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

blog.danhulton.com

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

#91

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…

IMHO your original 'request' was phrased as an indignant demand. Of course, the OP should have just downvoted and moved on. But now there seems to be some confusion, so I hope this clarification from the peanut gallery is useful.

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

#92
The fact that you can't leave negative feedback as a seller caught me off guard too. I understand that there are scammers on Ebay, that's just the way it is. But Ebay cares so little bit about its sellers, that it takes away their only defense. This just makes me just mad, especially since you have to pay all kinds of fees to list an auction.

Story time: I sold some eletronics to a guy in Italy. After it arrived, he accused me (in a Google Translate-based English message since he didn't speak German, despite bidding on an article with German description) that I sent a defective item and requested part of his money back. I explained to him that I tested it before sending, and that I would (despite not being required to) offer a full refund, but only if he sent the item back. If it turned out to be really defective, I even offered to pay all shipping costs.

The buyer then messaged me again, saying that it miracously worked after he "repaired" it, and since I did not send him a refund, he left me negative feedback. I tried to contact him twice, asking why he decided to keep the item but still give negative feedback, but he never responded. Only then I tried to give him negative feedback too, but to my surprise Ebay does not allow that. Had I known that before, I would have never ever even used Ebay.

Anyway, I contacted Ebay support, but they said that they do not want to remove the feedback, even though their FAQ states they can remove feedback in situations like this.

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

#93
I hate ebay/paypal just as much as most people but:

http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&#38...

Solved, done. Your $2 will return to you.

If your buyer agreed to cancel your transaction or didn't respond, you'll receive a credit to your seller's account for the final value fee within 7-10 business days of closing the case.

If you want a refund for your credit, see Requesting a refund of your eBay credit balance.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.h...

Granted it's buried in their help system, but it's there.

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A petty injustice is still an injustice.

Good heavens on some scale every injustice is petty. You imply that the OP's problem is petty compared to more serious eBay dispute - but what stops someone from descrying the pettiness of those thousand-dollar disputes, because someone got screwed on a mortgage, worth tens or hundreds of thousands? What's to stop someone attacking you for bring up an injustice that just involves money when women are being systematically raped and murdered in sub Saharan Africa?

You need to get off your high horse and stop attacking someone for expressing disgust over a small amount of money.

I would add an important fact, one which I've never heard expressed but which I have not seen an exception to: the net sum of petty injustice in this world is far, far greater than the great injustices done in this world. The reason? Because people like you shut down those who would spend the time to fight it. Meanwhile, eBay takes $2 here, $2 there and laughs all the way to the bank with millions.

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

#95

So a big part of the problem seems to be that sellers can no longer give buyers bad feedback when it is appropriate. Does anyone know the motivation for this rule change? I can't think of a type of fraud that this would prevent, but it seems like they must have been targeting something when making this change.

Buyers were afraid to leave honest feedback on sellers, due to the threat of retaliatory feedback. Some listings actually came close to extorting positive feedback, with high volume sellers bluntly saying things like, "You can't hurt us, we already have over 10000 positive feedbacks, so do as we say."

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

#96

Scammers, confusing auction settings, limited integration with paypal despite owning them, terrible invoice generation, image uploads that don't work without Flash, etc. I despise eBay. That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing l…

I believe you can also sell electronics TO Amazon. Probably at a reduced price, but I got several hundred dollars in amazon credit (equal to cash for my personal use) for an iPhone once. It was absurdly easy.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMHO your original 'request' was phrased as an indignant demand. Of course, the OP should have just downvoted and moved on. But now there seems to be some confusion, so I hope this clarification from the peanut gallery is useful.

[deleted]

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, you basically got around $68 back and you posted this blog post ABOUT losing less than 5% (around 3%) from a failed transaction? Whereas there are other people who have legitimate complaints having lost >50% of their item value along with fees. Wow..... I really do want to understand the rationale behind this. Explain.

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.

You made it about the $2 in your headline. And frankly, I have to agree with the grandparent.

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

#99
post #23

eBay is a great place for scammers to get free stuff! every few years, my girlfriend gives eBay another chance and tries selling something. Every single time, she gets scammed. Each time, the buyer claims he didn't receive the goods or received the wrong thing. eBay automatically sides with the buyer and immediately refunds their money. In cases where the buyer claims they received the wrong thing, they either fail t…

I've never had that problem. Ship with delivery confirmation and insurance and you're safe.

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

#100
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With bitcoin you can do some surprisingly complex things. Such as move money into a fund that the other people can verify are there, which only pays out on a trigger condition.
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