Anybody buy on Ebay often?

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BabyTyrant

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I buy most things I want through Ebay, 1st nice thing is usually you can find a great price on basically everything and 2nd there are all these sales they do from time to time where you get significantly more % back in eBay bucks (normal is 2%), think of it as free money you get on eBay that you can then use to buy stuff for free or a reduced cost.

A word of Advice though, there is some risk running into a bad seller, but in my experience theres a much bigger risk running into unsavory characters as a seller yourself, any time you sell anything of any kind of value there is a risk the buyer is trying to RIP you off before they actually "buy" the item by thinking of some way they can raise a complaint to eBay and then get issued a refund; I've seen it happen half a dozen times and they try a multitude of different tactics.

Usually these tactics are 1. "The item is a fake" (they often use this claim if you sell a luxury good that is often faked like Purses, watches, etc). 2. The item arrived broken or "significantly not as described" (this claim is often used when the buyer wants to keep the item and get a refund, or they use it after they break your item, or they try to keep your good item and send you their broken one)

3. They also sometimes claim "item never arrived", but usually this claim can be fought with a tracking number (usually under $1 per package)
 
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I buy used computer components off ebay every now and then. From a buyer only standpoint I have one real gripe: improper packaging. This is where I start to trust international sellers more than home sellers (U.S.A.); because every product I have ever bought from overseas is properly packaged. About half of the products I have ever received from US sellers was thrown into a box without a single thought of minimum needed care.

Case in point: I am trying to build a Socket 754 computer to play Sim City 4 with its larger than itself folder of mods. So I order an MSI K8N Neo+ from a US seller and an ATI X800 GTO from Ukraine. The photo of the mainboard shows the product resting on an anti-static bag. When I unwrap it from its box I can feel the static charge building on the bubble wrap as I carefully remove it from the mainboard. No anti-static bag was used. To my [shockingly surprised] delight, the board amazingly lives. You damn right I would've launched into ebays complaint system for a refund if it didn't work. The video card on the other hand was wrapped neatly in a resealable anti-static bag and packed snugly into a box full of low density packing peanuts. As EXPECTED it worked without issue.

I will agree that some buyers on ebay are some of the most unrepentenly scandalous theives you can find, but most buyers are for the most part just like anyone else. Bad sellers are very few and far between since the complaint/refund system is biased towards the buyer more often than not. The 8-bit Guy on youtube has a video describing some of the most common situations he encounters when selling his wares on ebay.
 
I regularly buy computer parts, vintage diapers (not the $1000/bag kind, mind you), and other stuff on eBay. Seldom will I spend a lot on large electronic items (e.g. whole computers) because I've learned that the average seller just can't be bothered to pack things well.

My biggest gripe about eBay is that reporting fake items and other fraudulent listings is nearly impossible. As soon as you go to report that kind of thing, you come to a dead end where none of the reporting choices you're offered are applicable. In short, it seems that eBay has decided, "There's too much fraud here, so we can't be bothered to follow up on reports of fraud, so... *plugs ears and starts humming loudly*"

I'm highly skeptical of most listings--and particularly for large/expensive items--where the condition is listed as "new." I've lost count of how many listings I've seen for "new, unopened" Mac computers with configurations never offered by Apple. And I've several times gotten "new-in-box" PC motherboards with telltale patterns of dust on them, or circular scratches around the screw holes.

Long story short: You can pretty much find anything on eBay, and if you're persistent in watching for certain kinds of items, you can score amazing deals. But you do really have to watch out. I've been lucky in that, in all of the cases where I've opened a package to find either a broken item or one that was plainly not as described, I've been able to sort things out with the seller. You might not be.
 
I buy on from the US EBay site and usually I don’t have any problems with items arriving. With that being said I have only had issues with 5 orders since 2007 and of those issues only one was a seller from the US the remainder of the issues were from China and one from Korea. I know that sellers work hard most of the time making sure that the order is accurate and for those whom ship with tracking I applaud them as yes there are people that say that the never received the item. With that being said there are individuals out there who follow carriers and steal packages. I know this from experience as I bought a cellphone from HTC and it ended up being intercepted (delivered by FedEx and investigated by FedEx and HTC GPS tracking showed that it was delivered to to the wrong address so I was told by HTC) even though it required signature. Which is why either I stay at home or I have the carrier hold the items when I am not going home when packages are arriving.

Mind you this is just one buyer’s input and I cannot speak for all buyers.


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Speaking only from the viewpoint of a buyer eBay's given me vary few problems over the years... As a posed to wish.com who consistently f***s up the conversion of US to metric sizes. The first/only time I ever ordered shoes/boots from wish.com no two of the 4 I ordered were in the same metric size and all were to small.of the 5 dresses I tried to order from then. One was wearable, tight, but wearable, the others I just gave away to a friend.
 
