EBAY Beware

I have been a longtime fan of Ebay. Like most people who have found the site, I've enjoyed myself selling my stuff for a little money and searching its pages for bargains and hard to find stuff.

I recently had my first real experience with fraud at Ebay. I'd managed to damage the cord to the very laptop I'm typing this on. Rather than pay a ton from Dell to get a replacement, I went to Ebay and found the exact same model number from a seller with a high feedback rating (over 10000). Taking this as a sign that he was an honest seller, I ignored the few hundred negative and neutral comments.

The seller sent me a box that had the wrong AC Adaptor in it. It had a three prong plug and a two prong adaptor box (I'm not sure what you call it). It was of no use to me, so I wrote to the seller who asked me to ship it back in a certain way (that wound up costing $7) and he would ship me the right item. I was promised I would get a refund on the return shipping, but only up to $6.

I sent it back. About a week later I came home to my wife using the adaptor that was sent back. She started having problems and the power went out to the laptop. I looked at the adaptor. Wrong model again. Fearing it would damage the computer, I unplugged it and wrote an angry letter to the seller demanding that he ship me what I ordered immediately along with a refund of my shipping charges and a prepaid mailer to send the second mistake back.

The seller responding by asking me my model number and laptop model and not replying to my request. I figured he was going to tell me that the one I got would be okay with my computer and I was right. He replied by saying he didn't understand why it wouldn't work, but he would refund my money.

I began to read his feedback. Negatives and neutrals were sporadic but consistent. He seemed to have a habit of shipping the wrong item and/or an item that was not in the condition he represented in the auction.

I posted my own negative feedback. He replied by lying in his. I filed a request for refund with Paypal and reported him to Ebay. Paypal said essentially, "You got a package, you don't deserve a refund." Ebay said that it would investigate but it couldn't tell me what it was going to do. Apparently there decision was nothing, judging by the member's numerous auctions.

What disturbs me is that Ebay and the Ebay owned Paypal seem more concerned with the short term profits provided by big dishonest sellers than they are in creating a sustainable community of sellers and buyers where honesty is the rule. Reading through pages and pages of comments by Ebay users on their own bulletin boards, I discovered that there are hundreds of smaller sellers that are completely disgusted by Ebay's lack of concern and self policing. My own personal experience shows that their Customer Service is a joke, consisting of extremely hard to find reporting mechanisms and form letter responses with conflicting information.

Of course, like Microsoft, Ebay is almost a monopoly. Unlike Microsoft, there don't seem to be any real contenders to replace it. Yahoo and Amazon have dabbled in auctions, but both are like trying to sell President Bush medallions in a strip mall in Tikrit. Given the general frustration brewing at Ebay, both might be wise to start building their sites back up.