eBay Gambling

@f00l If it hadn’t been for the photos I’d never have risked it. It all looks good and it’s allegedly a US-based seller and there was no tricky language in the description so I decided it was worth trying. Gamestop wants $279 for the console alone so getting it complete in box with the pack-ins and extra game is worth the risk of having money tied up for a couple of weeks.

Besides, I’ve been there before, trying desperately to get reputation under your belt when nobody will take a risk on you. Even with my buying rep when I first went selling on eBay with high end Patagonia jackets and Maui Jim sunglasses (shifting overstock from a company I worked for) on eBay it was a fight to get buyers, I just didn’t have seller rep. If it works out, I will feel good having helped a new seller make their bones, if not, I get to crucify them with eBay support, I’ve done it before to far more established sellers who turned to the dark side, this would be no different.

@jbartus
Yeah I know getting seller rep can be a major pain. I started with little cheap stuff, until I have 10 or so. Then I started listing the expensive stuff.

But sometimes someone just wants to sell one item, and doesn’t want to go thru all that. I get it.

I think a few times I spend more than $100 on a seller with no feedback, because it felt legit, and because the pictures weren’t ripped off. And because Ebay will protect the buyer.

The most entertaining dispute I had was when I bought a used-g-shock. The seller had a bunch of them, and decent fb rep. The listing said GENUINE in big letters. When it showed up, it was clearly a fake, no question. I filed a dispute, and the seller took me to task - “G-Shocks are expensive, you can’t expect to get a real on at that price”, etc etc, and tried to argue with me that they had every right to sell fakes on ebay and list them as genuine.

And we had all these conversations thru the Ebay messaging system! So I called Ebay CS and got them to read thru the messages from the seller to me. They promptly closed the seller’s account. I did get a refund. The seller insisted I return the phony watch, and paid the postage, so I did. Perhaps the seller didn’t want me out in the world with the evidence.

@f00l Ah see the few times I’ve gotten counterfeits I flat-out refused to ship them back on the grounds that returning them to the seller will just empower them to rip someone else off. So far eBay has allowed me to retain the item every time. eBay buyer protection aint messing around.

@UncleVinny I have some inherited coins I need to sell. Is Ebay a good place to market them? Or would a local dealer be better?

@dhackle2000
Oh yeah. Heaven help the collector once you get on Ebay.

I have gone thru few binges.

@dhackle2000
You will prob get more $ on Ebay. A local dealer will be less trouble tho.

And on Ebay you have to deal with buyers and would-be thieves and all that, it can be a hassle.

If you are trying to sell anything of real value on Ebay, have a few long talks with someone who sells on Ebay all the time.

Legit buyers expect certain things in the listing, and certain behaviors from the seller, you want to know how to handle that. And you have to go to the trouble of packaging and shipping, and if need be, insuring. And hope no one opens the package in transit and steals the coin. (It matters how you package it. If someone thinks the package contains jewelry or coins, there is a far highly probability of the package being slit open in transit, I have received a few.

Also, bad buyers are a tiny percentage of the buyers on Ebay, but they exist, and hijacked accounts exist.

If you just want things to be easy and no trouble, sell to a local dealer or collector.

@dhackle2000 Ooh, I’m curious now. What kind of coins do you have?

/giphy coin-eye emoji

Try searching on ebay for other coins similar to what you want to sell, and see what prices they’re going for. Then do some math and figure out if it’s worth it to you to go through the hassle of listing them. Maybe try listing one or two of them and see if you are annoyed by the process or if you find it fun. Yes, you’d get less for them by going to a dealer, but your time is worth something, too!

@f00l I’m really glad to know I’m not the only one! I have maybe 300 little Harmony Kingdom figurines, all carefully boxed and stored. I don’t know what came over me, but they’re generally cool and witty. I guess some day I’m going to have to list them for cheap just to free up the storage space.

@magic_cave
I think the collecting bug is contagious or something.

Actually, realistically, it’s thinking of something that makes sense to buy on Ebay. Then going there. Then, while you are there…

Then there’s all that unique and vintage and collector stuff.

Lost! Sanity Is Lost!

/giphy lost

Sorry, I didn’t mean to post this twice!

