THE IMMINENT FALL OF EBAY? (aka eBay Sucks)

eBay is accurately described as the electronic Main Street, and as such, eBay has experienced massive success. However, customer service at eBay has lagged. Complaints regarding eBay's service and policies, from both buyers and sellers, appears to be growing exponentially. When you type in "eBay sucks" at Google, it returns about 177,000 results.

I personally love buying and selling on eBay. It's the next best thing to Wal-Mart and Costco, sometimes better! However, I'm hearing more and more horror stories of bad eBay/PayPal experiences, and I've run into some problems of my own that, in days past, used to be a no-brainer for eBay because of clear violations of their policy.

Along with my own problems, it seems that there is a growing chorus of complaints that have gone past simple customer service issues. People aren't ready to leave eBay because there isn't a viable alternative, but more and more people are talking about it with fervor. I don't think they're "screaming" for an alternative just yet, but eBay is starting to take on the persona of the local phone company (before they opened up competition), where there is no recourse for the consumer or merchant if eBay enforces their policies, written and unwritten, inequitably or unjustly. This becomes a national issue if you consider the number of individuals and companies relying on eBay for their livelihood, but of course, if enough people become frustrated with dealing with eBay, it will open up the door for a competitor, like Amazon.com.

Some of these serious issues are:

1. Accounts are closed for no apparent reason at all, or for an unjustified reason.
   
   People have recounted their experiences of selling and/or buying items on eBay, without incident, only to have their account closed without warning and for no apparent reason at all. After digging and jumping through hoops to find out what happened, they're told that their account was suspended because an "associated" account is delinquent in their payments to eBay.
   
   I have heard that this has happened with PayPal (an eBay owned credit card company) as well, and I'm sure there are numerous testimonies of this at Paypalsucks.com I have never heard of another company that will kill your account because someone that they think that someone you know owes them money. When did it become your legal responsibility to resolve your mother, brother, sister, father, roommate, neighbor's delinquent bills?
   
   If this has happend with a PayPal account, it should violate some consumer protection law because they will freeze the monies in your account, indefinitely. Unfortunately, in the cases when people have tried to fight PayPal on this issue, they are told that PayPal is not a bank or credit card and therefore not bound by federal regulations.
   
   


2. You report a violation of eBay policy by an auctioner, but nothing is done if they're a huge seller.
   
   Most sellers, at some point in their eBay life, have had either received a phone call from eBay or had their auctions dropped, without warning, for violating eBay's search engine spamming policy. The policy is a good policy, and that is not in question. Users take exception to eBay's practice of enforcing their policies.
   
   Basically, sellers aren't allowed to fill their auction text with words that will come up in multiple searches that have absolutely nothing to do with their auction just to get eyeballs on their auction. This policy maintains the integrity of a shopper's search, since there are probably hundreds of thousands of items being sold on eBay at any one time. However, huge sellers are guilty of keyword spamming, and not only has eBay not curbed the behavior, the sellers continue to flagrantly keyword spam without penalty, which creates an uneven competitive playing field for anyone wanting to sell similar products on eBay.
   


3. eBay's VeRO Program
   
   In eBay's attempt to curb fraud and copyright infringement, they created the VeRO group, which, in a nutshell allows manufacturer's, like Rolex, Cartier, etc. "police" auctions on eBay for fakes and frauds represented as their products. It would be impossible for eBay to have an expert on every product that is sold on their site, so this protects consumers by allowing the experts to monitor auctions and report problems to eBay.
   
   The problem arises when legitimate sellers have their auctions closed by the VERO group, but the VeRO group cannot tell you how why. The VeRO group takes the word of the manufacturer that the auction in some way infringes on their copyright and eBay immediately pulls the auction, according to the VeRO group, without even finding out why! This protects eBay, but there is no recourse for those that have been wrongly accused of some vague copyright violation. Not only that, but it is near impossible to contact the accuser, the person at the company that made the initial accusation to verify or dispute the complaint. What if they had simply transposed two numbers in the item ID and you were not the intended target?
   
