eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
a.twiddler
Posts: 347
Joined: 4 Jun 2009, 12:17am

Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by a.twiddler »

I find it hard to believe that ebay will let a seller repeatedly list items with their contact details visible, especially if they're in the habit of cancelling a listing after a short time. Ebay have occasionally been quick to jump in when I've tried to give details to a buyer using "contact buyer" even after they've paid, with dire threats about restricting my account for not complying with their rules.

A recent issue I've had was in buying baby items which while not damaged or badly made were deemed by Mrs T to be unsuitable so she wanted to return them. The seller listing stated it was Manchester based and that returns were accepted. On trying to use the ebay returns service, because the category didn't fit into "not as described" or similar categories I was liable for return postage. Fair enough, but the return address given by ebay was Shanghai. I queried this with ebay but at present it's virtually impossible to talk to an actual person, and none of the FAQ type replies covered my query. I contacted the seller and got into some sort of circular menu of options, but nothing addressed the return address issue. I wouldn't be surprised to find this is common among some Chinese based and other sellers, to have a shipping set up in a UK warehouse so that they can claim "UK stock" and appearing to accept returns. It's no good accepting returns if the shipping costs will far outweigh the cost of the item if you have to send it back to the place of manufacture. In the end, as was probably intended, I just sucked it up and resolved to be very careful about the source of anything I bought in the future. I just left no feedback to the seller.

It appears that ebay are actively supporting unethical business practices. Just one more reason that ebay has fallen in my estimation recently.
Airsporter1st
Posts: 784
Joined: 8 Oct 2016, 3:14pm

Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this pleasebased

Post by Airsporter1st »

a.twiddler wrote: 29 Jun 2022, 4:51pm I find it hard to believe that ebay will let a seller repeatedly list items with their contact details visible, especially if they're in the habit of cancelling a listing after a short time. Ebay have occasionally been quick to jump in when I've tried to give details to a buyer using "contact buyer" even after they've paid, with dire threats about restricting my account for not complying with their rules.

A recent issue I've had was in buying baby items which while not damaged or badly made were deemed by Mrs T to be unsuitable so she wanted to return them. The seller listing stated it was Manchester based and that returns were accepted. On trying to use the ebay returns service, because the category didn't fit into "not as described" or similar categories I was liable for return postage. Fair enough, but the return address given by ebay was Shanghai. I queried this with ebay but at present it's virtually impossible to talk to an actual person, and none of the FAQ type replies covered my query. I contacted the seller and got into some sort of circular menu of options, but nothing addressed the return address issue. I wouldn't be surprised to find this is common among some Chinese based and other sellers, to have a shipping set up in a UK warehouse so that they can claim "UK stock" and appearing to accept returns. It's no good accepting returns if the shipping costs will far outweigh the cost of the item if you have to send it back to the place of manufacture. In the end, as was probably intended, I just sucked it up and resolved to be very careful about the source of anything I bought in the future. I just left no feedback to the seller.

It appears that ebay are actively supporting unethical business practices. Just one more reason that ebay has fallen in my estimation recently.
If registered with eBay as a business seller, their contact details are normally visible with just one click on their user name.

I habitually check the seller's info, because there is a huge number of China-based sellers masquerading as being UK-based. Often they will include a Union flag in the photos. I do think that eBay at least turn a blind eye to these practices, which is a real shame.

Bring back the days when eBay sellers were predominately private and the majority of listings were in auction format. It's quite revealing that a search for any given item will result in a large number of hits, which when filtered for auction only, reduces to a mere handful at best.
Biospace
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by Biospace »

We're living in a time when governments have yet to decide how to deal with the Internet, so what would once have been called monopolies go unchallenged and often contribute amazingly small amounts of revenue in taxation to their host nations. The Americans are good at getting their own way online and offline it seems, the UK frequently rolls over when asked - see the Assange case, for example.

Someone remarked ebay is worldwide, but that's not to say every country uses them as the UK does. The last time I looked, plenty had their own home-based alternatives doing a lot of trade. France was one with its https://www.leboncoin.fr/, Poland has its own site and so on. There are plenty of nations who, unlike the UK it seems, dislike American abuse of its domination and the typical behaviour of some of their large businesses.

I know plenty who will only use ebay as a last resort on account of their complicated site navigation for occasional sellers, very high fees and general hassle, but if you've something specialist to sell quickly then it can be convenient. It's pretty poor behaviour to plan to withdraw an item once there's sufficient interest but if this is happening on a wide scale it's likely there are vendors who feel they've been treated unfairly by the company in previous disputes.
Psamathe
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this pleasebased

Post by Psamathe »

Airsporter1st wrote: 29 Jun 2022, 6:04pm ....
I habitually check the seller's info, because there is a huge number of China-based sellers masquerading as being UK-based. ...
Same on Amazon Marketplace - though often there are "signs" e.g. Company-UK (a UK based company calling themselves <something>-UK is unusual and warrants a double check that takes seconds to make).