@jbartus
I think we get it. Anyone who ever bought electronics from a zero FB eBay seller knows that feeling. : )

@RiotDemon I love that little frisson of excitement when I open something I’ve forgotten about.

@jbartus
Sellers can no longer give negative FB to buyers, so there is little incentive for them to hold back on FB as blackmail or similar.

As a buyer, I feel horrified w self if I forget to give prompt FB.

@f00l Why on earth can’t sellers identify shady buyers? That seems beyond stupid. Both buyers and sellers need to know about the dishonest folks out there.

There is a local shady seller of RV’s. He holds the keys to their RV hostage and forces they buyer to write the E-bay feedback in front of him (saw that one buyer had updated feedback and indicated that - I was not surprised to see that). The problem is that seller rips off the buyers because he hides problems, take a video with a working generator and then trades it out for a broken one, throws a jacket over a 3’ rip in a bed, etc. I once checked one out there for someone on a forum I am on as it was local to me. It was an, um, “interesting” experience… I was escorted off the dirt lot at shotgun point when I pointed out that the condition of the RV did not match the video or description, the odor of mold was overpowering, there were a number of leaks (I purposely went after a heavy rain just to see if there were leaks) not mentioned in the description…

@Kidsandliz
Sellers are supposed to identify shady buyers thru Ebay dispute and Ebay CS, I guess.

Way too many Ebay sellers were holding buyers hostage over FB back when sellers were allowed to give neg FB to buyers. For every buyer who deserved it, there were more sellers abusing it.

This was a while back, but I knew of one seller who had crates of big-name still-date-valid sports bars and was selling them cheaply by the crate. I bought some, he, and they, were fine.

When I went back for another box of them, things had changed. According to the inventory listings on Ebay, and according to his description copy, he still had an spare room full of these boxes of date-valid bars. But he had stopped shipping. Just stopped. And he would not communicate at all.

Buyers were, of course, giving him neg FB. And he was just automatically giving out neg FB to every buyer, whether the buyer had given him neg FB or no FB or pos FB.

Of course, this didn’t last long, Ebay shut him down and removed the spurious neg FB from buyers in this instance. I wondered if the guy had lost his job or was going thru a divorce, or something like that, and just blew up at the world.

But most FB-abusing sellers were more subtle, and not in the midst of some personal crisis - they just used FB as a nasty tool.

That RV lot you describe ought to be kicked off Ebay. Gad.

The thing about Ebay buyers is, most of the non-performing ones are either newbies, or just going thru a bad spot in their lives. Most of them will be decent customers in the end. A few of them are dedicated scammers, or infinite trouble-makers tho.

For some, Ebay is their source of “drama” and they love it. : (

@f00l they might not be able to give negative feedback, but they can still withhold it if you don’t rate them positively.

@jbartus
Withholding pos FB might have bothered me when I was a newbie. But now, what does one more pos FB mean? Once you have a lot …

Also, it seems like a reasonable option for the seller not to give FB until the transaction, including FB, is complete. Because what if probs turn up after FB is given?

But it’s prob a smarter move to give pos FB upon payment. It makes for nice goodwill, prob worth far more than what one might gain from withholding.

@magic_cave
I usually won’t buy on Ebay with seller scores of less that 98% or even 99% cutoff for FB. Exceptions - not much feedback, or else I got read it carefully. Or there is something I want enough to consider an exception.

Most heavy sellers on Ebay manage to maintain that.

On AMZ I will allow for lower than that, since most buyers won’t bother giving FB there. But I look at it, and it is a consideration.

@f00l As things go, I usually look for 99-98% FB, but over the years I’ve learned to sort through all those vague descriptions, hedge words, and nasty sellers. If they have a list of threats and warnings for buyers, I walk away from it. They’re going to be problematic, and life’s too short (and there are other sellers) to deal with them. It’s true, though, that eBay is far better for buyers since the company stopped the FB extortion, stopped allowing money orders and checks, and just overall leveled the field.

By the way, could I interest you in some delightful little Harmony Kingdom items?

@magic_cave
LIke I need something else to want.

You are being evil and you know you are, and you’re doing it on purpose.