   In addition, if you did unwittingly committ a copyright violation (maybe you improperly used a term that you thought had passed into the common vernacular, like Kleenex), there's no way for you to correct it in the future so that eBay does not close your account or stop any other auctions.
   
   In many ways, eBay is damned if they do and damned if they don't. As stated earlier, they cannot possibly police all their auctions, but they need to at least keep a record of the accusation and have a method for sellers to contact the originator of the complaint, and not through a bulk email address.
   


4. A Seller doesn't want to ship my item because they want more money for the item and have relisted.
   
   This has happened to A LOT of people. A bidder will bid on an item, get a great deal on it, fully intending to purchase the product, only to have the seller backout and relist the item. eBay used to deal with this judiciously and immediately, but most people do not receive a response from eBay when they report this behavior.

Some of the more solvable complaints stem from either buyers or sellers that have not educated themselves on how eBay works and how to avoid getting scammed on the world's largest online auction marketplace. eBay has actively attempted to address some of the more common complaints that can be easily remedied through education, and they do make an effort to educate buyers and registered users on how to avoid scams, especially phishing scams. Some common complaints are:

1. I got outbid in the last several minutes of my auction and lost the item by x¢.
   
   There are a number of "sniping" services (proxy bidding services), available for free or a fee, online that will allow ANY bidder to bid up to the very last seconds of any auction on eBay. Experienced bidders know that sniping is one of the best ways to ensure you win your auctions, provided that you placed a high enough bid in your snipe. Most bidders also don't seem to understand that, even if you use eBay's bidding system, you should put in the amount that you are willing to pay for an item, instead of bidding it up dollar by dollar. eBay's system won't make the auction the final bid amount (unless there is a reserve that is higher than your final amount) until another bidder challenges your bid. At that point, the auction will be bid up to the lowest amount bid, until the next challenging bidder arrives, etc.
   
   The highest amount of bid activity on most auctions at eBay are done within the last 30-60 minutes, and sometimes in the last 30 seconds! If you choose to bid up an auction a dollar at a time, that's your choice, but you will be beaten, and there's nobody to blame but yourself for being outbid. It's not cheating because everyone has the ability to bid up to the very last seconds of the auction.
   


2. You can't trust sellers on eBay, regardless of good, high feedback, because it might not really be them.
   
   This is also known as "hijacking" a user's identity, and it happens when thieves have phished for a seller's username and password, then they take over the account and change the password. When the worst of this was going on at eBay, eBay and PayPal both sent out numerous emails warning users about clicking on any link sent in an email that leads them to another site that requires them to enter their username and password. Since then, I believe that most power sellers are aware of the danger, so I feel I can trust most of the sellers with a lot of good, recent feedback, but if you're still worried, pay with a credit card. Your credit card company will protect you from fraud just as they would in a store.
   


3. I got screwed by a "0" feedback bidder!
   
   I think it's always unfortunate for the eBay community when either a buyer or seller doesn't follow through on their contractual obligation, but unless you want to sue them for the money, you'll have to relist your item and report the bidder as a non-paying bidder so you won't be responsible for the eBay final value fees.
   
   However, in the future, if you want to either approve all your bidders before they're allowed to bid on any of your auctions or forbid "0" feedback bidders from bidding, you can set that up in selling manager.
   


4. eBay charges outrageous fees above and beyond the listing fees!
   
   Yes, eBay charges final value fees in addition to their listing fees, and if you accept PayPal, be ready to have PayPal take a little over 2% of the final sale price, immediately. Neither company hides any of their fee schedules. Just be sure to read all the information regarding fees for any service you use, and if you think it's too high, don't sell on eBay.

There are many other common complaints, but if you don't find the answers you're looking for on eBay's Help pages, then try their community discussion boards. Most people are pretty friendly to newcomers.