Ebay at it again!

I don't think I would offer any discount if I was sure the buyer was acting fraudulently. I do negotiate though when I think the buyer genuinely isn't happy, even when I think my description was reasonable, and sometimes even when the buyer hasn't actually asked for anything. Good feedback is worth the cost.

My feedback was over 900 just on the selling side with 100% feedback and I don't think my description was reasonable .. I know it was more than.
Unfortunately while there are people that will try to protect their feedback at all costs then buyer will continue to try and scare sellers into giving a discount when it is not warranted.

A practical piece of advice I have for eBay newcomers and currently-occasional sellers is to sell a good number of small items in order to get more feedback.

This will bump up your feedback score so that your DSR will be less affected by any one individual leaving you only 1/5. Then your service really is bad if your average drops below 4.5/5.

Here is link to feedback extortion

Plus

Feedback removal: We’ll remove Feedback under the following exceptional circumstances:

It breaches specific policies

It’s left by a user who is later suspended

It’s left by a buyer who fails to respond to an Unpaid Item Notice and you file an Unpaid Item strike.

Surely it would come under one of these,especially if you sent unpaid strike complaint .

Roy

Must say in over 700 sales/purchases i have never had this happen.

Ah now you see I thought that on another occasion but note it says IF A BUYER FAILS TO RESPOND TO A UNPAID NOTICE.
When you send the unpaid notice all the buyer has to do is type anything, that is counted as a reply and then he can leave negative feedback with no come backs.

You have highlighted a real problem.

If I sell a large heavy photo book, how can I send it for Free (Photography>Books etc,) or for £4.75 (Books etc.>Antiquarian maybe) when the real cost might be over £6.50?

Sadly, the only answer is that the price has to go up and overseas cistomers pay over the odds, because you can charge the proper rate for overseas sales.

Also, not being allowed to leave negative feedback for a buyer is a bit one-sided, but fortunately for the sort of things I sell I have mostly mature buyers who are not irresponsible. Mostly.

It's not perfect, but we get to live with it.

Overseas customers don't have to pay over the odds.

Lets take an example of £3 for your actual UK p&p, and £7 for your actual overseas p&p. You can simply charge £0 for UK p&p and £4 for overseas p&p with the remaninig £3 going on the item price if you wish.

I think that might explain my good experience as well. If I was selling something like mobile phones then I'd expect a lot of dodgy goings on!

The ink jet refill set has gone up at £4.50, that covers the postage and insertion fee, I'll see who is interested, if anybody!

The smart media card has gone from £10 to £11 to cover postage, that also had to have free postage!

It seems from this thread that I've opened a can of worms (again), what can we, as users do about restrictive rules from ebay?

It's no good having a free insertion for £0.99 or less start items if you can't cover postage!

Have ebay shot themselves in the foot with this?

I agree. I don't think I phrased my comment very well on this occasion!

I am wondering if Ebay are going to try and convert their business to BIN items only, a bit like Amazon. Their fees are half the price if you do it that way rather than an auction and they have reduced the insertion fee to only 40p on a BIN sale where it used to cost a fortune.

I hope not Mike, it's quite exciting when an auction takes off!

Every sold anything for a huge amount that's taken you by surprise?

I guess the problem is 'work-roundable', but it's annoying that yet again sensible people are being inconvenienced because of a gullible clueless minority who are too inept to take P&P charges into consideration when they bid!

Yes, a chaise longue we couldn't get charity shops to collect.

No, my SMC-M 40mm went for a measly £40, including carraige. The ones before and after were £20 up on that!

Win some loose some!

I still think the postage thing is getting stupid.

And conversely, absolute bargains are possible with an auction. The new trend seems to be to list something for a huge BIN amount, and just keep relisting it until someone 'bites'. This isn't great news for buyers though.

Lobby our MPs to setup an independent regulator and competition authority for the online auctions industries. OfBay!