Bad Sellers on Ebay

There is a lot of good sellers on ebay, however most of the time we forget about the bad ones. We just assume that there good. Sometime good feed back can cloak a bad seller. But there out there just like they are off line. Sometime we buy items from bad sellers without even knowing they are bad no good two toed varmints. The worst thing at times is having several transitions take place with a that seller. All seems well until that faith day comes when you have trouble with something that you brought from the. Then WHAM, it hits you like a brick in the face. The truth is out and the seller shows there true colors. You become the enemy and everything is your fault. You become the great darkness. The enemy. A good way to avoid this is always switch up buying from different sellers, but that also open you up to running in to the bad situations. But that's ebay. Taking the bad along with the good.

I had a few transactions on ebay and however they all have not been good ones. When I first started out on ebay I brought a game from this one seller, however I noticed at the end of the auction that the seller didn't take Paypal. So I did the standard email and asked him if I could pay by pay pal. The seller said it would be fine, he would relist the item so I could pay by paypal. Sounds good so far but wait it is not. When the seller relisted the item I bought it, but when he send me the invoice he gave me an extra five dollar charge. Extra five dollars?!? What was that for?!? When I asked the seller what it was for he stated that it was the relisting fee along with the Paypal Transaction fee. "A relisting fee??! What in blue Hades realm is that?!!" (I wasn't a seller then so I didn't know.) He told me it was the cost of him having to relist the item and the cost of me having to pay by pay pal. Confused, well I was confused too. I told him I wasn't going to pay, because that wasn't the original price that I had brought the item for. That's when he changed in to an evil entity and demand that I pay. The last email I got from him is when he called me stupid and demand me to pay. I didn't of course. I bought the item form someone else and receive negative feedback from the sellers. He wrote that people should beware of me because I was a non paying bidder, he also add giant capital letters so everyone could see. I counter it with the truth.

So what does this mean? If someone over charges you for something then my advice is "do not pay it." Do not feel that you have the obligation to pay, don't be forced into paying anything if you feel that something is in the wrong. Ad fees and the 2 percent paypal fee is not yours to over. Also paying this guy an extra five dollars is triple the cost of his relisting fee and the minor paypal fee. Either way that cost isn't something that should be put on the buyer. All he had to do was send me an invoice for x amounts from pay pal and I would have paid for them with no problem at all the first time. His greed killed the sale and any future sell I would have gotten from him.

Also avoid sellers that demand you pay insurance on small items that don't need insurance because they are not responsible if it get lost in the mail. Twice I brought form people like this and twice items disappear in the mail. One said I was to stupid to go to the post office and pick it up and that's why it returned to him. That was a lie, I had to go to the post office every week to pick up package plus the tellers knew who I was and would just give me the packages when they saw me. The package wasn't at the post off and it wasn't mailed. After arguing with seller for days, I then paid him to reship it. Week passed again and guess what? No package. He claimed to had send to out and he had no idea why I wasn't getting it along with more insults. Plus I was told it was my fought for not having gotten the insurance with the item.

That's when I learned the hard lesson of having to read people feed back first before I buy from them. If I had looked at his feedback then I would have know better. I wouldn't had bought any thing from him. Yes, he had sold over five thousand items to people, however he had received over a thousand negative feedback from customers and seven hundred neutral. In my book that is very bad. How and why he is still in business on ebay I will never know. If half of those buyers had reported him to ebay then that seller wouldn't have been a seller any more. The worst thing is after 12 months all that negative feed back disappears and it make it look like he just have a few negative feedback now and it no way that people can scroll through over 5000 feed backs looks for someone bad one.

How can you avoid bad sellers like this? Read the feedback. Read why the reasons that the buyer left the feed back. Don't buys from people that have long list of negative feedback. Do not buy from people that want to add extra charges after the end of a transaction. Do not buy from seller that say they are not responsible for your item if you do not buy insurance. The item usually magically get lost and they pocket the money. Also do not buy from seller with required insurance. Some seller have require you to pay insurance when you purchase the item. Usually the insurance is really high and most of the time you don't see it because the shipping and the cost of the item was so cheap. Insurance on an item should be optional, not forced on by the seller. Insurance should only be gotten on big purchase that are actual worth something. Lookout for sellers that have high shipping cost. Some sellers do the trick of having dirt cheap items and high outrages shipping cost to avoid the final ebay fee. Most of the time it is a trap to get buyers caught it. Most buyers buy the item thinking that they will be getting a good deal to discover later that they owe an extra twenty or forty dollars. Low buying prices and sky high shipping seem too catch people every time. There is a way to avoid this. You can avoid this by reading everything in the ad first. All to often people just give the item a glance and click the buy or bid button. You should away read the ad before bidding on or buying it. The worst thing that buyers do is commit to buying something without reading anything. If it equals good price then most sellers do not stop and think, they just buy. Always read the ad completely, I can't stress that enough. Also read the summary info that comes after you place a bid or will confirm to buy. The summary list item bid/cost, shipping and insurance if required all in one. That will be your final warning and chance to back out.

I can't stress this next point enough. Do not ever buy something from someone that says no refunds on matter the reason or my favor "buy as is." That usually means that it is broke, or will break. If your very luck then it is usually not broken. Also you should not have to pay any return or reshipping fee if the item you received was the wrong item.

Final note on emails. Emailing a seller is a good way to find out information on seller and their item their selling. If they don't answer their emails then their is a problem. I really don't want to buy something from someone that will not answer their email. However there are time when I will, I take in account what I am buying and where I'm buying it from. Some time the sellers do not speak English and other time that just get so much email that it is just to much to reply to. But if your like me than a lot o email go to the spam folder. Why? Because a lot of the scam artist send you spoof email seeking your ebay or paypal account and personal information. Since they hack the email address to look like they are being send directly from ebay when it is not. So unfortunately when I block them, I'm also blocking the real ebay emails too. But when I log on to ebay, then I can read the real emails from customers without any problems.

A good trick to find out a little about the seller is to cantact some of the people that brought good from them. Why were they a good seller? Why were they a bad one? Reason for the neagitive feed back left. Did the seller make an attempt to work things out with you? Asking questions like that will give you a good window in to what type of seller your dealing with.

    Avoid sellers that have no type of return or refund policy. SOme of the best sellers I dealt with had a good refund or return policy. Bad sellers don't usually want to return your money or exchange your item at all. They have your money and basic don't care, so always make sure you read return policy on items.