Ian
home
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by home »

a.twiddler wrote: 29 Jun 2022, 4:51pmthe return address given was Shanghai ... I just left no feedback to the seller.

It appears that ebay are actively supporting unethical business practices. Just one more reason that ebay has fallen in my estimation recently.
How long ago was this? Why leave no? Always leave negative. Sellers have no way of leaving negative feedback about buyers (a bad policy many small time sellers were bery unhappy about when it happened, again skewing the balance in favour of buyers, but why not exploit it?).

FWIW, in my experience, Chinese sellers will almost always roll over if you do. The reason being that they get so many they can't risk losing their discounts, or having their selling account shut down because of it. At the very least, they will offer your the item for half-price, which you should refuse. For the 50c they make, it's better for them to avoid return shipping & negative feedback.

I have no idea how many bank accounts or credit card they must burn out, because they all appear to operate numerous accounts all selling the same crap. Sometimes I wonder if they make employees use their own just because they know they're going to shut down.

I'm not criticising you but the problem is, you - & too many buyers like you - are too honest and straight/reasonable ... and the system isn't. It's designed to block & defeat you, as you found out, by not providing adequate options, means of contacting real people etc etc etc. It's not by accident, it's by design.

And, yes, it's really those mass sellers that eBay is building its business around. Companies that can afford to write off identical items.

I'm ruthless when it comes to bogus Chinese sellers pretend to be in the UK selling analogues of real items, i.e. items that look like the real thing but are just design for reaping foreign currency like tools made of plastic-like alloys. Negative feedback + refund claim straight away. Doesn't matter if there's not an accurate option to fit in, just use any.

Even then eBay does sneaky things like hiding the purchase so you can't find it to leave negative feedback once the refund claim has gone in or been processed. eBay are looking after their business first and there's an old Sufi saying, "the definition of a fool, is someone who is honest to dishonest people". Start from point of view, that you're dealing with a dishonest system.

I had good luck in little niches of reasonable people, but whenever I erred into mainstream items, including mainstream bicycle items (rather than vintage & obscure ones), I ran into dishonest buyers. I think part of the problem is, your average Joe approaching the site today thinks he's dealing with some big company, rather than a lone enthusiast or single mum just trying to get by, & treats the system as if it's like the former in a "screw you"/rip off manner.

And those scammers have definitely spread rumours about how to game to win free stuff, e.g. by leaving or threatening negative feedback unreasonably so. Like, if they've changed their mind, damaged the item, or want to pay less.
home
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Joined: 9 Jun 2022, 7:15am

Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this pleasebased

Post by home »

Airsporter1st wrote: 29 Jun 2022, 6:04pmBring back the days when eBay sellers were predominately private and the majority of listings were in auction format. It's quite revealing that a search for any given item will result in a large number of hits, which when filtered for auction only, reduces to a mere handful at best.
Another hint, most people dont get to, is that you can further filter items out by using a - minus sign in the search bar.

I've found this essential now, while searching for bicycle service items, to filter out those 10,000 identical items being sold from China (who all word spam the search function in their titles).

For example, say you want to find a "childrens handlebar", you would need to put in something like "child childrens kids handlebar -grip -grips -tassel -tassells -decal -decals" etc etc working your way through, adding all the spam words in the titles, until you get what you want. Sometime throwing in some unrelate random word, like 'orange' or 'frog' something, brings up a whole other set of results & things you didn't see. It's bizarre.

Note, no space between the -minus and word, and plurals count as separate words. Half the time I might have 10 or more "nots" in the search.

Something else it's really poor with handling are any numbers or fractions in the search, which is a PITA when it comes to fasteners or ERTRO rims & tyres etc. I have not worked out a way around that.
a.twiddler
Posts: 347
Joined: 4 Jun 2009, 12:17am

Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by a.twiddler »

The "-" factor is useful to know. For certain items the first half page tends to give relevant items followed by, as you have said, pages of identical items with the price varying by pence from apparently different China based sellers. The dreaded phrase "Speedpak fom China" is the cue to go nowhere near that seller, as far as I'm concerned.

Another curiosity is that sometimes I put something on my watch list from one of these multiple sellers with a view to using "see similar items" as it can bring up fresh items, and note that the price changes though it remains the same on the original listing.

This is just is just another thing to add to the list of anomalies that never used to happen.
Dingdong
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by Dingdong »

Just my twopenneth worth, but my eldest son is a seller on eBay and has had some real horror stories from manipulative buyers (who know only too well how to game the system) and the customer heavy 'protection' that eBay offers, at the expense of sellers.

He recently had to give up on a case where he sold a four figure Nikon camera to what appears a similar seller in Greece, who promptly opened a case for 'item not described ' and sent the camera back. When it was eventually returned, all the parts the buyer needed to fix his own identical camera were missing from the original. My son was out of pocket for about £1500, and had to fork out for the shipping, to and from Greece, about another £100. eBay would do zero to help him. Poor lad spent hours and hours on the phone to them, to no avail

It's absolutely no surprise to me that on high value items, sellers would rather circumvent the entire eBay process (and their near 15% fees) altogether and sell direct, using eBay as merely another advertising medium. A lot of people posting here are complaining about unscrupulous sellers, in my experience it's the buyers who are getting away with murder on the site. It's a genuine quandary to me that any amateur sellers still use it, but then again I suppose if you are selling specialist items worldwide, currently it's the only monopoly in town.

