VOGONS


eBay Experience....

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First post, by Iris030380

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So I've been selling things on eBay for a while. It was good for a time, but eventually I got a negative feedback from some buyer. They bought an orignal wrapped Windows 95 USB Support CD, in the bag sealed with the manual and COA. But they wrote " Was expecting a USB KEY! There was no such key! Maybe it's my lack of experience, but buyer is suspect! No pen drive included! ".

ebay went ahead and, despite my numerous complaints, allowed his negative feedback to remain. Despite him admitting that he (or she) was confused. I sold exactly what I listed. Even went to my usual length of including a bag of haribos and double bubble wrapping everything as per usual. Now I am "suspect". Now I am not to be trusted.

Had my fill. It was bad enough that eBay take their fees, and hold money for EONS (over 3 weeks), long after you posted the items and got good feedback! This was the straw that nuked the camels back.

So. is there anywhere else, for me to sell the rest of my horde? I haven't even finished GPU's, yet I'm face with buckets of EDO, SD, DDR ram. CPUS! Full systems. The works. But I refuse to support a platform that screws me over for no fault of my own.

Forget Amibay. I've been there, takes a month of foruming to even get something posted and replied to. Is there any valid alternative to eBay?

Thanks!

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Reply 2 of 25, by bloodem

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I've never sold anything on eBay (I'm generally just a buyer, not a seller), but it always seemed to be like being an eBay seller is very risky, especially in the past 5 years or so.
Don't get me wrong, I like and trust eBay as a buyer, they always handled my cases with great professionalism. On the other hand, my cases were always justified (mostly broken/damaged/non-functioning items that the seller was trying to get rid of by playing the "untested" card while still selling them as "Used").

Having said that, I would NEVER sell anything on eBay, don't want to deal with that particular headache, because eBay seems to always agree with the buyer, even though - many times - it's quite clear (even to eBay support, probably) that the buyer is being dishonest.

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Reply 3 of 25, by smtkr

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I haven't had any bad experiences selling on eBay, but I can see how a bad transaction can sour you on the whole experience.

The main nuisance for me is the fee, which is incredibly high for the service provided.

Reply 4 of 25, by Horun

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The fee and the wait time to get paid are my peeves. I never fret over a negative comment, there are always some arse-holes that will biatch for the most minor thing.
As a long term buyer/rarely seller I do read the feedbacks a lot, a few bad with many good feedbacks does not turn me off a purchase... just saying...

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Reply 5 of 25, by a_h_adl

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Horun wrote on 2022-08-17, 00:23:

The fee and the wait time to get paid are my peeves. I never fret over a negative comment, there are always some arse-holes that will biatch for the most minor thing.
As a long term buyer/rarely seller I do read the feedbacks a lot, a few bad with many good feedbacks does not turn me off a purchase... just saying...

Second that

Reply 6 of 25, by 1541

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You can't avoid negative feedback from... morons...
You will find them on other platforms as well, so don't let yourself down and just block that user to avoid further sales.

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Reply 7 of 25, by user33331

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World is full of old abandoned Win95 / 98 serial keys.
Guide the buyer to these obsolete keys.

Maybe a junior buyer who is in this modern Win10 world where serials really actually matter.
Old Windows keys are not worth anything.
If you are lucky you can even guess old serials and then there are test serials and such.

Reply 8 of 25, by astonsmith

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Anyone who reads that feedback that is familiar with Windows 95 will realise it was unwarranted. You could even comment something like "W95 has never been provided on USB drives, and wasn't listed as being so".

On the flip side, I'm going to have to leave a negative for a seller later this week. I ordered and paid for 4 of an item, and only received 2. Buyer has ignored my message. eBay says tracking proves it was delivered (which only had 2 in it!).

Reply 9 of 25, by Pierre32

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I wonder if sellmyretro.com is worth looking at too? I don't know what it's like from the seller's side, but I recently bought an RBGtoHDMI there and it was a great experience.

Reply 10 of 25, by rasz_pl

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sell in person. hamventions, retro game parties/conventions, flea markets
you might change your mind about some meaningless ebay feedback after packing/unpacking car twice, driving couple of hours both ways, and sitting 5 hours in the sun 😀
what worries me about ebay is just run of the mill fraud, like "Sold a 1K item on eBay; chargeback occurred–eBay collections, now what?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32503051

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Reply 11 of 25, by Pierre32

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Unpopular opinion maybe, but as an occasional seller on ebay, I like the way it's set up now that they've divorced from Paypal. Once you get paid, that's it - fees have been deducted and the net is yours. Before, you'd get paid for each item instantly but then you'd get slugged for all the fees a few weeks later. Sure, the fees suck. But you price that in.

