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- 4 Jun 2021
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I've always been a reluctant seller on eBay, fearing that if I got scammed, I'd lose out rather than be protected by eBay. After all, I'm not a business, just an individual with a few items to sell occasionally. This came horribly true after I got scammed by someone claiming not to have received an item, where I lost the item and the money. After this, I was so upset by it, that I didn't sell for ages and when I started again, it was only for a short time, a few items and then stopped.
In fact, I remember receiving an email from eBay some time after that experience, explaining that they'd overhauled their buyer and seller protection schemes, but it didn't look good at all for sellers, leaning heavily in favour of the buyer. This is what really put me off from selling on eBay and I was clearly right to stop.
After seeing this first video, I can see that fraud against eBay sellers is now rife, unsurprisingly, and eBay are obviously totally complicit in it. Check out how the seller got the runaround by eBay despite the evidence and the law being on their side - and lost all their money in the end, £300 of it.
In short, they sold a car headlight assembly in perfect condition, getting some great feedback from the buyer. A while later, the buyer opened a claim that the item is defective. They returned it to the seller, but the item now has a huge crack in it, where there wasn't one before, making it totally useless, yet eBay still decided in the buyer's favour, despite the seller's hard evidence that the buyer had damaged it.
In particular, notice how evasive eBay's replies are when the seller tries to pin them down on buyer scamming. This proves that they do actually understand exactly what's going on and are complicit in it. How this isn't a crooked business that should be shut down by the authorities, I don't know. Too much corruption, perhaps. That's usually what happens.
Now, this video was made in March 2020, but I doubt eBay have transformed their seller protection since then, or it would have made the news by now and generally been reported widely.
30 minutes of eBay runaround:
This second video is a recording of a 1 hour, somewhat rambling live stream, where eBay apologized by email after having watched the first video, but the seller still hasn't received their money back while having refunded the buyer out of their own pocket, making it rather pointless in my opinion; just lip service to attempt to cover reputational damage.
I've started the video at the point where the seller starts talking about it.
So, what alternative selling platforms are their to protect against scammers better than eBay do? None that I can see with all the others being far worse. For private selling then, you either take this known risk, or don't sell, that's the hard lesson to take away from this.
In fact, I remember receiving an email from eBay some time after that experience, explaining that they'd overhauled their buyer and seller protection schemes, but it didn't look good at all for sellers, leaning heavily in favour of the buyer. This is what really put me off from selling on eBay and I was clearly right to stop.
After seeing this first video, I can see that fraud against eBay sellers is now rife, unsurprisingly, and eBay are obviously totally complicit in it. Check out how the seller got the runaround by eBay despite the evidence and the law being on their side - and lost all their money in the end, £300 of it.
In short, they sold a car headlight assembly in perfect condition, getting some great feedback from the buyer. A while later, the buyer opened a claim that the item is defective. They returned it to the seller, but the item now has a huge crack in it, where there wasn't one before, making it totally useless, yet eBay still decided in the buyer's favour, despite the seller's hard evidence that the buyer had damaged it.
In particular, notice how evasive eBay's replies are when the seller tries to pin them down on buyer scamming. This proves that they do actually understand exactly what's going on and are complicit in it. How this isn't a crooked business that should be shut down by the authorities, I don't know. Too much corruption, perhaps. That's usually what happens.
Now, this video was made in March 2020, but I doubt eBay have transformed their seller protection since then, or it would have made the news by now and generally been reported widely.
30 minutes of eBay runaround:
This second video is a recording of a 1 hour, somewhat rambling live stream, where eBay apologized by email after having watched the first video, but the seller still hasn't received their money back while having refunded the buyer out of their own pocket, making it rather pointless in my opinion; just lip service to attempt to cover reputational damage.
I've started the video at the point where the seller starts talking about it.
So, what alternative selling platforms are their to protect against scammers better than eBay do? None that I can see with all the others being far worse. For private selling then, you either take this known risk, or don't sell, that's the hard lesson to take away from this.