Ebay Feedback - failing system

[ikonia]

Hello all,

I thought I'd sound a few people out on the ebay feedback system, I've seen a few threads on this in the paste.

today I fell foul to my first genuine ebay time waster.

I needed an "ok" laptop for a project I'm working on. I found what seemed to be an "ok" laptop at a pretty good price. Now for the problems, the seller had a feedback of "1" but his other sale was for a compaq IPAQ at couple of hundered quid, and that buyer had good feedback. I took a gamble and jumped in and won. I paid for the item straight away with paypal.

I then recived this mail

Hi. Thank you for your payment. I feel very silly : I have forgotten my paypal password, and I must have missed a letter in the clues I gave, as paypal won't re-set it. I think you can cancel your payment, as I haven't been able to accept it. Could you send it to nigel.turner67@ntlworld.com instead ? (my friend's address).
Thank you.
Ben

At this time it was a little too late as I'd already made the payment straight after the auction.

The next mail was

hi again. IGNORE MY LAST EMAIL !! I'VE MANAGED TO REMEMBER THE PASSWORD !

so all was well....

until

I am still having problems with my paypal, as the bank account wasn't verified. It worked well with my last sale, so I don't understand why it's a problem all of a sudden. Apparently it takes 4 or 5 days to sort it, as I have to wait for them to put money in my account and then I have to tell them how much the amount is. I am going on holiday at the end of the week, so nothing can be sorted until I get back late august. I'm sure you don't want to wait all this time, so if you still want the laptop, try getting your money back from paypal, and send it to nigel.turner67@ntlworld.com It should work then. Let me know if this is ok with you.
Regards

of course I couldn't get the money back as he'd already accepted it, however I didn't think this a problem as my paypal account was verified with a good score and my ebay feedback is good (100) so I suggested as he could see the money but couldn't get his hands on it for 4 days (not my fault) he ship the laptop as he would afterall have my home address, and could see the money in his account, and knew I couldn't with draw it.

next....

Hi
I am trying to issue a refund ; I can't see how at the moment, but I will contact paypal to tell them. They have locked my account, I think it's because it took me several attempts to remember the password. I haven't accepted the payment, it was accepted automatically. The problems occured when I tried transferring it. I can't access the money at all, so you will understand I will wait until the transfer is in process to send the laptop. I have seen a link to "cancel payment" ; try using that one ?
Doing my best to sort it, but as I said, I am limited in time, so might be best to cancel payment with paypal for now.

at this point my suspicions where altered......if he could login why was his account locked ? so I opened a dispute with paypal to freeze the transaction while we sorted this out. I informed the user of this. I also requested he gave me a phone call so we could sort this out.

his reply.....

I'm at work right now, but I will try and ring tonight. I got an email from paypal saying you had filed a dispute. I had emailed them about issuing you a refund as well, so you will get your money back. There has been a change of plans, and I'm going tomorrow, so filing the claim was the right thing to do. What I will ask of you though, is that I will file a claim to get my ebay fees back, saying it was mutual decision so that you don't get a warning for not paying. I will relist the laptop when I get back. I'm sorry about all this : it is really putting me off using paypal again !!!

I then queried why all of a sudden he was going on holiday "now" instead of the end of the week ? and explained that I would not be agreeing to an mutual agreement as this wasn't mutual, less then 2 hours after the auciton end you are mailing me with "failing to deliver", mutual is where we both agree, your forcing this on me, and I don't see why you shouldn't have to pay the ebay fees as its you his withdrawing the item. I also informed him that he couldn't send me non-payment warnings as ebay and paypal both had it on record I paid 6 minutes after the auction end so would not entertain that, so please don't try to put me in a position of "blame"

At this point my suspicions are very high, so I lodged a complain with ebay and got the users contact details....surprise surpise his phone number didn't exist something like 02345678910

his next response was lip service

The only thing I can suggest if you absolutely want that laptop, is that when I relist it, you contact me and I will end the auction early and you pay me the amount of the 1st auction. This is the best I can do for now. I will try and ring tonight, this is very bad timing, I wasn't planning to go away until the end of the week but something has come up and I haven't got the time to deal with all this. I have no access to computers while away, so can't do much during that time. I can understand you being unhappy with all this : I'm unhappy too : I needed that money for my holiday too ! Paypal is the only one to blame here.

