Quote:
Originally Posted by edtiques
I bought a lot of pins on ebay for $39.00 and they're worth probably $300. Well, the seller canceled the sale and refunded my money. He told me he "misplaced" the pins. That didn't sit well with me. I looked at his feedback and saw there was someone who left neutral feedback because he canceled that guys auction too within the last month. I looked at the item he canceled and it was a zippo lighter worth probably $120 or so but sold for $45 in an auction. I looked at his other sales and he was getting top dollar for everything. He knows the values, he's an antique dealer. He wanted to get full value for his items. He knew those two items went too cheaply, so he canceled the sales. That's a violation of ebay's selling policies. It's also just a very weaselly thing to do.
I reported him. People who do that shouldn't be selling on Ebay.
This is the message I sent him:
I don't believe for a second that you "misplaced" those pins. You feel like you didn't get enough for them so you cancelled the sale. Maybe you should start them at a price that's more acceptable to you to begin with, that way you don't have to cancel sales. Not that hard to figure out. Personally, my reputation is worth more than a few dollars so I would honor the sale even though I know I could get more for the item. But, that's me and apparently not you. I'm guessing you also "misplaced" that Vietnam lighter that you cancelled the sale on earlier this month too. You've earned the negative feedback I'm about to leave. This is my first time leaving negative feedback after thousands of transactions. Learn to do better.
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Ouch. This story really hurts. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous dealers on eBay, however, I don't really think that this is the norm.
I buy and mostly sell on eBay, and I love the platform. I make about 100 sales each week on eBay and 70% of the sales are from repeat customers. I can see where it is difficult to find great buys on eBay. The search engine is not easy to set up to look for deals, and the prices are mostly at full retail. So, if you are looking for bargains on prewar cards, eBay is probably not for you. But there are a lot of collectors, that don't have the access to card shows. Or they don't want to buy large lots of cards and then try to sell the cards that they don't want. They are willing to pay more to get exactly what the card they want. These are the customers that eBay is catering to. We would have a lot less people enjoying the hobby if eBay was not available.
As a seller, it does take some effort to create listings and deal with the occasional problem buyer, but for the most part if you treat the customer the way that you would like to be treated, you don't have many problems. Overall, eBay's fees are reasonable for what you get. They do allow you to display thousands of items in your store for a small monthly fee. You are only charged the final value fee if the item sells. The fee structure does make it difficult to discount off the listed price when you take in the actual cost of selling the item. I don't sell at shows, but I'm sure that the vendors at shows have to deal with the costs of travel and setting up a booth. In any case, people always complain about the high cost of cards at shows, too.
In my opinion, although eBay is not perfect, I'm happy that eBay is here, and doing well.
Best regards,
Joe