travisstoliker.com

It amazes me that E-bay can continue to get worse. (look at the stock price) I had a shitty experience with a lying user when I sold my jet-ski and now with the mixer I sold on E-bay last week. I’ve sold over 20 items in the past 4 years and have received 100% positive feedback. In the past I sold the item, the buyer pays through paypal w/in 24 hours, the money is deposited into my account and I use the money to pay for shipping the product out. After receiving the payment quickly, I leave the buyer positive feedback. After he receives my awesome product, he leaves me positive feedback. All are happy.

That is not how it works anymore.

For some reason after receiving the money, paypal (also an ebay company) said they were “holding it” for 21 days. It said if I uploaded tracking information for the package, and after it was confirmed delivered, I would be eligible to have the funds released.

This “hold” sucks. I have to pay for shipping the product out of my own pocket now, and how do I know if the money is ever going to arrive? I’m shipping out a valuable product, to someone I don’t know, without any money in hand, and paying for shipping myself. It’s bullshit.

So after shipping out the product I upload the tracking information but still haven’t received the money, even though the buyers already received it! Now they are saying that I have to wait a few more days and hope that the buyer liked my product.

The problem is, as I stated clearly in my e-Bay posting, I haven’t used the mixing board in several years and I sold it it “as is” - “best for parts”. What if this dude claims that it’s broken now? There’s no way I’m going to get the money, even though he bought it KNOWING that would be a possibility.

Ebay has also removed the ability for me to leave feedback on a buyer. This buyer didn’t pay within the 24 time period and I can’t leave any feedback about it… Stupid.

I had to put in a ticket to paypal to ask about the hold on my account. They sent me back an auto-response email w/out addressing my question. Horrible customer service.

The reason my account gets a “hold” now, according to their customer service is: “Have received fewer than 20 Detailed Seller Ratings in 12 months” —- I suppose I understand the security risk, maybe? However, what is the marketing affect of this? This means that people that haven’t sold something on E-bay in a year but want to come back and use it (maybe they were using Craigslist, or Facebook Market Place, or classifieds, etc) they will be put through additional hoops, have their money withheld, and essentially be treated as a security threat. This is not how you should treat returning customers with a history of positive reviews, profit for the company and verified bank accounts.

Marketing lesson #1. You should make it easy for a customer to return.