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Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

blog.danhulton.com

71–80 of 132 posts

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#71
post #24

A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed. I sold some iTunes gift cards and provided the redemption code from the card after I received payment. We both left positive feedback for each other (he already had 18 feedback). A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse.…

If you ever launch it, let me know and I will do my utmost to promote it. If you'd launched already I would have happily sold my iPhone through you. There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.

> There's really no way you could have provided a worse experience unless you actively tried.

Oddly enough, that's been tried at least once:

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pa...

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#72
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bonanza.com (the site I've been building for about four years now) has become one of the largest non-eBay marketplaces by scooping up sellers like you & the OP. We're now up to 25,000 active sellers and 4 million listings by virtue of having seller-friendly policies. Admittedly, there is enough gray area in marketplace transactions where determining "right and wrong" can sometimes prove difficult. But I like to think…

You should work with Brian Armstrong to allow sellers / buyers to use bitcoins on the site. The advantage is that bitcoin does not allow chargebacks. Their interface is very close to PayPal, and makes it much easier to get started with. http://coinbase.com/

Don't you think that "no buyer protection" is just heading too far in the opposite direction?

Especially with callmeed's post[1] above...

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730281

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#73
I was pretty frustrated when I sold my iPhone 4 when the 4S launched, had a winning bidder, who then never paid or contacted me. Couldn't leave negative feedback on them at all, and they continue to bid on stuff they don't intend on actually paying for, with sellers none the wiser that the bidder is a shitty person.

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#74
I've been a long time eBay user and have also had issues over the past year with a couple of unpaid items and having to relist. The annoying part was not being able to give the buyer negative feedback, allowing him/her to waste someone else's time.

What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, how much time did he waste over the benefits of the actually selling the item to someone who pays for the item. You take a risk when you enter into a contract without knowing what you are doing. How bad was the experience really? He said he got back MOST of what he wanted, but it appears that he needed to get $2 more in order to close this case, but they would not refund an unrefundable $2, that I woul…

So let's say you sign up with a hosting provider and they are just terrible. Your site's down all the time and FTP is slow as molasses, etc. You go ask for a refund because not only did they not provide the level of service they advertised, they actively wasted your time. You'd be just fine if they said "Sure, but only most of it because of reasons"? There's a lot of people echoing my experience here. So if there's a…

Should I follow your flawed logic? How does a crap host relate to eBay? Are you saying that eBay is a shit marketplace? Please provide proof to back up this defamatory claim. You took a risk using eBay's resource, you lost money due to a fee for using their resource, that is reasonable.

I gave you a chance to explain your rationale and you failed as all I'm getting is the feeling of someone who has a silver spoon in their mouth. It is a marketplace, you used their resource, someone didn't pay, you said you used one of their protections, it worked, but you needed to get an unrefundable $2 back, so you went to CS who did not want to refund it. There are more people who had a worse experience than this such as losing their item, fees, and not getting any support. If anything you got the closer to ideal case of this and you are complaining about it. That's crap.

I no longer have anything to contribute to this as I am wasting my time here.

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, you basically got a full story about my frustrations and issues with a major company and you posted a comment about the least important part of the story (the $ value)? Whereas there are other people who have legitimate complaints about being lied to about >50% of campaign promises along with facts. Wow... I really do want to understand the rationale behind this. Explain.

How does this contribute to the discussion at all? Answer the damned question. The immaturity that emanates from this is amazing. :) Go troll somewhere else. EDIT: Sure this could have been phrased better had the parent poster show some respect. I said I wanted to know the rationale behind the post, he chose to add an empty post, so yes this is warranted. I did not say anything vitriolic enough that warranted the par…

Please don't act surprised after what you wrote. There are polite ways to make a point, and good reason to do so.

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#78
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run Bonanza? Cool, I have a bill for you. 2 years ago I caught a lady selling handbags (that she didn't really have) from your site. I caught her because she was having people pay through an account with our service (nextproof.com). Guess who had to eat the chargeback fees? I did Guess who had to call other people, inform them the handbag they ordered as a Christmas gift was bogus, then listen to them cry? I did…

Wow. It never occurred to me that when you provide a service like that, someone could use it to literally ruin Christmas. That is heavy.

Don't make critical purchases from random people on the Internet? We should never blame the victim, nevertheless everyone should be thaught a basic level of "Internet street smarts".

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, you basically got a full story about my frustrations and issues with a major company and you posted a comment about the least important part of the story (the $ value)? Whereas there are other people who have legitimate complaints about being lied to about >50% of campaign promises along with facts. Wow... I really do want to understand the rationale behind this. Explain.

How does this contribute to the discussion at all? Answer the damned question. The immaturity that emanates from this is amazing. :) Go troll somewhere else. EDIT: Sure this could have been phrased better had the parent poster show some respect. I said I wanted to know the rationale behind the post, he chose to add an empty post, so yes this is warranted. I did not say anything vitriolic enough that warranted the par…

Honestly, it's usually trolls using the word troll. That combined with the lack of empathy and entitlement displayed in your original comment compelled me to check your comment history. You're a nice person in there though. What gives? I'm genuinely curious if I struck a nerve or something.

But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and let me ignore how entitled and demanding your "Explain" was, and actually explain.

It's not that the transaction was a failure that upsets me, nor is it the actual end cost to me. It was the abysmal entire experience, from start to finish. There are plenty of reputable companies that - when faced with a customer who has had a bad experience are happy to refund them their money and apologize for the inconvenience. eBay doesn't do that, and makes it as difficult as possible to actually contact them to resolve it.

Now, this is entirely speculation based on what I've learned from the comments here and on my blog and via Google, but odds are very very good I would never have gotten that money back anyway. And odds are very very good I would have been on the phone for upwards of 30 minutes in queue.

But ultimately in the end, the fact that I had to pay any money to them after having such a terrible experience, just to get them to stop bombarding my inbox with "SWEAR TO GOD, WE WILL SEND YOU TO COLLECTIONS (also don't reply to this email we won't read it)" is a complete failure of customer service. That's what's unacceptable, not the % of the fees I got back.

Re: Fine, eBay. Here’s your $2. I hope you choke on it.

#80
Also if a seller tells you to keep waiting or that they resent the item you didn't receive, NEVER let it go past 45 days. Because after 45 days you can't even leave negative feedback on the seller much less try to fight their scam. Even if you do go to the trouble of getting into their system (which filters auctions older than 45 days) you will get a canned response of NO.
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