I've been lucky to only have good experience with buyers. But at least the feedback section allows space for useful comments these days. When I see a seller with negatives, I read the comments and it's usually pretty clear which party is the problem.

Reply 12 of 25, by Meatball

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Pierre32 wrote on 2022-08-18, 12:46:

Unpopular opinion maybe, but as an occasional seller on ebay, I like the way it's set up now that they've divorced from Paypal. Once you get paid, that's it - fees have been deducted and the net is yours. Before, you'd get paid for each item instantly but then you'd get slugged for all the fees a few weeks later. Sure, the fees suck. But you price that in.

I've been lucky to only have good experience with buyers. But at least the feedback section allows space for useful comments these days. When I see a seller with negatives, I read the comments and its usually pretty clear which party is the problem.

Haha; yeah... I do the same. Most of the negatives I read from the buyers are headscratchers or it's clear the buyer didn't bother to communicate with the seller to resolve any issues they were having. So, I tend to give the sellers the benefit of the doubt. The one type of negative, though, which has usually been accurate are for the sellers which don't ship and don't communicate. The sellers tend to get those in clusters, too.

The seller has to fail pretty hard to get a negative from me. If the experience wasn't good but not terrible, I don't leave feedback at all. Neutral feedback might as well be a negative, so I never leave those.

Reply 13 of 25, by effy

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I usually go through spurts of selling on Ebay. It will be fine for a while until I get some asshole or scammer that just makes it more stressful than it's worth so I stop selling for a while. It's just a hobby afterall.

As a buyer, there's plenty of dipshit sellers too. Usually poor packaging and the like. Lately I see a lot of people who must be new to selling. Had a recent one where it was a lot of items (parts/untested) for cheap and they obviously were going to take a hit on shipping because they priced it low. I can tell they were mad about it because they just chucked everything loose in a box and most of it ended up banged and broken. The cost didn't make it worth making a stink about it but come on, it's not my fault you screwed yourself.

Reply 14 of 25, by debs3759

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effy wrote on 2022-08-18, 14:09:

As a buyer, there's plenty of dipshit sellers too.

Totally agree. I bought a brand new electric wheelchair 3 weeks ago. Didn't notice that they don't ship for 2 weeks (that's on me, of course), and it's still not marked as shipped. Can't request a refund to buy from a genuine seller until Saturday. I need it as I'm housebound and want to be able to get out and have fresh air before I try to sleep, as well as simple things like being able to shop without a carer.

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Reply 15 of 25, by creepingnet

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My experiences on e-bay have not been that terrible, even lately, as a buyer and a seller. But I also don't sell all the time, and I buy only when I want/need something I see, which I'm tremendously picky about.

As a Seller I've only had negative feedback 2 times in 16 years.

- The first time was warranted. I tried a new packing method that seemed robust when selling a flip-top Turbo-XT Clone and a IBM 5153 Monitor and it turned out to not be that great. The entire case was bent up, the drives were ripped out of the mounts, the 5153 was de-necked and cracked open, the only thing that survived was the IBM Model "F". It really pissed me off with UPS to the point I did not use them for 15 more years. I don't cry, but the pictures did jerk a tear or two, I put a lot of pride and hard work into that XT Clone and to see UPS destroy it like that REALLY pissed me off. I wish I'd just kept it, I'd probably still have it now.

- The second time was neutral feedback selling some kind of Halo thing that was new that I got when I worked at 343, in box, and properly packed. The buyer got pissed at the "scale" of the item and claimed it was scratched up. I had it in like, 4 layers of bubble wrap. Pissed me off. I just let it ride. I sold it because I have some pretty bad memories about that place and I did not want to have anything left to remind me of Halo.

These days I get mild-annoyances trying to sell off small excess parts I don't need. Mostly because nobody "bites" on those offerings, and I start them all out either where e-bay suggests, or at "staring bit of $0.01" with a BIN of around $10 - like 2 PII CPUs and a 486 CPU chip I've put up there. Had them already packed up and ready to be sent - they got relisted 7x - nobody wanted them. But then I recouped the whole cost of a DOA M919 I bought from RE-PC in 2017 that I never got working - sold as For Parts AS/IS Does Not POST - go figure. Maybe I should build a PII machine. Still have them now, toying with AMIBay or VCFED Marketplace next.

