eBay is Serious Business

[CancelMyService]

So I wanted to get a copy of Tetris for my wife, who's a big fan. Problem is, the GameCube version is out of print. No worries, I turn to where everyone goes for crap they can't get anywhere else: eBay!


I find someone selling a copy for a price slightly below the legal standing for larceny, and placed an order. Now keep in mind this person was in Ohio and I'm in PA. It's important later. The deal was done on 2/16 and I await my purchase. This wasn't my first eBay rodeo (been a member for over 5 years) and this seller had a rating over 4000 so I figure we're all good.

Two weeks later, nothing. I send a message via the eBay system and get no reply. I open a claim with PayPal, not wanting to waste any more time with this. Immediately she responds to the claim by stating she shipped on 2/18 (by USPS First Class, per the item listing). I asked if she had a tracking number, she said she did and would send it to me the next day. Well of course nothing else was heard, so I escalated it further. PayPal gave her until yesterday (3/15) to respond. She ignored that too, and surprisingly I got my money back when the claim was closed out in my favor.

Now seeing as she flat out lied to me, I left negative feedback on the item. This sent her into a fury, and she demanded I retract my feedback or she would sic her lawyer on me. She also decided to leave negative feedback against me which would be the first time in over 5 years anyone has done so. I don't have the thousands of ratings she has, so that one negative has a bigger impact on me than mine had on her.

Two things happened at this point:
1. I checked her feedback history, and she had nearly 40 negatives to go with all those positives. Every one was followed by righteous fury from her and ended in the feedback being removed by "mutual agreement", ie she bullied them with legal threats until they did.
2. I became officially sick of her shit.


I told her that she could go ahead and follow through on her legal threat (she already made a request for my contact info) since any lawyer worth their law degree would not take her case.


That lead to this wonderful reply from her:

He is my business attorney and he is on salary so he kind of has to do what I ask him to do.

His name is Michael Anthony, by the way, and he is a well known Columbus business attorney.

I do not have a tracking number as I did not purchase delivery confirmation on the package. I DO have the postal receipt as proof though.

Did you stop to think perhaps it was lost in transit or the post office had made a mistake?

No, you obviously did not.

I will be glad to show you the receipt if you like.

I communicated with you all along and I CHOSE to refund you in full. I did not have to do that but I believed you that you did not receive the item and chose to refund you

All the hallmarks of the classic SC: legal threats, flat out lies (she never responded to me or Paypal), and now she's saying she doesn't have a tracking number after all.

So I responded the way we all wish we could to SCs:

Michael Anthony? I wondered what he was up to after Van Halen canceled their tour. I'm sure he is a very well known member of the legal community.

Seriously though, I never heard anything from you until I opened the PayPal claim. You have no proof that you sent, your listing said it would be shipped by First Class mail and I know from experience it shouldn't take longer than a week tops to ship from Columbus to Pittsburgh. I gave you two weeks just to take the slowness of USPS into account. You never replied to PayPal and they refunded the money. You never replied until the claim was filed and now you're only replying because the claim was closed. Where were you for two weeks while they were waiting for your response? Where was the esteemed Mr. Anthony? Now you're leaving retalitory negative feedback and making legal threats. You obviously never sent and I got my money back so, with all due respect piss off.

Not exactly the most professional response, I'll admit that, but this nutter is trying to smear me to anyone who would want to buy/sell from me in the future. As a wise man once said, Homey don't play that.

[marasbaras]

There was an episode of the People's Court about this kind of thing. The seller said "but, I dropped it in the mail, not my fault it didn't arrive."

The judge thought otherwise.

[CancelMyService]

Generally speaking, no tracking number = seller loses since they can't prove anything was ever sent.

If she wants to play Legal Threats: The Home Game, I'm up for it.

[k386trl]

Wow, shes definitely crazy. Take the time to petition Ebay to remove the neg. They'll remove it if you show its a retaliatory negative, especially with the new buyer cen't get a negative rules.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Ha ha! Nice response!

Sellers like her are the reason honest sellers like me no longer do business on ebay. Ebay is enacting new policies that will make it impossible to give buyers negative feedbacks, even if they are completely warranted. This is all thanks to the OP's seller and people like her, who use feedback as a retaliatory weapon against buyers who dare speak up and say how lousy their experiences were.

[bigjimaz]

If the feedback you received from her has any legal threats or cursing you can have it removed while hers stays.

If she is threatening you using the eBay email system you can report her for that.

By the way, there IS a Michael Anthony in Columbus that is an attorney that specializes in defending small businesses. Linky

You can also agree to mutual withdrawal, but that means that her well-earned RED goes as well as the one you didn't earn.

You can also respond to the feedback she left you stating it is retaliatory because you gave her a neg for not delivering.