I've purchased many items through eBay. eBay is pretty good for finding just about anything at a reasonable price. I've purchased quite a few AB items and accessories through eBay. In addition to my AB stuff, I've found lots of out of print DVD's, CD's, autographed memorabilia and cool T-shirts and caps. I have yet to have any poor dealings with eBay sellers. The items I have ordered through eBay were shipped immediately and I received them in solid packaging and pretty expediently too :)
 
Keep an eye out for eBay vouchers; the first time I was issued one, I thought it was some dodgy advert (cos it looked one), so I didn't bother clicking it. The second time I saw one, I clicked out of interest and it gave me fifty percent off any purchase. Got my axle bearings on it 😀
 
I also had a buyer once that kept a PS3 I had sold him for about a month and a half, which eBay allows, then he decided to return it because the HDMI input didn't work (the older set-up worked so it was still a functioning system), clearly he had been enjoying it for over a month before he decided to return it; if it really were such a big problem he would have sent it back to get his refund almost immediately; the big draw was that it was a backwards compatible PS3 so it could play basically any PS2 game you put in it, which people liked because some people had a huge PS2 game library and on a newer PS3 you couldn't play PS2 games.
 
I have bought and sold many things on eBay.

It is by no means a perfect medium, just this week I had a big problem where I added things to my cart from a very reputable seller that had in his postage “additional items free”, sure enough when I looked in the cart it had each of the same item with its own postage, I pressed the request total button and immediately stupid eBay flipped to “you have committed to buy you cannot request a total.”

I jumped onto the chat function to eBay support and explained the problem and the smart arse just types of you changed your mind you will have to ask the seller if they will cancel he order. I was very lucky the seller was decent and did adjust to 1 lot of postage but quickly realised if they weren’t NO ONE at eBay would help and I would be stuck with either paying way too much postage or getting non payment negative feedback.
 
My wife bought me some cute onsies on Ebay and we didn't have any problems. She was an Ebay champ.
 
I buy things from ebay when I have money, I tend to like to look at their reviews and such, especially people who seem to be obsessed with having a perfect rating score, usually those people try not to screw you over as they don't want bad reviews (Atleast in my experience) I've never had a poor experience on ebay with anyone. I know some day it might happen but honestly, as long as you do research and make sure you aren't buying from someone with horribad reviews, you'll get a good result 99% of the time.

One could say I run risks on things as I tend to buy cheaper things from china and wait the 2 months for it to arrive, something that would cost $20 in America that I can get for like $1.50 from a Chinese ebay seller. Tbh, I've had better experiences with some of the Chinese retailers than the American ones as they seem to have some insane obsession with not getting a bad review. I guess you could say the worst thing I've ever experienced was seeing people relist things that were on amazon and listing them as their own item on ebay, (I.e. when you pay them they order the item on amazon, ship it to you and you pay them more than they payed amazon) That's by far the worst thing I've personally seen, but honestly for someone like me who only has paypal, since amazon doesn't take paypal, (Or didn't at the time, still don't as far as I know) I'd rather pay the extra 50 cents and buy it off someone on ebay. Shame, Amazon would get a lot of my service if they'd just accept paypal.
 
I use ebay a lot , now not near as much because of amazon. I signed up for it in its near beginnings :) What I have found ,, especially for clothing items ,, if there is something you really want , you have the disposable $ for it .. look at it carefully , read the description carefully . If concise measurements aren't given like for clothing items or descriptions,, ,, send a message to the seller and ask, if they don't respond back , their loss. Never allow your self to get caught up in a bidding frenzy <guilty> Generally ,if you have the time ,, make your final bid at the end of the auction . I've found some really awesome deals over the years on littles stuff and leather goods ( I have a thing for leather ) Questions I ask myself ,, Do I need this ? Do I really want this ?Could I live with out it? Can I afford it? check check check <click>
 
I use eBay a small amount. I think I may have bought a total of 100+ things over 10 years. Not that much. Usually I have good experiences, but a few notable things pop into my mind:

I avoid Chinese sellers like the plague. One of the first things I ever bought was a brand new cheap beginner trombone. It came in a nice box, but when I opened it up the whole thing was dented badly and unplayable. It wasn't even the right size, either, something they avoided mentioning in the description. I requested a refund and was refused on the grounds that it had been damaged in transit. since the box wasn't damaged, it had to have been damaged before it was even put in the case! I left them a bad feedback, so they left me a bad feedback (in the days when the buyer had to do it first). When you're on less than 10 feedback, a single bad feedback is horrendous for your rating. They had like 25,000, so it didn't matter for them.

I once bought something off Alibaba (and the 40 thieves) from China, and when it arrived, it was significantly different from what was ordered. I complained, and the seller said that I was showing them photos of someone else's products, and that I had hidden theirs! I did NOT see that one coming. No refund. And no Chinese ever again for me.

I have come across numerous examples from all sorts of businesses in my professional life that say the same thing: the Chinese are impossible to deal with. One guy got a container full of products that were fine (paid on receipt). He paid upfront for the second container, assuming that an identical container would arrive. It was all junk, unusable.

