Ahh eBay that mystical place of dreams where you browse for items that you long for, in bed, on the toilet or on the train to work, millions of people selling things that you'd love and need. You find a great item and punch the air at your luck as you frantically mash the buy it now button so as not to miss out. Then you get a message through the following day that ruins the illusion completely and reminds you that not all ebayers are like yourself. In fact a increasing amount of them are complete insufferable C - Units Just had a message through off a seller that went something like this: Not is it ok to use this **** 3rd rate courier service instead of the £15 royal mail service I have bloody paid for but its all done and dusted deal with it. Now the address it goes to is 5 mins away from a royal mail depot. I wont be in but it doesn't matter. Well it didn't, it now does matter as the nearest depot for the new courier is 10-15 miles away. I replied saying it was not ideal for me due to the above reason but accepted it as not to worry asking for tracking information. Perfectly politely. Then I get a shitty response back saying I should be grateful for a tracked service instead of signed for with exclamation marks in situ! (in a increasingly familiar broken English) Where do these people who treat buyers with such contempt come from? I can be an arsehole with the best of them but I tend to be pretty civil when dealing with people buying and selling! Only saving grace is he left me positive feedback before I replied. When I get the item I will restart communication with Mr Seller. Wonder if he will apologise?
Makes you appreciate bit-tech's Marketplace. You deal with like minded people that sell their wares at reasonable (forum debated) prices and couldn't do more to help.
Nothing wrong with interparcel per se, it's which courier brings it to the other end! Frustrating if you paid extra for RM though.
Meh, he's already taken a giant sh*t in his own nest, IMO. Neg rep the tw@t. After making sure your item arrives as described!
Mostly Romania and Poland. *hears gasps of racism and bigotry*. I'm not being racist, or a bigot, but each time I've had a bad experience on Ebay it has either been from a Romanian or a Pole. I ordered an Intel SSD. I waited, and waited. After about ten days I decided to email the seller. It went something like this - "Hi there. Can you please tell me if this has been sent, and, who it was sent with? are there any tracking details?" I get the reply. "I will send it in a couple of days". I then did some digging and noticed that my paypal payment had gone to an email address ending in .pl. So two more days went by. I contacted the seller again. "Hi. Has this been sent yet? can you please tell me who this was sent with and provide any tracking information?" Thanks. Two more days passed before I got a reply. "This was sent today". So I replied again. "Hi. Can you please tell me how this was sent and who it was sent with and provide me any tracking information?" No reply. Five days later it arrived second class (not recorded or signed for) in a padded envelope and nothing else. The other bad experience I had on Ebay was from a seller whose name was apparently Romanian when I put it through Google. A baked 8800 Ultra that lasted about four days. It hadn't even had the thermal pads replaced and the seller had just pumped on gratuitous amounts of thermal paste (cheap white slop) in an attempt to sort the memory out.
This has happened quite a few times to me lately. I've paid over the odds to then have stuff arrive by MyHermes, which pretty much every seller seems to be using either them or some other godawful courier now to save them a little bit of money, and I've often found profit a fair bit on shipping too.
I ordered a posh Tefal frying pan and it came with them. Took over a week. I have stopped selling on Ebay now for a couple of reasons, but mostly their fees which are extortionate and people do not want to pay for a decent service. I've got an exemplary feedback record on AVforums and I always treat my buyers with respect. I send photos of the item being packed and everything. I like Interparcel though tbh. They use DPD.
On the other side, sometime it's buyers who are total bungholes. Anyone read the comments ? Well I do, when I see a bad comment for a 2$ item, it piss me off. I've seen bad comments for amount as little as 0.99cents : / Last year I purchased a SD card hub from china, there was a choice of colors so I asked for black, I received a pink one... However I paid 1.79 for the damn thing so who F*****g care ? It work.