@magic_cave Yeah before E-bay changed a few things it was riskier to buy. I had had uniformly good experiences and so decided to buy something more expensive. That particular purchase turned out to be a mistake. Lost nearly $300 on that and ebay refused to refund. Back then lost $1200 on something else antique (it was what they said it was, they just neglected to mention (and photoshopped out) all the squirrel damage - must have been stored in a garage or shed or something. Again ebay refused to refund (this was back when ebay owned paypal). I stopped buying expensive things after that on there and bought with my credit card so I’d have more protections (knowing back then if I used my credit card protections ebay would cancel my ebay and paypal accounts). Of course these days there are more buyer protections and so there is less risk from the buyer point of view.

@magic_cave
Am seeing a whole new side of you.

What do the pups think, having to share your love with manatees and other collectibles?

@f00l obviously they’re not fans which is why @magic_cave wants you to adopt their collection. You would be doing a public service to both man and dogkind!

@jbartus
In this instance, you are the better man for the job.

@f00l no way not me! I’ve got model trains and Beanie Babies out the wazoo, no room for beasties!

@magic_cave

http://www.harmonykingdom.com/PiecesSub/PieceInfo.asp?itemno=RW08PI

@jbartus You’ve pretty well nailed it. The only place to put the display case for the Harmony Kingdom beasties is the place where the two dog crates now go. Seems to me, though, that you could buy some of the HK collection to ride on the model trains and snuggle with the Beanies.

@f00l The Killer Poodles haven’t been exposed to the HK beasties yet. We have a very small house and had to put lots of stuff into “protective custody” in a storage facility. Although they turned one year old a couple of weeks ago, the KP’s are still wilder than I expected; it’s been 16 years since we had baby dogs around, and I’d forgotten what it was like. So these two are not yet allowed to be free-range dogs in the house, where they would find wonderful human stuff to chew on and boxes of Kleenex to eat. Yes, eat. The smaller one heads directly for the Kleenex boxes when she comes in, and the larger one is right behind her. Consequently, all they really share their home with are blankies, cow foots (eg, cow hooves for chewing on), and two extra crate pads that stay on their favorite living room napping chair.

How about a nice little HK figurine of, say, cats? Or penguins?

@PlacidPenguin Aren’t those adorable? I think I have that one; I used to chuckle every time I saw the kitten. And Peter Calvesbert is my favorite of all their artists.

@magic_cave @jbartus

@f00l needs some friends for her (rubber) ducks.

@PlacidPenguin
@f00l has no place to put what @f00l already owns.

Why can’t I get a Robot Curator and a Robot Duster? That’s why I need.

And then a Robot-thing that does all the stuff I don’t want to do, as a followup acquisition.

@f00l

@PlacidPenguin has a solution to the problem presented by @f00l, but @PlacidPenguin has no way of executing said plan.

@PlacidPenguin
Please start with a Dusting Robot. Let’s go from there.

@f00l

Why would you want a robot which applies dust everywhere?

(I’ll have to check the get stuff for mehmbers and mehmployees budget. There’s a bit of a backlog, and I should probably deal with it before adding on new things…)

@PlacidPenguin said:

Why would you want a robot which applies dust everywhere?

Cute. Ok, since you don’t volunteer to get me a proper Dusting Robot, i demand a robot that removes all the dust here and dumps it at your place.

@f00l

No major objections to that.

Except…

Given what I know, your requirements don’t make sense…

Also, who would ensure that the robot returns to me?

@jbartus awesome

@jbartus cool!

@jbartus Congratulations! I’m glad to hear your optimism was on target for you.

@trisk that’s something I’ve noticed in that past that I’m not super happy with eBay about. When they identify a problem account and lock it down they should at the very least automatically notify buyers who recently transacted with them and make the refund process smooth. There should be logs somewhere that can help them identify how long ago the issue started, it should be easy. Some users don’t know enough to know they got screwed.

For example, one time a license of MS Office I purchased on eBay (last time I did that!) came in and had a very ‘legitimate appearing’ box and everything but the install instructions blatantly instructed the user to use a known crack to force activation. Obviously very much non-kosher. I knew what I was looking at as an IT professional but others? People who can barely turn their computer on never mind comprehend the implications of what they are being told to do? No way.