't know what happened in the end.  I had to claim an ebay purchase protection plan and only lost $80 out of pocket.  I later looked at the feedback when some negative stuff began appearing (after I'd mailed my money-order unfortunately) saying the seller was a rip off.  It only made these formerly positive feedback buyers look all the more foolish.  Check feedback!!!

 

2) Never use a money-order, cheque or bank draft/wire transfer!!!  If it's a scam, you're out the money without any recorse other than ebay buyer protection and there's the deductable that might be a major portion of the price you paid unless it was a high-dollar item.  Use a credit card via paypal or other such service.  When things go wrong and the buyer won't come through with the insurance you paid for (and they obviously never bought) or whatever, you have the credit card company to do a charge-back with against the seller once you convice the credit card company what happened and there was no other choice.

 

3) Deep a copy of the ebay auction page (print it off) and a copy of every email communication you had with the seller either through ebay or directly.  This was a slam dunk when I needed to go back to the credit card company!  The seller (in one case) either refused to admit or was absolutely lost in paperwork to track the auction.  If things go fine, you can just recycle the paper.

 

4) If you have a choice, get a tracking number from the seller within 24 hours of it being sent out.  If they can't provide that, then either they're lying or they aren't very professional.  Of course, I sometimes request USPS from the U.S. to avoid big brokerage fees from FedEx or UPS.

 

5) Shill buyers who force up your bid or bid at what the seller really wants for non-reserve auctions.  In one case, once I started checking into their previous auctions (ebay stores in this case) I found that the item I was wanting never sold for lower than a specific value, unless it went to one of these shills and in each of those cases, the final price was way below the normal level.  I guess they just didn't want to give it away, but why didn't they just use reserve auctions?  When I looked at quite a few of the completed auctions, even when one of the shills didn't win, they definitely bid causing the price up to a minimum amount.