ebay seems like they couldn't care less about many scams, including where people bid and win - but never pay. It's why I only post things as "Buy It Now".

I agree with you 100% (and I'm the one that posted the last alert post). Bad listings are going to diminish eBays reputation for buyers and sellers. I can only image whoever keeps posting similar listings to those are in a country where eBay can't do much.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

eBay doesn't care, to them it's just the cost of doing business. Things will change when Amazon either starts their own service or just straight up buys eBay.

Over the past month and a half I've had two separate items sell on Buy It Now and the purchaser never pay. It's gotten to be where eBay is my last resort when selling my bike stuff.

I think eBay - like Facebook and Google - is extraordinarily short-staffed relative to the scope of their business. This basically necessitates that hands-off approach to solving difficult problems. Anything that cannot (easily) be solved algorithmically is basically just met with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is (part of) why these companies are so enthusiastically supporting AI. I definitely get the sense that they hope that AI can solve a lot of the issues that simply require fundamental human intervention currently.

I also think this is a big part of why Amazon has been and continues to be so successful. It is extremely easy to get help from a real human being at Amazon. You can explain your problem to them, and they can figure out how to solve it, and they usually do a pretty damn good job in my experience.

Try to get in touch with a real person at eBay. (Or Facebook). Not going to happen.

Amazon has basically taken the stance that they need to be able to solve *every* customer's problem. These other companies have basically taken the stance that there's no way they can solve every customer's problem, so their response is that they will basically solve no one's.

Realistically, eBay needs a customer service team the size of Amazon's. But that's never going to happen.

I am likewise extremely reticent to ever buy or sell anything on eBay. Much more so than I ever was. Whereas I'm way more likely to buy something on Amazon year after year, because I've literally never had a problem that has not reached at least a satisfactory resolution.

It will be interesting to see if the not-at-all-surprising discovery that terrorists were (and probably still are) using eBay to launder-and-transfer funds affects the ways in which they are permitted to conduct business.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

You should use Immediate Payment Required.

Good point.

I still buy and sell on eBay, only because it's one of the view viable options easily accessible to me.

Based on casual observation over the years I am of the opinion that Canadians are some of the worst people when it comes to selling items on Craigslist. People don't seem to take the time to find out what their item is worth, and when they compose their ads they put one crappy picture and no specifics about the item.

Campers, bicycles, motorcycles, you name it; Americans seem to value their time enough to price and advertise their item in manner that it will sell sooner than later. Not as a rule of course, but insane prices seem to be a much more prevalent in Canada. And I don't mean high relative to the US, I mean higher relative to reality. People asking $2400 for a used 2015 bicycle when the exact make and model with identical (albeit new) components is on sale at the local bike shop for $2200.

I have really nice triathlon gear, most of which I bought used on eBay. I guess that's why it bugs me when I see the quality of listings circling the drain.

And for everyone that posted about non-paying buyers: I feel you - I ran a small eBay business for a while and gave it up due to a combination of people buying and not paying, and the removal of the sellers ability to leave negative feedback.

Interesting insight, did you work in tech at all? It comes down to the specific team but some teams do have decent budget to staff manual processed workflows, especially if it involves potential legal issues such as spam, abuse, hijacking etc. They are not always handled (at least in the initial tiers) by employees though and can be outsourced either to contractors or even a whole separate vendor company. This can cause mixed results, especially if all management cares about is some minimal quality/quantity of effort to tell leadership that spam/abuse has a process in place.

In general, you're pretty much correct that the focus has to be at scaled solutions for these types of things. I would go on a limb and say for eBay's case, they probably don't have a need to more strongly care/staff/prioritize this issue unless they're being hit with regulatory focus or lawsuits.

eBay is dying a very slow death.

This. The fees are so high that now you can get things for cheaper from other stores, Craigslist or FB marketplace. Ebay always sides with the buyer so it makes it very hard for the seller. I used to sell a ton on there but now I don't even try.

You haven't been looking at Speed Concepts or P5s. You can basically buy a new bike for what US sellers ask on EBay. There seem to be a huge contingent of people who realist the same over-priced crap. Why would anyone pay 75-80% of retail for a used bike that will have no warranty?

+1 on this, it took 3 listings of the same item for me to actually receive my payment. In order to avoid having to pay any seller fees I had to open a case with Ebay that takes 10 days to resolve for each unpaid item.

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AV8 | Team Wattie Ink Elite 2019

I gave up on EBay a while back. You can find much better deals on the Facebook groups these days

I require immediate payment on my listings:
https://pages.ebay.com/...mediate-payment.html

EBAY software is legacy >>> into the tablet era. Phone support has been good for me. I've sold two Porsches on there this year, plus we are wholesale retailing snow ski and water Intuition Liners with good success.

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I had a brand new, sealed iPad Air 2 128Gb which I sold on eBay via auction starting at $100. I sent it via DHL, at my own cost, and the seller refused delivery as they decided they had paid too much. It got stuck in customs as the seller tried to return to origin. The seller opened a dispute, which eBay eventually closed in my favour as they could see delivery had been attempted multiple times and the item was sat with the courier at the local depot. The buyer opened a second dispute which eBay quickly closed, again, in my favour.

Don't know where that iPad got to... sure glad eBay were reasonable in this case. Despite not losing any money this time, I'm really cautious about selling items on eBay.

Having said that, I've got two Thomson Masterpice seatposts, an X2 stem, a Zipp Sprint SL stem and some other bits on at the moment each starting at $5.00 - so guess I haven't learnt my lesson.

I tried selling a set of Zipps on EBay. The guy that won the auction wrote me asking me to cancel the bid and relist it so that he could bid with his wife's account so they could use a $50 gift certificate. Dude you just won a $2200 wheel set for $1400 and want to do some fishy stuff for a $50 gift certificate. I might buy stuff from EBay but I definitely wont sell there. Slowtwitch is a much easier place to sell on.

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All I Wanted Was A Pepsi, Just One Pepsi

Team Zoot, Team Zoot Mid-Atlantic

No time soon evidently:

http://www.ebay.com/...6:g:pBYAAOSwtIBZtFPN