I talked to my dad about it (he learned Chinese and lived there twice before I was born). He said that the Chinese have one moral: does it get them the money? If it does, it's moral.

So, back to eBay.
I try not to sell things on eBay. A year ago I sold my defunct laptop. The buyer turned out to be a computer parts dealer, he made a complaint that it was "significantly different from described" (it wasn't), and asked for a refund. I refused, eBay locked my account until I agreed (but he hadn't sent the computer back either!). So yeah. Didn't do that again. Nearly out of pocket the whole amount AND my computer. Luckily managed to avoid a full refund, and never got my computer back. Good riddance. Blocked him.

I have come across that tactic with a few different buyers. They pay top dollar, outbidding everyone by miles, then complain to get at least half their money back, which is way less than you would have received if you had taken the second highest bid. By that stage, your item is not coming back to you, they have you by the balls.

Having said that, buying DL stuff has been great! The sellers are super careful to wrap things discreetly, so it looks like a book, or a t-shirt. Never had any problems there...
 
I've never had issues with bad sellers on ebay but I tend to do USA only in my search because if I want to wait a month for something I'll get it cheaper off wish. That said I don't find ebay to be the best prices, I can almost always find a cheaper site, but ebay conflict resolution is worth it and again, never really had issues off ebay. That's not to say I haven't had packages go missing or items arrive damaged but every time the seller has made it right for me.

Most notably I LOVE ebay for car parts. Not like major engine parts but the tiny stuff that you don't really want to pay full repro prices for but also don't want to have to climb around sweaty in a weed filled salvage yard to find. Like window switches, trims, that kinda stuff. Also motorcycle accessories back when i was with my ex.

I'd never use it as a price guaging site but for random weird things its the best.
 
I buy from Ebay and never really had problems. Selling on Ebay I have also been mostly safe. That said I have a figure I have no interest in keeping and could do with the money. I personally would never buy figures from Ebay due to the countless fakes and now fear selling as these are the type of scams I can see happening. Unless I really under sell the figure for a price I'm not interested in, I don't see why people would risk buying from me if they can buy from a store :s and the only people that would be interested in paying full price may do just that.
 
You know, I recall the only issue I had was that I colorized a bit of promotional artwork for a cartoon. I did it for people to use as a wallpaper and some guy swiped it and was trying to pass it off as 'official DVD artwork'. I nailed his ass for it. Because at the time there WERE no official DVD's. And the encodes he had that he was selling were ripped by my buddy. XD I actually saved people some $$$ because my friend had them up for free download because they were sucky quality, but good enough if you just -had- to see the show.
 
PufftheButt said:
I buy from Ebay and never really had problems. Selling on Ebay I have also been mostly safe. That said I have a figure I have no interest in keeping and could do with the money. I personally would never buy figures from Ebay due to the countless fakes and now fear selling as these are the type of scams I can see happening. Unless I really under sell the figure for a price I'm not interested in, I don't see why people would risk buying from me if they can buy from a store :s and the only people that would be interested in paying full price may do just that.

Yeah that is one thing with eBay, anything that has a lot of fake versions going around could easily be a target for people to say "item is a fake, I want a refund", that happened once with my mom when she sold a purse and unfortunately how it usually goes is eBay/PayPal will usually just give the buyer the refund and not ask for them to send the item back, so it can easily be a way for some scumbag to try and steal your figure.

But more times than that I had people claim the item never arrived at all, mind boggling considering I always buy tracking and upload the number for the customer to see and use, if it shows as being delivered I've done my part and if they really didn't get the item they need to follow up with the shipper (mostly when selling on Ebay I use the postal service) and see if it got mis-delivered; or maybe someone stole it off their porch or mailbox.
 
One of my big gripes is one thousand listings same item and same seller then I have to Wade through all the spam listings.
It's mostly Chinese stuff.
 
foxkits said:
One of my big gripes is one thousand listings same item and same seller then I have to Wade through all the spam listings.
It's mostly Chinese stuff.

I usually buy from United States only (theres an option for this if you are using the desktop version), and I've never had such a problem; what I do hate though is with a lot of sellers there is a race to the bottom, that is a race i will not participate in.

I mean you gotta figure you are paying over 13% in combined fees, and then you gotta pay shipping, so I dont even sell anything that is worth less than $35 anymore (partially because I usually ship USPS priority to make sure it gets to buyers fast and has $50 included insurance in case it gets lost)
 
I sold a pair of footie pajamas and an ALF puppet on Ebay At 6 feet just under 2 meters most of even the adult footies are smaller than i can wear. The puppet is a real collector item and IF I had one new in the box pristine condition I'd be able to pay my rent for months. Anybody who was alive in the 80s would remember it. You'd have no choice, it imprints on your brain because it's so weird. I had bought the both at a thrift store $5 total. My latest purchase, coming maybe tomorrow, a replacement screen for my laptop. Hooray! O frabjous day, callou callai he chorted in his glee...
 
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