What does surprise me, in the 20+ years they've been trading, with the tremendous volume of apps and development online is that there's no effective competition. Weird, huh ... :?:
home
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by home »

Dingdong wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 5:15amA lot of people posting here are complaining about unscrupulous sellers, in my experience it's the buyers who are getting away with murder on the site.
I concur. Sadly, that's quite typical for expensive IT too, as anyone who remembers the Romanian scammers episode. Buying a high end laptop, and returning a brick instead used to be another ruse. It worked for the scammers, as your son found out, because Ebay's refund system is automatic based on the tracking alone. Not the CONTENTS of what is being tracked. Once seller worked out sending stuff to Romania, they then moved to other countries, including the UK, and carried right on. Or used accomplices here as couriers.
Small Romanian Town Gets Rich Through eBay Scams

DRAGASANI, Romania – Hundreds of people in the poor Romanian town of Dragasani have grown rich by conning eBay online auction customers with deals that seem too good to be true — and often are. With few local jobs available in this industrial town in Romania's Valcea wine-growing region, defrauding eBay customers has became a popular career path for many of Dragasani's young people.

A classic scam is the "second chance auction," in which fraudsters contact an eBay user who has just missed out on an item, offering them another chance to buy it outside eBay rules. The scammers persuade their victims to purchase the fictitious items using payment methods that do not allow them to recover the money.

The biggest case involved the sum of $300,000.

According to Virgil Spiridon, chief of the national cyber-crime unit, there were 752 arrests and 84 convictions last year, many of them in cases where Romanians posed as Britons.
Dingdong wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 5:15amWhat does surprise me, in the 20+ years they've been trading, with the tremendous volume of apps and development online is that there's no effective competition. Weird, huh ... :?:
It's because they keep buying effective startups out and keeping them undeveloped, e.g. motors.co.uk and Gumtree in the UK (now sold as part of a huge merger). That's why Gumtree is/was free. Ebay could afford to run it at a loss ...effectively using it as a firewall ... in order to stop any competitor coming into the market who was not able to do so, e.g. the Singaporean start up Carousell who offered a very good alternative for a while. In short, you'd need several billions to be able to do so, and weather out Ebay's attack.

It's time eBay and Amazon were broken up by the monopolies commission (Competition and Markets Authority).
oldmanpop
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by oldmanpop »

Thanks folks for your input. I went as I felt obliged and lucky for me the sale was genuine.
The seller was lovely ,no cash involved the deal done by bank transfer. Thanks again.
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simonineaston
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by simonineaston »

The seller was lovely
A good outcome - splendid news! And a counter to the diatribes on the subject of ebay and its negative aspects.
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
PH
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by PH »

oldmanpop wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 12:35pm Thanks folks for your input. I went as I felt obliged and lucky for me the sale was genuine.
The seller was lovely ,no cash involved the deal done by bank transfer. Thanks again.
Did eBay get a cut for being used to find the buyer?
Bonefishblues
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by Bonefishblues »

PH wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 2:16pm
oldmanpop wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 12:35pm Thanks folks for your input. I went as I felt obliged and lucky for me the sale was genuine.
The seller was lovely ,no cash involved the deal done by bank transfer. Thanks again.
Did eBay get a cut for being used to find the buyer?
I expect so - they'll build a margin in for fraud, I suspect :D
home
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Joined: 9 Jun 2022, 7:15am

Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by home »

oldmanpop wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 12:35pmThanks folks for your input. I went as I felt obliged and lucky for me the sale was genuine.
The sale was only "genuine", if he paid eBay a commission for advertising his bike which we are all presuming he didn't.

Otherwise it was unlawful conduct, you were both in breach of contract, and you(s) defrauded eBay of up to £135.
Bonefishblues wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 2:25pmI expect so - they'll build a margin in for fraud, I suspect :D
No, it becomes a premium that all of the honest buyers and sellers have to pay. Like the millions they spend on fighting fraud.
Last edited by home on 30 Jun 2022, 4:16pm, edited 1 time in total.
PH
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Re: eBay bike for sale pulled - Thoughts on this please

Post by PH »

Bonefishblues wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 2:25pm
PH wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 2:16pm
oldmanpop wrote: 30 Jun 2022, 12:35pm Thanks folks for your input. I went as I felt obliged and lucky for me the sale was genuine.
The seller was lovely ,no cash involved the deal done by bank transfer. Thanks again.
Did eBay get a cut for being used to find the buyer?
I expect so - they'll build a margin in for fraud, I suspect :D
Indeed, it's not likely to dent eBay's profit.
I'm not judging - I've never bypassed the eBay system as a buyer or seller, but I have made several Paypal transactions as "Gift" when they were nothing of the sort.
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