Someone sounds annoyed with ebay 🙂

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fox-36-R-Talas-15-hours-of-used-/221319540179?pt=US_Forks&hash=item3387ac2dd3

I liked this line after his Rant:

I am a former Rocky Mountain Rep btw. This is why i have most of these jewels still unused.

Jewels? Nice…

Kind of makes me think I could go a long way in the cycle business as I’m almost certainly more literate and not as prone to adding ebay-hate rants to my ebay listings…

A mate of mine told me his Paypal account was frozen at random and it took a while for them to release the funds.

Slippery eels them e-Bay folk. I’d not sell anything of value on there if I could help it. The repeated gouging for fees is ridiculous now.

The repeated gouging for fees is ridiculous now.

This. I avoid eBay if at all possible these days, the fees are pretty ridiculous now.

Sounds like this seller should just ditch ebay and sell his stuff on pinkbike or craigslist (gumtree for ‘mericans). Ebay will argue that this practice is for the fraudulent sellers who sell just one or two mobiles or other physically-small but expensive objects: proof of delivery is really just proof if delivery of a box that seems to weigh as much as it should. Hence holding funds until buyer posts positive feedback. However this in turn makes it easy for someone to make multiple buyer accounts with ebay and paypal and scam sellers by claiming item was lost, broken or just a couple of bags of sugar in a fork box. And then getting a free whatever-it-is, or reselling it under a different ebay account.

However, all all ebay/paypal’s (it is a complete joke that they claim to be two separate entities: haven’t been so for 10 years!) policy changes and fee revisions in recent years have either favoured established businesses selling high volumes as buy-it-now (Amazon, anyone?) or made it harder for the little folk. They also do little or nothing to combat ‘drop-shipping’ using stolen credit card details because the loss is the credit card company and/or the retailer the fraudulent seller uses: ebay is just by far the easiest platform to use for this and they still get their fees/commission so have no interest in stopping this.

On the other hand, if you are woollyhatshop or leisure lakes selling on ebay, its no skin off your nose to have to wait a few days for individual payments to clear (in fact i wouldn’t be surprised if ebay don’t bother with this for their ‘power sellers’

Ebay loves to milk the ‘broken laser pointer’ story, but really that is the last thing they want to be: the real money is in being like amazon or tescodirect and being a high-comission easy to search platform for shops and sellers that already exist but don’t have the profile or reputation of giant internet sellers.

Hence holding funds until buyer posts positive feedback

Ebay hold funds until the buyer posts positive feedback?

Are ebay withholding payments until delivery now? Is this now UK ebay practice?

Ebay hold funds until the buyer posts positive feedback?

I’ve had this in the past – it does mean that until the Buyer posts feedback you don’t get your money… I put it down to a dispute I’d had a couple of months before with a Seller, where I paid for a seatpost and an empty/ripped bag turned up…

I had this happen to me, selling forks too as it happens.

Apparently this is to avoid the scenario as above so if you you do an ‘unusual’ sale, e.g. high value after mostly low value items, despite good feedback, then money is held. It should be held until the item is marked as received or a time period elapses (30 days I think).

However, despite both of those things happening, no money, so I called paypal who sorted it out in a few minutes.

This plus the fees would put be me off ebay if it wasn’t for the fact that for some reason, if you are selling forks, they go for way over the odds on ebay compared to e.g. here.

I has this happen selling a complete bike a couple of years ago. I refunded the seller and cancelled the transaction.

There was no way I was going to send a bike on the off chance that Ebay/Paypal might be good enough to let me have my funds.

I pretty much only use Ebay now for collection only items with cash payment.

I had the same problem when I started selling on eBay,they would withhold funds until the positive feedback was received,I tried to mention this in the description and eBay wouldn’t let me complete the sales page because I had mentioned it so I don’t know how he has got away with ranting like that especially swearing.
I rang eBay up and had a rant with some guy as I had sold a hifi for £70 and I knew the woman had received it because I messaged her as soon as I knew she received it and asked her to leave feedback and she never did so I was left out of pocket of nearly a month.
I use eBay for buying and gumtree and freeads for selling,I don’t have any money in my paypal acc anymore as I’ve heard they freeze accounts at random also.

Hmm, didn’t know this about ebay.

I think I’ll continue to sell low value stuff quite happily on ebay. It has quite a high profile and seemingly valueless things can fetch a bit of money. Not so much a problem if they decide to hold up a tenner for 30 days, either.

High value stuff, think I’ll avoid, unless its a collection job.