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Thursday 1 May 2003

Ebay threatens to suck [lurks]

There's a saying that goes 'It never rains, it pours'. That being to indicate that bad fortune never occurs in small measure but rather in torrents. Sadly my experiences of eBay recently have fallen into this category. After reaching a rating of 50 and earning my blue star, I've had a remarkably smooth time with eBay and made a handsome profit to boot. However I've now had a string of screw ups which are souring my views.
First off, eBay pulled my FM Transmitter auction. I wasn't pleased about that, especially when they kept trying to charge me for the listing despite the fact their site says otherwise. Then I bought a radio-related bit of electronics from the US. It never turned up. I chased the helpful chap in the US and he's good enough to e-mail me scans of the delivery documentation and communication from the US Postal Service. They're claiming that delivery was attempted twice.
Well no, no it wasn't. USPS mail is, as far as I am aware, delivered by the Royal Mail. They definitely attempted no delivery as I was at home on the days they mentioned. They didn't ring my bell, they left no card and a telephone call to my local depot confirms they are holding nothing for me and have no knowledge of this consignment. I'm in the process of kicking this back to the guy who sent it to get him to chase up the USPS and communicate the fact that from this end, they appear to be lying. That's around 70 quid so far resulting in nowt.
Then there's a little cheap arse portable FM radio I bought off some guy. Auction finishes and this guy manually sends me the payment details. I pay by Palpal instantly. Then nothing for two weeks. During which time I attempt to e-mail multiple times, finally culminating in a bounce saying his mailbox is full. He runs a shop and is rated highly but he leaves dubious responses to recent negative feedback from other people, claiming he was on holidays and that the person would have got an auto responder. Well, I didn't.
So I sniff around eBays dispute resolution system. Get so far and it 404s. I bleat to eBay about it, peon responds with nonsense. I respond heatedly that had he read my mail he'd see exactly which bit was 404ing. They agree and apologise. A week later I try reading help pages on dispute resolution, find another 404. Repeat contact to eBay and point out that I'm trying to resolve a dispute and I'm not getting much a lot of joy from them. I get no reply from eBay. Good grief.
I decide I've had enough. I phone up the shop of the peasant who sold me the radio. I managed to get hold of the guy and tear him a (small) new arsehole. He agrees to send it first thing in the morning. Right job done on that one, now I just have to find out what the hell is going on with this one from the US.
Bloody nightmare.

4 comments:

  1. Ebay repeatedly spam me, despite my opting out of all contacts from them (I've never bought or sold, only reg'd because I thought I might).
    I sent their UK privacy contact an email stating what had happened, that they had violated the DPA etc. by contacting me in the first place and second by shipping my data outside the EU to a country where the privacy restrictions are inadequate (I traced the email as it arrived at an email server I admin). I received a 'form' email reply stating that 'now you have had trouble with a user, you can ignore messages from them'. I sent a STINKER of an email back telling them to read my original and received a short letter saying it wasn't them.
    So I sent them the source of the original message, traced the netblock owner to the ISP, asked them if they hired servers from that ISP etc. I pointed out their campaign ID, the fact that all links were to click.ebay.com and personalised with a user ID unique to me etc. Received another form email and a denial.
    I have continued to receive spam from them, and I'm only the width of the effort required to get off my fat arse away from making an official complaint to the Data Protection Commissioner.

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  2. They're astoundingly arrogant. The e-mail exchanges I had with them when they yanked my auction were infuriating. That's the trouble, they're the only show in town and they know it. Of course there's absolutely no excuse not to be held accountable for what you describe. God it's a pain getting wankers to stop e-mailing you. Most of my spam at plothatching.com is actually legit stuff, sort of, web sites I visited and registered. Of course I always make sure any boxes are ticked/unticked concerning their marketing shit but they do it anyway.

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  3. Hey, so I did a search on eBay Hell Blog and got this page. Here's the seller's POV: We don't give a fook! We do what we're s'posed to, and that's that. Do you think a less than 10% margin on 99% of all sales on eBay makes it worthwhile to answer emails repeatedly? How 'bout backing up your $30 purchase with a bigass warranty and free tech support and no-questions-asked returns? All for 30% off retail?? Go spank your monkey at a high street shop then and stay off eBay. If you want something sent 99% of the time (or whatever the hell their rating is) as stated, and be done with it, buy on eBay. If you want service and support, go pay a hooker $20 for a hand job and a therapist $100 for an hour of time. Otherwise, go buy your damn full retail price package, abuse the store all you like about "this tickle me elmo doll looked at me funny, I want my money back" and so forth. Point taken?
    PowerSeller in eBay Hell

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  4. You're a fucking moron. None of us were talking about ebay sellers. In fact had you read it, you would have found that I was the seller.
    Just goes to show, eBay is where the retards go when they can't work out how to run a real business.

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