talkmagic.co.uk

'Let the buyer beware!

I just thought I'd share with you my little problem regarding buying from ebay, something that we have all probably done or will do in the magic community.

I decided to buy a pool table for my local nick last May and eventually one came up that fitted the bill (for the Bill) and so I bid and won. The price was in the low hundreds and the seller had a high positive feedback rating, all of which read well.

Having paid, I found that I received no furthed communication and after trying to contact the seller for a couple of weeks realised that this was looking dodgy. I contacted ebay who told me to wait even longer and to effectively resolve the thing myself. After a period had passed ebay eventually, after much prompting, said that I could claim from their 'insurance' which after their admin costs would see me receive just over £100 back. I sent paperwork back and was asked for it again. I asked for progress reports and was asked for the same paperwork. I asked for confirmation of receipt and was told that there was a backlog and that this was not possible. The majority of the responses appeared to come from automated systems purporting to be 'live' people.

Anyway, the upshot after me faxing documents and asking for progress reports time and time again was that ebay's claims department, under the guise of some apparently 'all is in ordnung' moronic individual by the name of Sieffert, wrote on the 22nd of December to say that as they didn't have the paperwork, the claim had been closed!

I wrote back outlining the fact that I had prooof of recipt from fax transmission and that my communications prompted 'backlog' responses and received a mail basically saying 'get stuffed!'.

Just a cautionary note - I have used ebay for over seven years and this is the first time that I have been turned over. people are dodgy, that's life. What annoys me is that reading around, I am not the first to be treated like this and the organisation itself appears to be either incompetent or untrustworthy in this respect.

Take care when you use ebay!

My sister's friend bought a phone from ebay. They said it had just a little scratch on the screen, but when it arrived it was badly damaged. They wouldn't let her get her money back and she had spent about £200 on it.

So she was stuck with a broken phone and an empty wallet.

Maybe just don't buy expensive things over ebay?

Personally I've never bought anything from ebay, but I'm considering buying a ring for De'ring, so maybe I should go elsewhere?

How did you pay?

If you use a credit card via Paypal you can claim the money back from your credit card company.
Just phone them up and tell them what's happened.

I did that a while ago and was refunded 100%, unlike Ebay's "refund" system.

I unfortunately fell foul of ebay's 'refund' system.

I would have been happier having lost the money but having been made to jump hurdles and been the butt of automated 'pretend' humans I feel a bit niggled.

The attitude of the organisation appears to suck, which is a shame as I have been a user for nearly eight years.

V

for an item the size of a pool table, which you have had to collect anyway, i would have been tempted to pay COD. surprising to hear you have had problems as i have always been very satisfied. sorry to hear of your story.

Unfortunately this sort of customer 'care' is symptomatic of a monopoly. If only ebay had some serious competition (or any competition at all!) they might start looking after their customers better. They should be ashamed!

Sorry to hear of the hassle you have had.

saxmad wrote:How did you pay?

If you use a credit card via Paypal you can claim the money back from your credit card company.

You don't need only to pay by credit card via Paypal and claim back from the credit card company - other Paypal payments are also covered by Paypal itself. I bought a PDA from eBay and its screen was slightly damaged. The seller stalled for ages - I think for so long that eBay's refund system was out of date. Anyway, he then simply 'disappeared'. I went through Paypal's system and got all the money back, incl. postage. Also, as the seller had vanished, I got to keep the PDA too (which was imperfect but still perfectly useable) - I gave it to my girlfriend. Bargain.

Can't we have a "name and shame" section dedicated to those people out there who are intent on ripping us good people outta our hard earned cash

Maybe just a sticky, where people can post what kinda problems they've had, when and with whom, would be some kinda help

E-Bay don't give a damn about buyers, its the sellers who pay the fees so they don't want to upset the flow of money.
There was a guy who had been selling CD's and DVD's and had a large positive feedback rating, but he decided to just stop sending stuff out and kept advertising it. His feedback was all coming back negative, after a certain date every single person got shafted and he was just collecting the money.
Because it was small money purchases e-Bay's or Paypal's insurance were useless, but hundreds of people complained to e-Bay, and I'm talking about 40 or 50 people a day, and they did nothing. This was allowed to continue for two months!
Now I do my best to buy of people with a 98% feedback in the 1000's at least and look out for the Paypal insurance sign and only pay by paypal. I must say also that I have noticed a slight change in Paypals attitude since they are now owned by e-Bay!

StevieJ wrote:Because it was small money purchases e-Bay's or Paypal's insurance were useless

Paypal deduct £15 from claims.
Ebay probably do something similar.
So for small claims it isn't worth it.

But your credit card company deduct nothing.
I claimed back £7 from Barclaycard for one purchase that was never delivered.

saxmad wrote:

StevieJ wrote:Paypal deduct £15 from claims.

Is this new? My PDA problem was, oh, around six months ago, I think. Paypal didn't deduct anything, I got every penny back.

Paypal have a processing cost of $25 or £15, so if the claim is under or near that its not worth it

Sexton Blake wrote:

saxmad wrote:

StevieJ wrote:Paypal deduct £15 from claims.

Is this new? My PDA problem was, oh, around six months ago, I think. Paypal didn't deduct anything, I got every penny back.

It's been around for a while.
Don't know why you got lucky, maybe the rules are more complex than I thought.

Yorkshire Pudding wrote:Unfortunately this sort of customer 'care' is symptomatic of a monopoly. If only ebay had some serious competition (or any competition at all!) they might start looking after their customers better. They should be ashamed!

Sorry to hear of the hassle you have had.

I've heard rumors lately that Google has an auction system in the works. This may force eBay to work on their customer care.

I would also keep an eye out for Amazon, we got totally ripped off by them this year. Quite a few items never arrived, arrived very late after spending lots on shipping, were damaged or missing pieces, etc.

I'm getting rather fed up of doing business online, and fear that if online dealers don't start spending more time on customer care (just because they don't *SEE* the customer they seem to think customers don't matter) we'll see a serious decline of the amount of business done online.

I found Paypal to be as much use as ebay when it comes to customer service. They found the claim in my favour and awarded me less than half of what I paid but then said that I would only be paid if they could get the funds off the seller which they never did.

They're all thieves in their own way