Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t click-scam or irrelevant link
I emailed the mods.
Thanks much.
Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
51–60 of 144 posts
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#52I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…
It’s not that bad. I sell a lot of stuff and have had no problems with scammers other than a couple of people doing a buy it now and then wanting stuff shipped to Lagos etc and payment via money order. You just cancel the sale and relist then. The real risks are couriers in my experience. eBay success: 1. Avoid GSP 2. Sell only inside your region 3. Mark and photograph everything sold and keep the serial numbers. 4.…
If someone picks up from you take a signature.
If you do a buy it now, tick the immediate payment box
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#53Some day in the far future, eBay will invent a technology that lets people embed Youtube videos in their listings. I'm not holding my breath though.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with all of your points plus the UI is massively inconsistent, not just in term of format, but different pages will give you different message count or items sold count, or one page will tell you you received a message and the message page will show nothing, it looks like something quickly hacked together in php in the old days. And I am not even talking about consistency between browser and iOS UI in term of i…
Doesn't help that half of the user panel hasn't been updated since the 90's/early 2000's. Some pages look relatively modern then some just look awful.
They've had a given typo ("choosen", in their end-item message) for at least fifteen years. I reported it to them in 2003.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#55I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…
This is anecdotal, because it's only my experience from being a long time eBay user (buying and selling). 1 Buying on ebay is nice and safe because eBay protects the buyer and will almost always rule in the buyers favour. 2. Selling on eBay is fraught with problems: The Seller is not protected from scams at all. It's easy for a buyer to buy something, and they can flag to eBay that their account was compromised. Beca…
Here's my view of the scams. Modern retail has created the expectation that you are entitled to a refund for anything, no questions asked. A retailer can take a statistical view of this situation, and price their goods according to the expectation of how many refunds they have to eat.
Eating refunds is preferable to being strict about them, because the freewheeling refund policy invites more sales overall. This may also be a policy of the credit card companies, since they want to do more business as well.
eBay wants your experience to be just like buying from any online retailer, so they impose the same policy on their sellers. Naturally this invites the scammers. But the calculus is the same: The retailer eats the scams and bakes the cost into the selling price.
The hardship is for the "little guy" who wants to sell a few things. They can't take a statistical view -- a single loss could kill them, or eat all of their spare time dealing with it. But the little guy isn't eBay's focus. It was announced long ago in the business press, that eBay was shifting their focus from being America's Yard Sale, to being more of a regular online retail space akin to Amazon (at the time).
My thought is that eBay works for sellers if you've got a big enough mark-up and enough sales to cover the cost of simply writing off the scams and refunds. For crap bought as surplus, or imported in bulk from China, the mark-up could be greater than 10x.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to look at the reactions maintainers have to pull requests. Do they usually get merged, or do they end up being dragged through a bureaucratic nightmare and eventually closed?
I've never written anything popular enough to really get pull requests, but I can definitely understand not merging a pull request due to not being able to maintain that code or it taking the project in a different direction to what you want.
It's one thing to say "no", it's another thing to say "later" forever.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#57I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…
I've sold quite a few older "premium" things (>$1000) over eBay and didn't have any issues so far. Things I did no longer need like older computers, GPUs, drones, cameras, synths etc. I however always took photos of the package in the final stages of wrapping up, showing what exactly I shipped (together with serial numbers if available), including when it was ready for shipping in case anything scam-like arose. Maybe…
You've just been lucky so far. All those photos, serial numbers and the likes will mean almost zero to ebay if a buyer ever raises a dispute.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#58I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…
> Nothing about their site has changed in 20 years, and they're waiting to die, like Yahoo.
I'm from NZ and I suspect our local equivalent (TradeMe) has the same systemic problems:
* Horrific UI flaws.
* Adverts. Everywhere. It's like they don't want me to use the site.
* A new version of the UI for mobile browsers (a replacement for the broken mobile browser version), that breaks all their links within emails
* Automated emails sent at 4 o'clock in the morning (I complained and was told it was so they could use their servers efficiently).
* Please please let me filter for NZ only - so I can choose not to have drop shipped items if I want it this week...
I also use eBay.com.au and it is sweet to use in comparison to our local TradeMe, but TradeMe is the incumbent that everyone uses...
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#59I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…
I've sold quite a few older "premium" things (>$1000) over eBay and didn't have any issues so far. Things I did no longer need like older computers, GPUs, drones, cameras, synths etc. I however always took photos of the package in the final stages of wrapping up, showing what exactly I shipped (together with serial numbers if available), including when it was ready for shipping in case anything scam-like arose. Maybe…
>Maybe the price level guaranteed nobody wanted to commit that much money for scam?
I think you've just been lucky, after all the whole point of buyer-scams is that they buy something, then raise a complaint and get a refund.
The end result is that the buyer has your item, and has their money returned. Sure they might need some available money, but they don't lose out.
Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is no doubt the reason, and it seems like a reasonable rule on the face of it. But there ought to be another rule that takes priority over that one: when you use the name of a person or company, capitalize and spell it as they spell it. They are the ones who get to decide. It's not the prerogative of a third-party publisher or newswriter to override that. It seems like a simple matter of humbleness and deference…
> They are the ones who get to decide Once upon a time, the late musician Prince decided to change his name. Turns out that no, you don't always "get to decide" and even fans don't follow your every whim: Most ignored his choice and without much "humbleness and deference" started referring to him as TAFKAP—"The Artist Formerly Known As Prince."
Well, that and he changed his name to a glyph which didn’t actually appear on anyone’s system. It was practically impossible to call him by his ‘real’ name even if you had wanted to.