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Posted By: Joann

I buy quite a bit on Amazon.com, and last month had my first genuine problem with one of their third-party sellers. After five weeks of fruitless email exchanges, I finally complained to Amazon. Amazon - not the seller, but Amazon itself - processed a credit within 24 hours. They refunded me so quickly that they clearly hadn't had time to investigate. They just refunded me outright, and now they are taking it up with the seller.

Will ebay do that? No. Heck no. Think amazon.com would respond to complaints about one of their sellers selling reprints, alterations, and otherwise engaging in fraud? Yeah. I think they would, and quickly too.

So how does ebay think they get to be a fixed seller company without providing one of the most very, very basic services of that kind of company - customer support? They think they get the fixed seller advantages while being able to retain their traditional "hey we're just an uninvolved forum provider" posture? It feels like they haven't thought this through very well.

J