Buyer BEWARE !!

[Starryeyes]

Just had an eBay seller in Beijing China selling “Peanut Warrior” kits ... I purchased 2 weeks ago . Come to find out they haven’t even been released yet .. the seller never mentioned “pre-order” only AFTER paying that shipping wouldn’t be until April-June 2021 . “Sunflower939” is the users name .. refund was issued today ..

Chuck

[jcon]

That sucks!!! Glad you got a refund!!!

[modelcarfan]

That sucks too... I have almost got ripped off from a guy who asked me to send an e mail so he can pay me the payment through pay pal... when an item is already in the ebay listing. I had my intuition alarmed me off not to give in the info. I then told him he can buy it through the e bay.. he never did.

and then next day his account in ebay was closed, I knew I was right. oh man you gotta be very careful and listen to your intuition .

[wardster]

Jan 30, 2021 15:14:42 GMT -5 modelcarfan said:

That sucks too... I have almost got ripped off from a guy who asked me to send an e mail so he can pay me the payment through pay pal... when an item is already in the ebay listing. I had my intuition alarmed me off not to give in the info. I then told him he can buy it through the e bay.. he never did.

and then next day his account in ebay was closed, I knew I was right. oh man you gotta be very careful and listen to your intuition .

Sometimes, even intuition is not enough ... but yeah, if you have any "tingles of warning," we should back off in a hurry!

I'm surprised that sellers are doing what they did, related to "selling" stuff that technically does not yet exist!? I guess that it is a constant give-and-take or back-and-forth between eBay, and sellers (or buyers) that aren't willing to "play nicely"??

A bunch of years ago, probably fifteen or so years ago, I was selling some rare items off, related to a hobby I'm not in, these days ... and boy, was that a mistake, in some cases! Holy bleep, were some buyers just total "causing sellers huge headaches JERKS, back then! It turned me off of being an seller on eBay, back then. For a while, when Amazon started selling used books and what not, I gave up on eBay entirely: neither buying anything from them, nor selling anything through them.

This was all ages ago -- (way back before eBay got better on giving buyers better tools to keep certain not-so-honest sellers in line) -- so I'm not badmouthing eBay's practices, these days. As an occasional eBay seller, many years ago, I had mostly honest people who didn't cause any real trouble ... but the ones who did, wow! One of those "lingering traumatic memories" kinds of things! No matter how many images I posted, and how large the word count was on describing an item, when some jerk wanted to be a jerk, they'd claim "I didn't know that's what the item was" ... which was ludicrous, every time it happened. I quit selling anything on eBay, years ago, and I haven't ever gone back: in part because of those few really toxic buyers. (But mostly because I have nothing I want to sell, I guess?)

One guy, for instance, back before eBay sort of "recorded" all messages to and from buyers and sellers, had bid ridiculously high for a rare video game item I was selling, thus winning the auction. Then, instead of paying, he threatened me right out of the gate (as the seller) with negative feedback (that I absolutely would NOT have deserved!) before I'd even had a chance to ask the butthead for the money he owed me ... and he ended up saying that because he didn't trust me, he would pay me half up front, and half after he got the item. I sent it out with tracking and the whole bit. I never got the second half of what he owed. This was all back when (if memory serves) buyers and sellers had to work out any details, on their own, via emails. If you had some lying jackass threaten you with undeserved negative feedback, it was like a gun pointed at your face: you had almost no way of proving that you were not at fault, as a seller, back then. I'm sure a lot of buyers had issues, from sellers who weren't totally up-and-up, back then, which made it even more difficult to "prove you were a good guy" way back when. I bring all that up to say this: other guys who were into that other hobby, all those years ago, had seen the ludicrous amount of money that guy had bid, for that item, and they were all worried that "now everyone is going to want that much for it" ... and when they heard what that butthead had done, and that what I ended up with was only half of his bid amount, that got a lot of guys re-thinking selling anything, on eBay. A lot of guys were selling items through other means, back then: bulletin boards or web forums, or the like. More or less like coming onto this board, and selling stuff directly to other fans of those hobby items.

I had other guys bid; win; not pay me a cent; and (again, this was all years ago now) threaten to give me undeserved toxic feedback, as the seller, if I didn't let them just decide "to work with them" in situations where they won, and then decided, no, I don't actually want that item, that you uploaded all kinds of pictures and text about ... I think I sold about thirty items, total, before I decided I had better ways to spend my time. Before eBay's improvements, in recent years, I wouldn't have even considered selling. I was getting rid of items I no longer wanted, and once that pile of items was gone, I gave up selling stuff on eBay, back then. This was all probably fifteen or more years ago -- back in what I think of as eBay's "Wild West" days.

However bad eBay is, now, it used to be (in my opinion) WAY worse! At least with the "new" system where all buyer and seller communications go through eBay's "hands" and are there to point to, it's a lot harder for dishonest types to "get away with it".

I guess I'm saying that it astounded (and disturbed) me that such people existed, back then. I guess they're still around?? It is sort of like, no matter what eBay may want to do, a crook is a crook is a crook ... and given enough time, they'll find some loophole to try to take advantage of people. 