I again pointed out this was not paypals fault, this was his fault for not being ready to sell it, and that this sort of weak attitude towards honouring the sale would not help. I then offered to go and get the laptop and lose the shipping fees and offered to give him a post dated cheque for his return date so that IF the paypal money went astray (impossible) he would have my cheque that he could cash and dispute with the bank, as he was only about 1.5 hours away from me.

the next mail finished it for me

Paypal has put a hold on that payment : I won't be able to get the money. I am sorry, but I am not prepared to let the laptop go when I can't get the money. The address on ebay is still my old address as I had to put the address that matched my credit card statement, and I haven't changed it yet. So I'm nowhere near Southampton anyway.

this just stinks of timewaster/con

I've an open distpute with paypal and ebay which I'm sure will be resolved in my favour (hence me not agreeing the mutual agreement) however what i'd really like to do is leave negative feedback so that others don't fall into this timewasters trap, however he will just return the favour....because he will despite the fact that I've been really good and tried to be helpful on this.

what is the point of the ebay feedback system is people are worried too much about their own record to leave negative feedback for timewasters/cons

surly ebay should moderate this in a better way. eg: is a dispute falls your way then the loser should not be allowed to leave feedback, as he's obviously going to be bitter...or you can explain to ebay and they'll remove your feedback but leave his. Something like that

the feeback system is failing.

[Nick]

You can respond to any feedback left to you, so why not put the URL of this thread in the reply, then everyone can see the whole story...

I've had to negative feedbacks from people, one was someone moaning that I took a two weeks to post an item to them... of course they neglected to mention that they piad me by cheque, took a week to send the damn check and also agreed that I would not post until the cheque had cleared... but they still negged me... So I just negged them back.

If you've got a good rep already, losing a couple of percent isn't a big deal.

[ikonia]

its a fair comment, and using the link to this thread is a super suggesiton.

its more a question of principal, ebay is a proffitable company and doesn't have to have "phone support" workers, so an "admin" team who moderate the feedback in the same way a forum is moderated would make it much more effective.

[Marcos]

Losing 100% is really annoying though

[ikonia]

I didn't have %100 as there was one auction I just forgot about, but it was more about the principal that you know that a guy can send you a mail saying "not paying, or not shipping this item tough luck" you leave negative feedback, as you should and he can just respond with "tried to sort this guys a looser" and its on the system

it only takes a few of these and even with 100 positive feedback reports a couple can really cause suspcion for buyers/sellers

[Apex]

Originally Posted by Nick

You can respond to any feedback left to you, so why not put the URL of this thread in the reply, then everyone can see the whole story...

I've had to negative feedbacks from people, one was someone moaning that I took a two weeks to post an item to them... of course they neglected to mention that they piad me by cheque, took a week to send the damn check and also agreed that I would not post until the cheque had cleared... but they still negged me... So I just negged them back.

If you've got a good rep already, losing a couple of percent isn't a big deal.

You can not put urls into it....it's consided breaking the ebay rules, i fell foul of this last year.

[Stringent]

It would be really annoying loosing 100% feedback to have a negative mark put on your record, I guess its pride. However, as a general rule I try not to buy anything from those with less than 10 positive results, and have a look at what they have sold and who too. Granted its not fool proof.

[jon bda]

Originally Posted by Stringent

It would be really annoying loosing 100% feedback to have a negative mark put on your record, I guess its pride. However, as a general rule I try not to buy anything from those with less than 10 positive results, and have a look at what they have sold and who too. Granted its not fool proof.

I lost my 100% feedback (over 200 comments) a few weeks ago...some muppet won an auction for a T-Mobile simcard, £2.49p the total was. Anyway, it went on for weeks, basically he was sending a cheque, then he'd forgot to and would get his mate to send Paypal, then the cheque was in the post, all the time asking if i'd had his address to send the sim to etc. One day i log in and notice i've got this...

Did not state that I could not use paypal. Did not send address for a cheque to

...which sort of miffed me a little. Still, it only knocked me down to 99.5%, my comment knocked him down quite a bit as he had low feedback anyway, and had already had one neg mutually withdrawn. Muppet!.

[Rave]

Any sensible buyer knows that keeping 100% feedback is almost impossible with all the muppets on ebay now. I always check out sellers recent feedback (and check to see that the listings look similar to make sure their account hasn't been hijacked). If they've got good overall feedback but a couple of negs from obvious noobs/idiots I don't worry about it.

[ikonia]

well this problem was been resolved for me, as the user has been removed/banned from ebay, and the person who left him positive feedback has also been banned/removed from ebay, so ebay obviously think this is a scam. Ebay sent me a mail saying "don't pay and if you have contact your money issuer" which was a bit late as I had already paid, but also handy that the issuer was paypal and they are part of ebay. I phoned paypal to inform them off this as surly this doesn't look good for him in the paypal dispute, and I was told by paypal that they do not look at ebay auctions/results/feedback/anything when looking at a dispute they just look at the facts in paypals log, which sort of surpised me a little as it removes the point of ebay/paypal being connected.

The interesting thing was I looked at the paypal dispute and the seller had actually responded to me opening the dispute today, and his comment to my complaint (which basiclly states the above complain in my first post) was this "None"

the status of the dispute is now "reviewing sellers comments" surly this is an open and shut case, I opened a dispute, paypal/ebay have logged the transactions and the email exchanges, I have 100 positive feedback, he's been banned from ebay, his comment to me complaining about him withdrawing the laptop from sale and trying to do a runner with the money was "none" and yet paypal are still "reviewing it"