watervole | Ebay is driving me crazy

Ebay is driving me crazy

I'm buying an MP3 player on Ebay. It's the first time I've ever used it and I'm going to come out of it with a negative rating...

Why?

On Ebay UK, all the items I looked at in the initial listings had the bid price and the postage price and any insurance was included in the postage figure.

On Ebay (America, I'm guessing), many items don't have postage quoted in the main listing. If you look at the item, there's a postage cost. What you don't see, because it's hidden behind an extra link is a £22 charge for insurance. In other words, various sellers are trying to make their profit on the surcharge and hiding it as best they can.

I didn't spot this until after I'd won the bid. I shall therefore be leaving the seller negative feedback. He'll doubtless retaliate, which will leave me with a totally negative rating and probably unable to deal there again. It's a matter of principle though. When I complained, they simply threatened me with negative feedback. It's a mutual blackmail system with people giving good feedback in order to get good feedback.

I'm also having problems with the payment. The seller offered Paypal or credit card. Turns out that their idea of 'credit card' is 'use your credit card via Paypal'. I don't like Paypal, not least because it offers less legal protection and I consider some of their working methods to be a total rip-off. However, having bid, I'm obligated to pay. I go to Paypal. BUT, and it's a big but, having asked for credit card payment, I now have no data telling me how to do a Paypal payment. I don't know the seller's e-mail address and I can't find it. The seller is in Australia, the item is being mailed from Hong Kong, I'm in Britain, the web site was probably American...

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The insurance charge (on ebay.co.uk at least) is usually optional - if the seller is insisting on insurance then that should have been made clear in the item description or have been included in a postage+insurance displayed postage charge. If this wasn't clear in the description then you may decide to leave negative feedback, BUT it is best for you, the buyer, not to leave feedback until after you have received the goods. The seller may leave feedback after he has received payment, and if he receives payment in a reasonable time he should have no grounds for giving a negative rating. The rating is voluntary, if he has not given you feedback by the time you have received the goods, you do not need to leave him negative feedback if you think that would be harmful to your rating.

To use a credit card through paypal you should just need to click on the 'pay now' link on the eBay item and select paypal (which will use the email address that the seller has already assigned for it, so you don't need to find it). You may need to set up a paypal account when you follow the link if you don't have one already, but you can then pay with your credit card through the paypal system. You don't need to put a credit balance in the paypal account to do this.

What's driving me crazy is that I can't find a 'pay now' link.

I even contacted a friend via net meeting. She's used e-bay before and she couldn't find the link. It's as though clicking on teh credit card choice somehow removed the other links.

If you log into Ebay and go to "my ebay" they should list items you've bid on and/or won. The item you won ought to have a status description like "awaiting payment" or "leave feedback" or something. I think it's a drop down so you *should* be able to pick a payment option on that button-like thing.

'awaiting payment' doesn't have an active link. 'awaiting feedback' does.

It's as though going down the menu once has made it impossible to do so again.

I contacted the seller who gave me a Paypal invoice, but that gives an error message when I try to use it.

Try going to the link on the invoice and when you arrive at the error message alter the url so that the https becomes http. This should give you the paypal page and it *will* redirect you to the secure site (I have no idea why the links are broken but this has worked for me in the past). Good luck.

The error message I'm getting is

Our records show that this eBay User ID is not one of the winning buyers for an item being paid for. Please check your entry and try again.

Possibly a dumb question, but might it be down to your browser? Certainly, for me, LJ's interface is horribly broken, but I put that down to using an ancient version of a Linux-based browser rather than an up-to-date version of Windows IE.

Or perhaps it's using some kind of automation that your current settings have as "disabled".

Sounds unpleasant, though, and not at all what you need. [sympathy].

I'm usng Mozilla and

grumpoldusenaut used it fine a couple of weeks ago (on my computer) to buy things on eBay, so it isn't the browser.

What's the item number?

You made a bit of a newbie mistake: virtually all of the stupidly cheap electronics goods are shipped straight from Hong Kong, and you pay the real cost on the postage. They're also usually generic unbranded crap. It's possible you may get stung for import duty and the courier's handling fee too. It's hardly worth trying to find an MP3 player or something like that on eBay, because it can be difficult to find the UK sellers
among all the Hong Kong dealers who claim to be in the UK.

Paypal has its faults, but it's what virtually everyone uses on eBay. If the seller set the auction up correctly, you should be able to just click on the "Pay now" link and select Paypal as your payment method.

I spotted the postage, failed to spot the insurance.

I wasn't expecting a terribly high-quality item. At long as it works - I just want something I can play when I'm out for a walk, so I'm not after high quality sound.

Courier's handling fee? That's a new one on me. I once got stuck for VAT on something I got from the states, but I though you had to be over £40 in value before you got caught on that front.

I can't find the 'pay now' link. It's as though having tried to pay by credit card, the link has ceased to exist.

The handling fee is if the courier (or Royal Mail) pay the VAT/import duty for you. I think there may be a cutoff value below which customs don't bother to apply the fee, but I'm not sure what it is. It's a bit of a lottery- expensive items have got through with no fee several times, and I've also at least once been stung more than I paid for the item in fees.

I found the auction you bid on. I would have avoided it just from the big flashy HTML advert for an unbranded item and the feedback (very high 98.7% positive means they don't care about the occasional neg), as well as them shipping from Hong Kong and using the postage dodge: all red flags when you're used to dealing with eBay. They do give the actual fees (postage and insurance) in the listing (right down at the bottom), but the advert is slightly misleading because it mentions having to pay the insurance but not how much the insurance is.

Is it possible you've already paid? Try looking at the auction payment status in "My Ebay".

But how do they get such a high feedback rating if they're so crap?

I've definitely not paid as My Ebay shows me as having an item to pay for.

It sounds obvious I know, but you get a high feedback rating simply by selling a lot of stuff and delivering it. Almost nobody leaves negative feedback on eBay unless they were completely ripped off, because they know it's likely to result in revenge feedback. It looks like this guy gets away with using the postage dodge because the charges are there in the listing if you look hard enough for them, and it would appear that he does actually ship the goods.

Reading between the lines on eBay feedback is a bit of an art form. This guy's feedback tells me:

* He sells a _lot_ of stuff every day (look at the dates - several feedbacks left every day). That means that a negative or a neutral will disappear off the bottom of the first page of feedback within two or three days. If a seller has any negatives, I always track them down and try to figure out whether they were his fault or not.
* He has enough positives that another negative won't do very much to his percentage.
* Most of his buyers are fairly inexperienced.
* When somebody leaves him a negative, he immediately accuses them of not paying and gives them a negative in return.
* About half of the negatives he's got have been cancelled out using the mutual withdrawal method.
* Quite a lot of the buyers, despite leaving a positive, have left not entirely positive comments like "Good and quick service but the insurance was extortionate" and "Pretty good, be aware of postal insurance charge".

I don't know why it's not letting you pay; it sounds like it might be an eBay fault. You could try emailing the seller to say the "pay now" link and the invoice email aren't working, and ask him what email address to send the payment to.

Regardless of this experience, don't get too "put off" - you can get some really good deals at times as well.

I've just bought a car there! (The Citroen got "customised" by a third party the other day - fortunately his insurance have accepted liability!)

Alastair

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Ebay is driving me crazy

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