eBay - used products?
Community Forums/General Help/eBay - used products?
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| I need some advice on how to ask this eBay seller to tell me what's the condition of some illustration books he is selling. Facts: - The products are OOP (out-of-production), from 1999. They are not factory sealed. - He did not post a photo of the articles. - He entitled their conditions as "Very Good". Just that. - He responds questions. As you may have experienced, not everyone out there knows precisely how to describe the current state of a product (or has the patience to write out everything how it is...). Is there any 'best' way that I can ask what are the current conditions of his products so he answers exactly what I want to know? apart from, you know, common english. |
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| The last 3 times my wife and I have ordered off ebay we have received used items that were touted as new. Working with the sellers to get our money back or a discount has not been fun... and in one case we had to go through ebay complaints. I'm just not sure its worth ordering from. Bascially, with a book.. I'd ask if there are any rips, writing, stains or other abuses noticable on the book or if its in pristine new condition. |
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| rips! there's another type of damage I hadn't thought of (I had fades, scrapes, torns, bents). Well, if I were asked a question for an item I was selling, I'd take the time to describe how everything really is...especially if I didn't put any photos. PS: It's an eBay Store wtih a 98.9% ratings. It has a lot of buyers. |
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| PS: It's an eBay Store with wtih 98.9% ratings. It has a lot of buyers. That would be a good sign, but one thing to check for: Are they more or less specialized in books, or is this the odd one out in their inventory? I mean, if they sell thousands of books and get a 98.9% satisfaction rating, I'd feel much better at taking their word for it than if they sold a million ceramic cat figurines plus the one book that you happen to be interested in... |
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| I'd have to ask why the seller didn't post any pics. Do the seller's other items for sale have pics? |
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| PS: It's an eBay Store with wtih 98.9% ratings. It has a lot of buyers That's quite bad, really. I rarely deal with anybody on eBay who has less than 99.8%, and even then I always read the negative feedback to find out why. |
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| Thanks for the tips, I'll check these things out right away. That's quite bad, really. I rarely deal with anybody on eBay who has less than 99.8%, and even then I always read the negative feedback to find out why. He's got a lot of comments, like, 200 pages. Do you know of any way to sort only the bad or neutral feedbacks? |
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| Do you know of any way to sort only the bad or neutral feedbacks? Click on his/her feedback score, and it will show you a "recent feedback ratings" panel on the left. Click on the numbers in there to show the negative feedback they've had. |
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| I couldn't do what you said, GfK (the numbers weren't interactive, just plain text), but I found this site: http://www.toolhaus.org It lists all the negative\neutral feedbacks only. It's very nice. |
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| I tend to agree with GFK. Anyone with a "shop" gets the E-Bay Mafia Protection™ which basically means they're bulletproof. You can buy an item, pay through EBay's own (or it was at the time) payment system, PayPal, the "shop" owner reports that you haven't paid and despite the PayPal receipts, they'll issue you with a non-payment mark, and discount your negative feedback. So to actually get over 1% as a Shop.. well I can't imagine what you'd have to be doing for E-Bay to let that happen. I'm not surprised they disabled the ability to view just negative feedback. As I said, the E-Bay Mafia™ are very keen to support their shops, even if they are selling counterfeits or defrauding customers. |
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| I'm not surprised they disabled the ability to view just negative feedback They didn't disable it, though? I can do it right now. Doesn't matter whether its an individual or a shop. |
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| I can do it right now. Doesn't matter whether its an individual or a shop. I don't know? Kryzon says it's disabled for him, and I can't see any reason for him to say it is if it isn't. Maybe it's done per-territory. I'm simply saying, if they've disabled it, I'm not surprised. |
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| Anyone with a "shop" gets the E-Bay Mafia Protection™ which basically means they're bulletproof Just found out this is actually true.I ordered three items from the same seller, after I'd paid I noticed I hadn't got a 50% postage discount for multiple items like the listing stated, so I emailed them twice, which they ignored. They replied on the third attempt and gave me £1 back. The postage for the lot was nearly a tenner! Its only a few quid so I'm not overly bothered about it, but I don't like companies who are basically crooks. I left them neutral feedback and thought that was the end of it.... until the next day when the seller started emailing me, demanding I remove my feedback. I refused on the grounds that it was fact-based and the error was theirs. Checked just now, my feedback is gone. Good old eBay. I guess they're making too much money out of some people to even bother if they're giving crap service or ripping people off. |
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| I wonder how they approached the eBay management to get that feedback removed. From the way you say, it's like the management didn't even care to "investigate" why they got the neutral feedback in the first place. @OP - I asked the store for a more specific description of the condition of the products (and if he had photos of them), no answer. "Cha-chiiing" is what he's not going to be hearing. |
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| Checked just now, my feedback is gone. That is beyond f'ed up. |
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| Nothing on E-Bay is given a condition of less than 'good'. Everything on sale is 'excellent condition' and indeed, negative feedback doesn't seem to exist. I can't stand ebay personally, there was an issue a while back where soemone else used my account details to purchase stuff, fortunately I stopped any credit transactions, but the goods were sent in good faith. the seller never did the money - I felt bad for them! Amazon and their Marketplace seller, whilst can be expensive on occasions, is a much 'safer' environment in my opinion. Used books ought to be extremely cheap. Postage & Packing usually far outweighs the needs of the few, or the price of the book itself. admittedly, books are less likely to be in an 'unusueable' condition. Unless they're really falling apart! A bent spine or creased cover is, to me at least, typical of used books and quite acceptable, so there's less risk involved with a book than with other products, though I would definitely advise caution. As mentioned above somewhere, buying from 'shops' and traders with many customers is also 'safer' than an individual with little feedback. |
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| I can't stand ebay personally, there was an issue a while back where soemone else used my account details to purchase stuff, fortunately I stopped any credit transactions, but the goods were sent in good faith. the seller never did the money - I felt bad for them! Boy, that's tough (especially for the salesman). My experience with eBay has been small so far (just bought a Bull-Whip to give some cracks out in the street). So far, no troublesome anecdotes to tell, luckilly. Only those that I hear from others. |
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| I'm sure that there's a huge number of legitimate, safe and genuine sales to be found on eBay, and it's good your experience has been okay so far and continues that way :) A friend of mine and his wife seem to do nothing but buy and sell on there :D It's handy to know, of course, the worst-case scenario, and to be wary. I know you're not stupid / gullible either, but what's of major concern here, is the lack of any real recompense in cases where things do wrong. |
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| im not using ebay anymore either. |
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| Why's that, D4N? |
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| because i also bought something, it took 8 weeks to arrive and i too wrote a bad comment on a "power seller" page and it got removed too. |
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| I quit using eBay when they made PayPal their payment system. Paypal is crooked as hell. |
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