What percentage of ebay buyers are just plain stupid?

[Michael B]

A vast majority of the buyers from me have been very good over the years. I have had 2 negatives since starting in 2000 and both were morons.

1) I got a Rawlings Official Major League ball signed by Luis Gonzalez at a sporting goods convention. I described it as such as I knew the difference between ROML, ROA and RON. They buyer complained because it was not an RON even though the description was clear. Newbie, moron with a below 20 feedback.

2) This summer sold a photo out of the Jim Wiggins collection signed by Olympic medalist and world champ boxer Lou Salica. This photo was a non-glossy photo printed on heavy paper, almost cardstock. It was described as printed on thick paper. The Brazilian buyer (ciscogu) emailed saying it was a photocopy photo and signature and he wanted his money back. He insisted that I refund his money before he returned the item. I will not do that, not for $5.00, not for $500.00. He threatened me and immediately left negative feedback. Interestingly ebay agreed with my assessent of the situation and did not refund him from my paypal. They did not remove the negative, but did send several emails letting me know their investigation found I was in the right. Solution: NO more shipping to South America even though this may have been the first, it was the last.

[cpbronco]

I guess I've been lucky. I've been selling for about a year and a half and other than a couple non-payers, I haven't had any issues. Of course, the stuff I'm usually selling is low value stuff that doesn't need any authentication or anything like that.

I have read the horror stories about sellers getting scammed and the general idiots out there who apparently can't read. Twice when selling two higher value items I had bidders sent me several messages asking about stuff that was clearly described in the listing. After the second message from each of them, I just blocked the bidders. Much easier than dealing with them after the sale.

[Runscott]

As a seller, most problems have come from selling very inexpensive items that weren't sports, weren't collectible, and I should have given to Goodwill. People get very anal about very stupid insignificant stuff, but sports collectors seem to be pretty cool overall.

[Fuddjcal]

I always painfully describe items though description and multiple pictures resulting in less money.... sometimes. As far as baseballs, it does irk me when sellers don't describe them and only take 1 picture. How hard is it to take a picture of the back? You just have to not purchase from numb skulls like that I guess.

I have a case with an idiot right now after paying for an item immediately like I always do, it takes the ass clown 8 days to ship, and the item is not to me yet after an additional 9 days. I just open cases with e-bay these days like I open a can of beans...I don't care anymore. I don't try to work it out with the seller. I'm tired of their B.S. Open a case and let e-bay sort through it. I especially open a case immediately when the jack asses love to put "NO RETURNS" in their auction. If it's not as described or damaged...it's going back no matter what their stupid ad says. When I sell, they can return the Item anytime, no questions asked if their not happy, I don't really give a crap.

This idiot tells me (only after I open the case) that he will "check with the USPS because it's a package and not a letter" and provides no tracking#. (good luck with calling the usps to track a package with-out a tracking number buddy) after the case is settled, he's going to get an accurate assessment of his performance which is negative feedback no matter what he does. Yes E-bayers are about 10-20% morons and losers, which is less than the average in our society today. look around, people are idiots everywhere.

[slidekellyslide]

My latest idiot was a buyer that bought something that required UPS shipping..they made three attempts to deliver to him and UPS finally called me to tell me it was on its way back to me. The buyer who made no attempt to get this item from his local UPS tells me that I have to pay to ship it back to him. No way in H E double hockey sticks is that going to happen.

[prewarsports]

Not trying to sound sexist here but if you have a Woman buyer you have a MUCH higher potential of them being pissed off. Sell stuff women dont want and you eliminate a lot of problems. What Scott said is also true, cheap stuff brings out the a-holes in large numbers. So if you have a $9 photo of a princess, you're screwed!

I have sold on ebay for 14 years and sold tens of thousands of items with only a handful of real problems. I only sell stuff guys want in general and I only try to list things worth more than 30-40 as my bottom limit and I seem to eliminate 99% of the items that bring the problems out of the woodwork.

Not trying to be an elitist/sexist jerk, but it works.

Now if I could just find a way to eliminate the EBAY caused problems, I would be able to live a Zen-Like existance!

Rhys

[buymycards]

Rhys, I agree with you on the $30-$40 limits. All of my problems and npb's come from sales under 5 bucks and bidders with feedback of under 20. I have been thinking seriously about bundling my items and not selling anything under 30 bucks.

Rick