DVD & VHS BUYERS SCAM ALERT

When shopping online, trust in the seller is much more important than when we go shopping in a local physical store. Imagine shopping for an hour in a store. Going to the check out. Paying for the item. Then, the clerk disappears with your item!!!

eBay  "Power Sellers" of DVD & VHS media, who have tens of thousands of transactions &  99.5%+ feedback, are doing this repeatedly to thousands of buyers, every day. If you read their feedback carefully, they have stiffed hundreds to thousands of DVD & VHS buyers per day & or per month. These sellers are very well known & have a notorious pattern. Here it is:

1) These DVD & VHS sellers list items by the hundreds or thousands per day; thus, their feedback per day is hundreds of buyers. Because they do such high volume sales & nonsales, their feedback rating doesn't accurately reveal the hundreds of buyers they are stiffing per month, let alone the thousands they are stiffing per year! (Who has time to surf through one day's worth of feedback remarks when there are hundreds of them, pages & pages, in order to find out the very clear cut pattern of nonselling activites they are up to?).

2) Go to our own feedback left recently for several DVD & VHS "Power Sellers" and read what I have written. (Ours are milder examples--there are far worse ones!). Just within the last 6 months, buyers have been permitted to give negative feedback on eBay about these nonsellers without fearing undeserved negative feedback retaliation. So the patterns are now beginning to surface since some eBay buyers are aware that nonsellers cannot ruin our feedback ratings.

3) Another aspect of these nonseller's pattern is that they refuse to make any contact whatsoever with buyers, especially PayPal buyers, after a DVD or VHS auction has been won & paid for. With the very high volume of sales they are (ab)using eBay to do, they dont' have proper customer services! Thus, buyers are reporting in masses that we are not being contacted at all after we win auctions & pay for DVD & VHS items. We are reporting that we are not receiving items at all or for nearly a month after paying instantly for them. This is inexcusable.

4) When buyers get the registration phone contact & address for these sellers, they are businesses. Most only have answering machines. Others have given eBay false location information & have listed themselves as being in the USA, but are located in other countries! Buyers find this out when we try to phone them & the call is an international one; but, the seller's address is listed in some place like New York.

5) The 99+% rate in their feedback is not an accurate picture of the kinds of business transactions they are doing. We've read through their feedback records extensively! Hundreds to thousands of buyers PER MONTH are either leaving red negative feedback asking things like, "How many negatives does it take before eBay does something to stop this?"; "Item never received, no email, no phone contact, no refund."; "No contact, money refunded without any reason."; "Seller claims item is out of stock."; "Seller claims item is damaged"; "Seller didn't like the price I won for; claimed item was damaged"; "Seller claims they emailed us, but offered no proof 10 days after sale"; "Didn't learn item was damaged until 2 weeks after we paid seller"; "Didn't receive item for a month"; (Sound familiar?).

KNOW THIS: IT IS A LISTING VIOLATION OF EBAY'S POLICIES FOR A SELLER TO LIST AN ITEM THEY DO NOT HAVE. WHEN YOU READ THAT A SELLER IS CLAIMING OVER & OVER AGAIN THAT THE ITEM CAN'T BE SENT BECAUSE IT IS OUT OF STOCK OR DAMAGED, ASK YOURSELF, "WHY DID THIS SELLER LIST THE ITEM THAT WAS DAMAGED OR NOT IN STOCK?" "WHY IS THIS SELLER NOT CONTACTING BUYERS AFTER SALES?" "IS THIS HOW I WANT TO BE TREATED?"

6) The reason that "Power Sellers" with tens to hundreds of thousands of sales transactions are listing items they do not have or are damaged DVDs & VHS' is because of the high volume of business they do & the low level of customer services they have. They don't know if they even have the item they are auctioning or selling out-right as "Buy It Now." What they want is our money.

7) Isn't it clever to repeatedly claim that the seller doesn't have the item they sold in stock? That the item is damaged (once they bothered to look at it AFTER a sale? Or even that the buyer is 'hard to please', after their customer service is nearly or completely non-existent, post-sale, after they have our money, but will not respond to a one line email sent through eBay's message portal?

8) PayPal & eBay both are well aware of this pattern, they both state. Both claim that they are "trying their best" to weed out these sellers they have freely given "Power Seller" status to. That status & 99+% feedback rating are what misleads eBay buyers. Both PayPal & eBay need buyers' help to stop this pattern of seller listing violations.

9) Before pushing the bid or buy button, READ THE ACTUAL FEEDBACK COMMENTS & ACTUAL NUMBER OF NEUTRALS & NEGATIVES PER MONTH. When a DVD & VHS "Power Seller" with thousands & hundreds of thousands of transactions has hundreds or thousands of neutrals & negatives, remember, hidden in their feedback are postives too, that are false positives, written by buyers who are hesitant to leave neutral or negative feedback, but do leave comments that indicate that their experiences were not good--in fact, they fit this pattern to a T!

10) These "Power Sellers" will not have the option open for buyers to purchase insurance. Buyers who want insurance will have to contact these sellers to ask for a bill or for them to change eBay's &/or PayPal's software options to allow us to buy insurance. This is one time when buyers will learn that the seller is not going to communicate with them. In short, buyers will spend hours surfing for DVD & VHS items, bid & win, or buy, & wind up waiting a week or longer before ever receiving any kind of email. These sellers are such high volume dealers that they do not keep up with their inventory, stock, transactions, shipments, or email. BEWARE OF THEM!

11) REMEDY: A good scam warning offers a remedy! Here's what we've found that works. There are DVD & VHS eBay sellers who have rightfully earned "Power Seller" status who are low volume & private individuals who pride themselves in conducting excellent, smooth transactions. Their percentage ratings & their feeback will be in the low thousands & their buyers will hardly ever leave them either neutral or negative feedback. They will not be selling hundreds of thousands of items per day or week. If they are shipping via USPS Media Mail, pay the extra $1.70 for insurance!

USPS prioritizes insured mail, even media mail. It will arrive within 3-5 business days when it is insured. Make sure that the seller really does combine shipping when bidding upon or buying multiple items from them, by emailing them first. Keep all email from sellers until you've left & received feedback! Tell sellers to contact you through the eBay message portal & do not give them your private email address (this way they cannot claim to have sent email to you that you never got, because eBay's message portal keeps the messages they send & we receive in our message boxes on eBay's webserver). Report every single seller website you surf across that fits this pattern to eBay. It only takes a minute. The only way to stop scamming "Power Sellers" is to have enough eBay buyers making eBay wide aware of who they are & what they are doing.

The way to report scam sellers who are repeatedly listing items they claim they don't have in stock, are damaged, or do not respond to buyers for over 10 days after a sale, or items not received is to go to eBay's Trust & Safety site, then, report the seller & pick an item a buyer reported about as a "Listing Violation." This will get eBay's attention. When sellers persist doing listing violations on eBay they will not be able to maintain their "Power Seller" status, or worse.

All of us who shop via eBay need to help keep it reputably safe enough. By leaving truthful feedback for such obvious patterns sellers are engaged in, we help to prevent violations of eBay policies as well as build up the standards of good customer service for all buyers.

REMEMBER HOW THIS ALERT BEGAN:

When shopping online, trust in the seller is much more important than when we go shopping in a local physical store. Imagine shopping for an hour in a store. Going to the check out. Paying for the item. Then, the clerk disappears with your item!!!