Starting in May, sellers will no longer be able to leave buyers negative feedback.

[friendofjimmyk]

Stick to your guns. Don't let her bully you into taking away the negative response.

As far as "her" lawyer - she could've easily googled an attorney in Columbus and thrown the name out. Just as easily as the poster found out there is a Michael Anthony. At any rate, she has no claim!

Please keep us posted - I'd like to know how she responded - if she did.

[SilverOrb]

Happened to me too

Now seeing as she flat out lied to me, I left negative feedback on the item. This sent her into a fury, and she demanded I retract my feedback or she would sic her lawyer on me. She also decided to leave negative feedback against me which would be the first time in over 5 years anyone has done so. I don't have the thousands of ratings she has, so that one negative has a bigger impact on me than mine had on her.

Wow, the same thing happened to me. Sorta. I bought three necklaces from someone, we'll call them A B and C. When the package arrived, I got A, 2 B's, and no C. Tried contact tried contact, eventually filed a claim, which he STILL didnt repond to. Eventually I got my money back, and left negatives because he refused to communicate with me. He responded with a Negative and a neutral. SInce I dont have much feedback, I now can't sell anything on EBay. He took me from 100% down to 93%, but he has so much feedback that he doesnt care. He said that by doing that, I need to "Understand Ebay rules". What a JERK!

[CancelMyService]

If the feedback you received from her has any legal threats or cursing you can have it removed while hers stays.

If she is threatening you using the eBay email system you can report her for that.

By the way, there IS a Michael Anthony in Columbus that is an attorney that specializes in defending small businesses. Linky

You can also agree to mutual withdrawal, but that means that her well-earned RED goes as well as the one you didn't earn.

You can also respond to the feedback she left you stating it is retaliatory because you gave her a neg for not delivering.

Starting in May, sellers will no longer be able to leave buyers negative feedback.

Oh I already reported both the retaliatory feedback was well as her using the eBay email system for legal threats.

Also, I never doubted her lawyer was real, I just couldn't pass up the softball fate lobbed at me with that name. It seems pretty clear most of the people she's had negative encounters with were either kids or eBay n00bs that would get scared from someone waving the lawyer card in their face.

There's no way I'm agreeing to remove any of the negative feedback from her, no matter how big of a hissy she throws.

[greensinestro]

I must say, this sounds like the woman I dealt with back in November 2003. I was very new to E-Bay at that time, and was looking for things to buy for my kids. I did a search for Disney apparel, and I found one of those old wristwatch wall clocks, along with a few wall hangings. That clock caught my eye, because I had not seen one of those in over 25 years, since one of my childhood friends had one in his room!

In any case, I bought this item and thought all was cool. It really had not occurred to me to view feedback, or check out a seller's history. Again, I was new to this, and perhaps naive. But, a week later, my items came, and this clock, which I had really looked forward to receiving, was missing one of the watch straps. I had made several attempts to contact this woman via e-mail, all of which went ignored. So, after a few days, I left negative feedback, claiming she was a fraud and a thief. Well, that was when she replied, stating I needed to resolve this with her before leaving any feedback.

I told her she advertised these items, and did not say anything in her description about the clock missing one of the straps. Her picture showed this clock, but it was on a table shoved up against a wall, hiding the missing strap from view. Because I had left this negative feedback, she was not willing at that point to work with me, including having the feedback removed, nor have my money refunded. I filed a claim, but it was closed out, because I did not see justification in paying $20 to have my feedback removed, as well as hers, plus she was not willing to work with me at all. And, I had paid only $8 for this, so it really wasn't a big loss to me. It was what I found out later about her that pissed me off. She had a high number of positives, but also negatives. Any time someone sent negative feedback, she would do the same to them. In fact, she would also leave negative feedback for any buyers who left neutral ones for her. With neutral feedback, you do not get any points added or removed. It's mainly a "zero". Later on, she had her rights pulled, after over 100 complaints against her. What gets me also on this is, and perhaps someone can clarify this for me: It seems like there really is no way to keep a seller like this off E-Bay. Couldn't they just have their selling rights revoked, and all they have to do is create a new user profile? Even so, they can change their mailing address, open a new PAY PAL account, etc, without being detected? Or does E-Bay have something in place for this, too?

In all, out of 106 transactions in 4 1/2 years, I only have one negavtive feedback, yet this one negative caused me a problem for quite a while whenever I wanted to buy something. Sellers would often question me on this, because many sellers don't like dealing with people that have tons of negative feedback. Since then though, it's been in the past.

[Andara Bledin]

Ah, eBay. It amazes me the stuff people don't quite get.

