I know that many here despise eBay and I completely understand. It is more like a love/hate relationship for me. I've been a member there for almost 20 years with over 1000 positive feedback.

I mostly buy these days, but back in the day I was more of a seller especially when I was laid off in 2009. Anyways, fast forward to this week. I thought I would give eBay a try and sell some items from my Tiki collection that I am downsizing. I thought no problem, someone likes it, buys it and I ship it. Pay the extortion fees and we are all good. Right?

Well. I sold one of the mug sets the other night and now eBay is holding my payment until the buyer receives the items and then it could be a couple weeks until the funds are released. They say it is to protect the buyer from scams. Really???!!!

I put a call into customer service I was told since I'm a new seller, that is their protocol. I asked the rep if he could see my join date and my feedback and of course he said Yes. Since I haven't sold anything in years I'm a new seller.......

And to answer my question..... Fuck You eBay

I don't mind buying stuff on eBay, but I'd never again try to sell something, and it's purely because they will fuck the seller nine ways to Sunday to protect the buyer.

Last summer, I bought a Soldano SP77 preamp for $750. The market fluctuates, but suffice it to say, I've seen them fetch as high as $3,500 in recent years. The lowest I've seen them go is a little under two grand. When I saw one pop for $750 BIN, I knew something was fishy, but I went for it anyway.

It arrived in a box made out of cut-down cardboard with black Gorilla tape, and instead of bubble wrap, it was in a pillow case and nothing else. The unit itself had a rusted out chassis and peeling paint. It worked, but it was abysmal condition that did not match the description, and the pictures had obscured the damage. I checked the buyer's profile, found social media for what I thought was a college freshman. Turns out, it was for the college freshman's single mother, a Remax agent who has to do disclosures for selling houses.

She said the burden was on me for not asking if it was rusted out and full of dead bugs, and was royally pissed off that she had to issue a refund, but Apu was in total agreement over the phone with me that the pictures I sent him of the preamp did not match the item description, or the pictures she used. I shipped it back to her in a new box, used an entire roll of packing tape on it, within and without, using all the bubble wrap I could find (it was multiple layers), and made sure to include her pillow case as a final "fuck you" before sealing the box. That sucker could've floated for hours, it was air tight and waterproof. A few days later, she re-listed it with the same description and pictures, and I flagged it for fraud. She re-listed it again with the same pictures and said there was some rust on it. Eventually, Mark123 contacted her through the site and asked for more detailed pictures and information, and she updated the listing to be less fraudulent. Essentially, we forced her to unwrap the fucking thing. Eventually, someone decided the condition was worth the asking price and went for it. I have alerts for keywords that tell me they have not re-listed it.

I went through all this crap because I sold a Soldano SP77 about ten years ago on eBay and wished I hadn't. Though I specified "No Paypal, no international bidders," eBay essentially told me that I had to ship it to the buyer in Israel, and per the terms I set, I would have to cover shipping if I couldn't come to an agreement with the buyer that made him happy. I got negative feedback from him after shipping but before it got to him because he didn't like that I wanted to cancel the transaction and re-list it. eBay wouldn't let me dispute the feedback or respond to it, so an account I'd had for over 20 years was sullied with what was essentially a fraudulent feedback from a buyer. I abandoned that account after that, and made a new one to purchase only. When I originally sold it, the BIN price was right at $750, and I think I netted about $450 after fees and shipping and all that.

So yeah, eBay will bend over backwards to protect the buyer and stick it to the seller. I will never sell anything on eBay ever again, but as for purchasing? Not worried about it at all. Their business model is totally fucked, I have no idea how or why anyone would sell stuff on there these days.

Should've packed it in glitter to make sure the item didn't shift in transit.

I also used to buy and sell quite a bit on ebay but after a scammer tried ripping me off on the sale of some Sig grips I will no longer sell on ebay.
Luckily for me I got in contact with a reasonable rep that understood what I had going on and sided with me even though the policy is the buyer is always right.
At the time I quit selling they had just implemented the holding of funds till the buyer was completely satisfied. But being established at the time it didn't apply to me. The fees were starting to get way out of hand though.
What ruined selling on ebay was Amazons return for any reason at all policy. People started returning items for no other reason then they just changed their mind which is bs to a small seller on ebay then add in the scammers that send an empty box back on the return and the seller has no recourse to stop the scam.
I still buy a few items that I cannot find on Amazon. Anymore though after buying on Amazon and getting used to the super fast shipping it seems like forever before you get your stuff if a seller is slow to ship.
As a seller I used to pride myself on honest detailed descriptions and same or next day shipping. My feedback reflected it. The biggest red flag was when a possible buyer would wear me out asking questions when the answers were in the detailed description given.
I only had issues that were my fault once on a screw up on my listing and I just ate it and moved on learning from my error.

Wow, this is discouraging.

I have been thinking of selling off most of my ham radio equipment on Ebay but have been reading stories of buyers buying an item and then swapping out good parts for defective parts and then wanting a refund.

As far as older stuff there is an option to list as for "parts or repair only" I wonder if that better protects the seller as long as I show lots of good pictures. Otherwise there are ham radio sites where one can sell stuff too.

Yeah EBay was good when it first came out. I haven’t bought or sold on EBay since who knows when.

