watervole: (Default)
Judith Proctor ([personal profile] watervole) wrote2005-10-04 08:09 pm

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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