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Posted By: James Gallo

Well I do ebay full time, that is my whole income. Lately I have been very disgruntled at best.

I could sit here and type all day about all the simple problems I have had with ebay and the total lack of support.

Here is a recent one for you. My account was hacked and a guy listed 2 computers using my account. I was away so I didn't see that auctions until there was less the 12 hours left. I am a power seller so I have a specific rep. I called him and told him about the auctions several hours before then were to end. He said he would take care of it.

That night I see that auctions were not removed, had ended and that one guy had even paid for one of the computers.

My power seller guy is great and helps when he can. He had no control over these auctions and passed on the information, well guess what like everything else someone dropped the ball and I along with several buyers could of had a big mess to deal with. The guy that paid was lucky and I just refunded his payment. The other guy I notified before another call into ebay so that I would get the fees back. After my second call the fees were reversed.

But my all time favorite ebay story is this. I sold an item for $7500+ to a last minute bidder with 0 feedback. They requested more pictures of the item after the auction ended. I had about 8 pictures of this boxed doll up and there were not additional pictures I could add. I refused the pictures, they refused to pay. Finally we agree to not complete the transaction.

3 months later they leave a libel negative feedback. I call my support guy and say WTF. This guy obviously bid just to mess with my auction and has now left me a negative that is libel and a load of crap.

After a second phone call my rep tells me the account has been suspended but that is was not a violation that allowed the removal of feedback. At this point I just ran out of breath. If someone had enough problems with the account so that is was suspended why the hell is the feedback still there.

It's crap and I sent a written complaint through my rep. I am sure that went really far up that latter.....

I now have 9 negs over 10 years with over 3100 unique positives and 4500 total positives. It seems to me that my overall feedback in this new system is going to take a big hit from the 99.7% it is at especially since 4 of the negs were in the last 12 months.

If anyone would like other horror stories I could write a book.

As for ebay being the only game in town, well it is because it is a corporation and until another corp with similar backing comes around they have us all by the balls.

I only leave feedback after I get it. This is generally not a problem as I feel it is on the buyer to say they are happy with the product. After I get feedback I will make a point to leave it. With this system I won't get hit with a random neg after I have left someone a positive. I get a neg and I give one.

Just about every neg I have gotten was either a newbie to ebay, someone messing with my auctions or someone that doesn't understand how matters can be resolved before feedback is left.

My most recent neg was from a 3 feedback buyer who had a problem with the shipping costs. It turned out to cost about 10 less then I expected. They left a neg without contacting me and got one in return. In the short run it will hurt them a lot more then me. IF they had emailed I would have refunded them and we both would have avoided a neg.

Hopefully it is a lesson leaned but I doubt they even understand that they could have acted differently, but oh well.

I can live with the fee increase as the is expected, but the increase in fees is insane and they are going to try to force people with lower feedback to use paypal. WTF.

As for not taking paypal, I deal with it because it makes getting payments very quick and often this is very important to me. It is a very useful tool but it should not be forced down your throat.

I wonder if ebay had anything to do with www.bidpay.com shutting down at the end of last year? I would expect that like any corporation they either bought them out or sued for some dumb ass reason.

I would love to not take paypal but I would not be able to do it as I need the quick cash flow.

I am interested to see how these 2 paypal disputes go down as I "should" be in the right even as the seller, but have a feeling I will get screwed out of my cash and the items.

That's enough of a rant.

James G

PS this boycott is on a lot of sites. I think it is getting more attention then a lot of you think. Maybe not enough, but it's a good start and everything has to start some where.


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