On buying:
Rule #1. Check the Feedback itself. Don't just trust the number, because there are crooks who hijack nice accounts and use them for fraud, and crooks who build nice accounts just to use them for fraud.

Rule #2. Check their selling history. Anyone with a history of 20 Feedback per month as a seller who is suddenly selling hundreds of iPods is running a scam.

Rule #3. Always pay via PayPal backed by a credit card for maximum protection of your money.

On Selling:
Rule #1. Use a different account for selling than you do for buying. It doesn't matter if you have hundreds of Feedback on your buying account since the smart buyers (the ones you really want to attract) won't pay that much attention to it anyway.

Rule #2. Point out every little flaw in your item. You'll get more bids with a detailed description describing all flaws, then with a glossed over description with a vague condition statement.

Rule #3. Have at least one very clear picture of what you're selling. Do not use a stock photo unless absolutely necessary.

Rule #4. Keep your terms of sale simple. If your TOS is longer than your description, you probably need to make some changes.

Rule #5. If using PayPal, insist that you will only ship to confirmed addresses because PayPal will make it more difficult to fight a complaint of non-receipt if you ship elsewhere.

Rule #6. US law mandates that it is the seller's responsibility to get the package to the buyer. It doesn't matter how many times your TOS says "I am not responsible" because legally, you are. The only way to get around the buyer claiming non-reciept is to require that they sign for delivery.

For buyers and sellers, both:
Rule #1. Never leave Feedback until the very end. You have at least 90 days to do it, don't rush it.

Rule #2. Never mention Feedback in emails, unless you're informing the other person you have left them some.

eBay is a large part of my job, and I've been a regular (off and on) for one of their more comprehensive and active community forums.

As an aside, I have a ton of negative feedback on my buying account. Short story: my computer died back when there weren't computers everywhere, so I lost all my info and didn't pay about a dozen sellers. I have never had any trouble buying things on eBay. Then again, the really savvy buyers don't bid until the auction is almost over.

^-.-^

[marasbaras]

eBay's feedback system just sucks. And, they're not fixing it. Just putting in something so that buyers can now scam, scam, scam.

[greensinestro]

Starting in May, sellers will no longer be able to leave buyers negative feedback.

I think that's a great policy. Why should the buyer have to suffer at the hands of the seller? The buyer usually has to pay for their merchandise before it is even shipped out, so to me, the buyer has fulfilled their end of the bargain, leaving it up to the seller to fulfill theirs. To me, allowing sellers to leave negative feedback to the buyer is retaliatory and vindictive.

Until this happens though, I have always been cautious whenever I sell something. Wait until the buyer receives their stuff, confirms it with you on e-mail that they are happy with it, then have them leave you positive feedback. After that is when I'll leave them positive feedback.

[Andara Bledin]

I think that's a great policy. Why should the buyer have to suffer at the hands of the seller? The buyer usually has to pay for their merchandise before it is even shipped out, so to me, the buyer has fulfilled their end of the bargain, leaving it up to the seller to fulfill theirs. To me, allowing sellers to leave negative feedback to the buyer is retaliatory and vindictive.

Most people don't really understand this, but the buyer has nearly all of the power in an eBay transaction.

For a smart buyer, Feedback is meaningless.
For a seller, Feedback can be the only way they can salvage anything after they get a psycho buyer.

For a smart buyer, there is almost no financial risk.
For even a pro seller, there will always be the risk of the merchandise being lost and bank overdraft fees being assessed. (there is no such thing as a safe payment)

The whole thing about buyers fulfilling their part of the bargain at payment is complete and utter hogwash oft repeated by the uninitiated and the scammers. There is only one transaction, and both parties are involved until the very end. Both. At the very least, the buyer should inform the seller by some means that the item has arrived and is found acceptable.

But mostly, what the buyer still must do after making payment is: not reverse payment: not return already owned broken item for intact one received: not claim it was not received when it was: not claim it was damaged when it wasn't: not leave Negative Feedback because they seller hasn't left Feedback yet.

Trust me, there are at least a dozen things that a buyer can do after payment to become completely sucktacular. Paying for the item is the least of their obligations.

^-.-^

[repsac]

I've only ever used Ebay once, and then it was to purchase something you can't get here in the US. Ok, it's not that you can't get it, it's just really really hard.

It took forever for the purchase to go through, and the seller was rather nice about it, apologizing the whole time. In my case, I was purchasing a train set by a company named "Hornby". (they are in the US but harder to find) The seller was actually a train/toy store in the UK and had listed several of their sets with a buy now sticker. Well, apparently the one I bought had just gone out of stock, but they hadn't realized that until my purchase. They were really nice about it though, working with me through mails and eventually when I got the set I found that they had thrown in some extra carriages and a track expansion to make up for the trouble.