That's all well and good when it's something that the colour doesn't matter on. I ordered a new shell for my old Blackberry and ordered red, they sent gold. It was bloody awful. Looked like a rapper's phone. In the end I settled for half of my money back but it went straight in the bin. The back cover was bowed and left huge gaps.. I don't like to complain on Ebay and I really hate disputes but at times you have to speak up. Us Brits are not very good at it sadly, but I'm not being shafted. I mean take this recent example.. I ordered a second hand Oreck for £58. Great vacuum, good price. It comes and there are two sections of the cable that have been stripped almost bare and wrapped in black tape. I could have said nothing but a new cable costs £15 and then I have to fit it. That brings the cost closer to what I can get a 7 day returned for. So I pursued a £15 partial refund. I got it too, and I actually felt a bit bad as the guy who sold it to me was really nice but at the end of the day he made no mention of the cable damage in the auction listing.
It doesn't really matter how much the item costs though imo. The seller sets the price, if they want to sell the item at that price it should be as described. If someone sends you something that is not as described and doesn't sort it out when you ask why would you not leave a negative comment? Maybe you ordered it especially because it was black and the item they sent to you is useless? Maybe they're deliberately misselling something because they hope you wont bother for such small amount of money?
I only use ebay for odds and ends where shipping doesn't matter, every time i pay extra for tracking or specific day delivery i get shafted. I did keep a running total once with how much i'd been ripped off on postage, but i stopped when it was around 80 quid. that said amazon marketplace isn't much better. For the few people who try to offer shipping options i'm sure it's just for them to rip folk off, I've never managed to get anything delivered on a saturday. SoC the lot of them.
Well a small update. Got back to my flat from a hospital apt this morning and found a courier driver on my doorstep. One of those self employed jobbies with a shagged 13 year old Vito. Item was fine luckily but what does the tracking for the item on interparcel say? *awaiting collection* Ah well avoided a painful drive to a depot I guess. Have messaged the seller saying I found his reply rather rude. See if he keeps it up and earns himself a juicey neg
All of the above is exacty why I only ever use eBay when I absolutely have to, generally only buy from UK businesses, and usually try to collect local items. As a seller it's pretty crap as well, as I detailed in my own eBay rant a few months back. Oh, and I'd neg him anyway - as eloquently as possible, because he's a knob and didn't provide the advertised (and paid for) carrier service.
You see this is my problem, the item was ridiculously cheap (even dispite the postage shortfall). And is all more or less new. However I take exception to people being obnoxious pricks towards me when they have my money. So will give him the chance of redemption Edit: *Good lord all that for feedback removal!*
I've had encounters with a few douchebags on eBay too. One time at band camp, I was in a rush for some money quite some time ago after an unexpected large bill landed on my door mat so sold and expensive item to raise some funds. The winning bidder announced a few days after winning the item that he didn't have the funds (with some crappy excuse) and asked me to wait until his payday which was three weeks away! I actually did wait though as by the time the auction had ended and he had told me, it had laready been 10 days and I feared something similar would only happen again. I had to pay bank charges as I didn't have the money in time because of it. Still left him positive feedback though because I didn't really fancy a slap round the face recieving negative after putting myself out. It can be good, just don't count on it. Pepperridge farm remembers when eBay used to be good.
I use ebay a lot, only done 2 negs. 1 when I didn't get the item and 1 where it did not work and seller was rude.
Never have left any negs, personally. In the middle of a "item recieved after refund"-like issue.....
I've had eBay / Paypal refund my postage costs on an item which was advertised (and paid for) on the basis on Royal Mail 1st Recorded and was delivered by 2nd class standard parcel. I complained that it took over a week to get to me, found it was posted 2 days after the seller told me it was dispatched and they used a cheaper service and eBay/paypal refunded my postage costs in full - don't know if they even spoke to the seller as when I initially contacted them I basically received a 'do one' message for my efforts. I used eBay a lot and unfortunately since I started (must be going on 10yr now) I've had plenty of issues but its the price you pay for buying from private individuals who think hiding behind the internet is a valid excuse for being a tit