It's mind-boggling (and disturbing) to see that some sellers are unscrupulous enough to be "selling" items that don't yet exist, or that aren't even available yet! That's sort of like a multi-month, interest-free loan. I'm sorry that happened to you, Starryeyes! I'm glad you got a refund, but wow ... what's a person's blood pressure readings worth, in dealing with sellers that are that dishonest?! Makes me glad I paid attention to my gut feelings, on a few items I talked myself out of buying, recently, for hobbies outside of this one. That saying about "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is not true" seems to apply?!

Anyway ... sorry for such a long post! 

[modelcarfan]

I can understand how you feel with this type of experience in old days.. I had sensed that something has not solidify the policy on selling and buying items on e bay back then... I recalled one about the same time you experienced problems. I did not sell much and only sold very few items... and then this time now days after my mother passed away, I sell items on e bay lately and luckily it has not happened yet. I guess the policy on that part has improved.

Yes, following your instincts and seeing how its processed does answer how it should be. I would not send an item if the item is bought half way and hold till next. I would want a full payment at once. I had to talk with the representative in e bay and explain the situation. They did their best to watch and follow up. I have not had much problems lately ( knocking the wood )

[wardster]

Feb 15, 2021 18:28:29 GMT -5 modelcarfan said:

I can understand how you feel with this type of experience in old days.. I had sensed that something has not solidify the policy on selling and buying items on e bay back then... I recalled one about the same time you experienced problems. I did not sell much and only sold very few items... and then this time now days after my mother passed away, I sell items on e bay lately and luckily it has not happened yet. I guess the policy on that part has improved.

Yes, following your instincts and seeing how its processed does answer how it should be. I would not send an item if the item is bought half way and hold till next. I would want a full payment at once. I had to talk with the representative in e bay and explain the situation. They did their best to watch and follow up. I have not had much problems lately ( knocking the wood )

In thinking back on when all that kind of thing had happened, it's probably closer to twenty years ago than "only" fifteen, but I guess the timing is neither here nor there. Anyway, when things "went right" on eBay, back then, it was SSSOOOOOO much easier than dealing with people via forums and the like. You could spend hours and hours jumping through some other person's various hoops, only to have them essentially say, after all of that, "Never mind: I've got a better offer / bigger sucker, who has more to trade" or some such BS. I swear, some people seemed to only be online to frustrate and torture their "trade partners" by dangling "Look what I have" in front of strangers ... and then, in the end, keeping it all to themselves.

So I guess, in a way, when Starryeyes said what he did, that was too much like the Bad Old Days for me not to comment!?

Back then, a lot of times it felt like someone maybe had some item, but wouldn't part with it ... and now, they don't actually have it, and are just going to tantalize people with the "idea of obtaining it". Sort of the flip side of that old coin, in a way?

>  I would not send an item if the item is bought
>  half way and hold till next. I would want a full
>  payment at once.

Back then, buyer protections and seller protections more or less didn't exist; at least not like they did, today. And so many people totally avoided anyone with even a single "strike" against them, that threats of undeserved negative feedback was keeping a lot of people from doing much of any steady business on eBay -- as a buyer or as a seller -- and until the folks at eBay got things in much better balance, I'm sure a lot of crazy-ish deals (that shouldn't have been that way, if both sides of a given trade were honest) went sideways on people, and one side or the other wanted BADLY to leave a warning for others. My memory on this might be rusty, but it seems like "bad trader" warnings, off of eBay, were common. It seems like a lot of deals never got feedback, either way, back then -- sort of "mutually assured destruction," if anyone gave undeserved negatives -- and eBay must have figured out more needed doing? The simple solution was "quit wanting it" ... and some of us did that, after enough bad experiences on eBay. So I hope eBay's current workers figure out what the ones from before, worked out? (That it was in their best interests to "stay involved" in any/all trades, until both sides had left positive feedback for the other.)

From my point of view: eBay improved, a lot, since the worst of the "Wild West Days" -- and these days, I'd generally take eBay over most "dealing with total strangers, over the internet," kinds of buying or selling situations. But it probably helps, too, that there isn't much I actually want, that I am forced to go to eBay to get? I probably buy more stuff from Amazon, in part because most of what I tend to buy is books and fairly common consumer items; not the rare items that eBay sells me, from time to time. If I can get an item from Amazon, I tend to do that. Their system lends itself to the stuff I generally want to buy: books, occasional wood working tools, and general consumer items. But when I use eBay, these days, it's way better than it once was. As a "buyer only" these days, it's fairly easy: I tend to look mainly for "buy it now" auctions, and I pay immediately ... and do all communications strictly through eBay's message system. Those few improvements made such a huge deal, in cutting frustrations way down! I thought eBay had the bugs all worked out? I'm sorry that's not always true!

[wardster]

When I saw this story, online, I immediately thought back on what StarryEyes had said, months ago.

finance.yahoo.com/news/prime-today-gone-tomorrow-chinese-235628244.html

News story:
"Prime today, gone tomorrow: Chinese products get pulled from Amazon"

It's a strange world that we live in, and it has every sign indicating it's going to keep heading that way.

[jcon]

Very true Wardster...