My mom made a lot of money finding great stuff at thrift stores or garage sales and sold them on EBay, but stopped selling them there due to all the BS.

I have had tolerably good luck with EBay.
Exception:
I saw a listing for a Pendleton Wool Shirt. Real deal Pendletons are kinda hard to find and expensive. Seller wanted $49 so I jumped immediately. It arrived promptly. When I open the box, I was hit with an unbearable stench. My cat loves to help me open boxes and when he got a whiff, he fled in terror! It stunk so bad I had to put it on my patio. Multiple washes with Woolite did nothing and made the washer stink. I took it the local dry cleaner. He failed too. I finally dumpstered it. I thought about going thru the dispute process but figured it was just my loss.

Sold a car and motorcycle on Ebay without issue, and several other small things, bought one thing in the past 5 years as it was something I could not find anywhere else.

Agree that Amazon has changed the game, it's no bid, easy to buy and sell.

Wasn't that bad until they passed ARP that applies capital gains tax.

Haven't sold anything since.

My biggest problem with selling on eBay these days is they "say" they only take something like 12% of your winnings as a fee. The bullshit part is they calculate that AFTER sales tax so they're actually taking closer to 25% of your winnings subtracted from the pre-tax total your item sale price.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Wow, this is discouraging.

I have been thinking of selling off most of my ham radio equipment on Ebay but have been reading stories of buyers buying an item and then swapping out good parts for defective parts and then wanting a refund.

As far as older stuff there is an option to list as for "parts or repair only" I wonder if that better protects the seller as long as I show lots of good pictures. Otherwise there are ham radio sites where one can sell stuff too.

QRZ dot com swap meet tab ham radio equipment for sale is pretty good.

CLIck HERE

Best wishes to you
DE N5USS
.

quote:

Originally posted by DanH:
My biggest problem with selling on eBay these days is they "say" they only take something like 12% of your winnings as a fee. The bullshit part is they calculate that AFTER sales tax so they're actually taking closer to 25% of your winnings subtracted from the pre-tax total your item sale price.

That's another thing I hate about selling on ebay. I'll keep buying there but I will never try and sell something again.....

Ebay in its original incarnation was great. Individuals buying and selling. I rebuilt two cars using parts mostly sourced via Ebay. Over years, it got more and more “corporate” with its accompanying corporate BS

Now there’s the occasional purchase but that’s it. Selling on there? Forget it.

I've bought a number of things on eBay over the years, the most recent just a few months ago. As long as the sellers have good ratings, I'm fairly comfortable buying there. But I don't think I've ever sold anything there, or if I have it must have been a LONG time ago because I don't remember it.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Wow, this is discouraging.

I have been thinking of selling off most of my ham radio equipment on Ebay but have been reading stories of buyers buying an item and then swapping out good parts for defective parts and then wanting a refund.

As far as older stuff there is an option to list as for "parts or repair only" I wonder if that better protects the seller as long as I show lots of good pictures. Otherwise there are ham radio sites where one can sell stuff too.

QRZ dot com swap meet tab ham radio equipment for sale is pretty good.

CLIck HERE

Best wishes to you
DE N5USS
.

Thanks! I have an account there and have used it for selling before but that was years ago.

Only time I ever got scammed was on a forum (obviously not this one).
My flags went up, but I trusted... and learned.

But I, too, would look at the forum mentioned above to sell.
Etsy can be another option, but viewership could be much less. I've found some really good stuff there, likely because others weren't looking there.

I buy from eBay every so often. It's nice for finding older discontinued stuff.

I've only ever sold a few things, and the most recent was around a decade ago. It's my understanding that selling has gotten much worse lately, with higher fees and more scammers/whiners, which seems to be echoed by some of the comments here. I doubt I'll ever bother selling on eBay again, but I'll continue to buy.

I will note that I hate this new software script/AI assistant eBay has that sellers can use to write their item descriptions for them. It's terrible. It spits out this bland, generic text that tells you little to nothing about the product itself, and it uses the same format for every item, just filling in the blank like a bad game of mad-libs. Unfortunately, in my casual eBay browsing lately, it seems like ~50% of the sellers have started using it as a shortcut, rather than taking a few more seconds to write an actual description of their item.

quote:

Originally posted by grumpy1:
Wow, this is discouraging.

I have been thinking of selling off most of my ham radio equipment on Ebay but have been reading stories of buyers buying an item and then swapping out good parts for defective parts and then wanting a refund.

Please consider www.qrz.com for your equipment. Excellent moderation on the swapmeet subforum.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
...

I will note that I hate this new software script/AI assistant eBay has that sellers can use to write their item descriptions for them. It's terrible. It spits out this bland, generic text that tells you little to nothing about the product itself, and it uses the same format for every item, just filling in the blank like a bad game of mad-libs. Unfortunately, in my casual eBay browsing lately, it seems like ~50% of the sellers have started using it as a shortcut, rather than taking a few more seconds to write an actual description of their item.

"Immerse yourself in" door-to-door encyclopedia salesman hyperbole that rarely mentions actual condition of the item being shilled. Yep, I hate Ebay's new AI feature too along with their ever-increasing ad/promo insertions in listings. It does help weed out the lazy sellers, though.

Ebay management should immerse itself... in a vat of acid.

I have stuff listed on Craigslist that I shipped out of state. People are getting smarter and searching Craigslist.