As a buyer, the most annoying thing is buying parts and learning that the problem you have is a problem that plagued that part at the time. Bought a new PSU for my NEC VersaDock, it was burned up inside EXACTLY like the original power supply was. So...uh....seems NEC had a problem with the VErsaDock II burning up power supply high voltage boards till the traces no longer conducted, and popping 2 230K Resistors on the power side (but the fuses were all good). Actually, the new one was even WORSE. Got a $35 refund after that one.

Another annoying but funny thing I encountered recently was some guy selling 8087 Math Co-Processors. His ad read "Intel 8087 Math Co-Processor" in in the headline, but the actual description was for some kind of Honda V-Tec water cooling car part. Not sure if he's trying to keep prices accessible by giving errant descriptions. He took awhile to ship but I got the 8087 and it works great - it's in my Tandy 1000A now.

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Reply 16 of 25, by candle_86

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Iris030380 wrote on 2022-08-16, 13:44:
So I've been selling things on eBay for a while. It was good for a time, but eventually I got a negative feedback from some buye […]
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So I've been selling things on eBay for a while. It was good for a time, but eventually I got a negative feedback from some buyer. They bought an orignal wrapped Windows 95 USB Support CD, in the bag sealed with the manual and COA. But they wrote " Was expecting a USB KEY! There was no such key! Maybe it's my lack of experience, but buyer is suspect! No pen drive included! ".

ebay went ahead and, despite my numerous complaints, allowed his negative feedback to remain. Despite him admitting that he (or she) was confused. I sold exactly what I listed. Even went to my usual length of including a bag of haribos and double bubble wrapping everything as per usual. Now I am "suspect". Now I am not to be trusted.

Had my fill. It was bad enough that eBay take their fees, and hold money for EONS (over 3 weeks), long after you posted the items and got good feedback! This was the straw that nuked the camels back.

So. is there anywhere else, for me to sell the rest of my horde? I haven't even finished GPU's, yet I'm face with buckets of EDO, SD, DDR ram. CPUS! Full systems. The works. But I refuse to support a platform that screws me over for no fault of my own.

Forget Amibay. I've been there, takes a month of foruming to even get something posted and replied to. Is there any valid alternative to eBay?

Thanks!

I feel ya, I got feedback on an Ipad 2 I sold, guy first requested a return because it wouldn't run the newest IOS, though it was stated it was an Ipad2 and out of support and no longer got new updates, but he claimed it was not as discribed so I took a hit their, then gave me feedback of "sells obsolete Ipads avoid this scam seller" I don't sell anymore either

Reply 17 of 25, by user33331

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There are overwhelmingly more positive than negative experiences in Ebay in the end.
- Lots of old items that you would have never ever in your lifetime got in to your hands without Ebay.

Bad experiences are like 5% for me and 95% they are excellent.
Lots of good memories and future transactions too.
+ Sad experiences stung for max.2 weeks in brain and then they are gone.

Like some shady cultural "English" game shop who sold me a "good condition" wireless Xbox 360 controller which was chop shopped and Frankenstein fixed using multiple different era/color parts.

Reply 18 of 25, by Shponglefan

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user33331 wrote on 2022-08-19, 05:47:

Bad experiences are like 5% for me and 95% they are excellent.

In my past hundred or so transactions buying things on Ebay I only had a single bad experience where a seller didn't ship the item and didn't respond to any communication requests. I was able to get a refund that resolved.

I did have another instance where an item got damaged in shipment. The seller did provide free-of-charge replacement parts, which I counted as a good experience.

Conversely, I did have two different Amazon marketplace seller experiences go back with items lost in shipment. In both cases I did get a refund, but it was still frustrating to spend a couple months waiting for a shipment that never arrived.

Overall my eBay experiences have been generally quite good.

Last edited by Shponglefan on 2022-08-19, 11:32. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 19 of 25, by Shponglefan

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Iris030380 wrote on 2022-08-16, 13:44:

Is there any valid alternative to eBay?

Selling locally can mitigate some of the risks of dealing with problem buyers (and sellers). But on the flipside it does limit one's potential market.

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