Is ebay safe??

[felix]

I have been using ebay for about 2 years now. I have really not had a problem using it and have been very careful about who I buy from and who I sell to. I only have 50 feedback but I have seen enough to wonder about how "secure" ebay is.

Now, dont get me wrong. I know that ebay is a secure site. I see the little lock at the bottom of my firefox window and it makes me feel secure in a way. But what about internal scams? What about people who post up things and never send them? I know ebay has a policy written on paper about that kind of thing, but what do they actually do when something goes wrong? As I browse the ebay forum here on DP, I see a lot of posts pointing out dishonest people on ebay (like the current one, where a person "came across" a lot of rare games and decided to sell them along with modded xboxes with preloaded pirated games.). What happens when you end up buying the item and they never send it? I know paypal doesnt do much and IF they do it takes upwards to 180 days to process..

Anyways, I want to hear some horror stories and what paypal/ebay did OR didnt do.. Is ebay really a "safe" place of commerse? I want to hear some opinions.






Heres mine:
I really havent had a problem with paypal OR ebay yet besides my occasional goofups (undercharging for shipping or taking a loss). But those are both my mistake. I have talked to a few other and they say its a matter of time before I get ripped of and that it happens to everybody at one point or another.

[anagrama]

Been buying & selling for 5 years, and have had over 800 transactions. In all that time I've lost moeny to 1 buyer who filed a fraudulent chargeback, and the only other trouble I've had was the occasional non-paying bidder.

It's not perfect, but then nothing is. Use your head, stay away from anything "too good to be true" and it's pretty safe really.

[aaron7]

I got booted from fradulent sellers giving me NPB warnings after I paid (and they are still selling on ebay, go figure)

I also got screwed out of $400 from a guy in PA. I mailed the money, he dissapeared. I have his address if anyone wants to make some quick cash (you supply the bat though )

[King Magnus]

yea ive been on ebay a while....as a buyer I have never not got something I won, and as a seller the worst thing I've had to deal with is non-paying bidders. Oh and also people who leave you bad feedback out of spite.....i hate that!

[jajaja]

I bought alot from Ebay and havnt had much problems.
Had one small problem recently tho, won an auction, but the guy who lost the bidding sent a mail to the seller and offered him 3 times as much as my winning bid.
So the seller sold it to him instead and claimed he lost the item on the floor while packing it to me so it got broken.

But what he didnt knew was that I had contact with the other guy who he sold it too so he came up with another stupid excuse that he had 2 of the item haha, ye right x_x A really bad seller!

I got my money back tho, but I really wanted the item so its fucking annoying.

Other than this I havnt had any spesial problems except one guy tried to charge me like $150 in shipping for a 2lbs package.

[Bluteg]

I have many bad experiences... one NPB negative after I did pay... he left the NPB 3 days after the end of the auction and the seller only accepted money orders. I guess I should have spent $20 on overnight express for a $5 game. Another time I won a cheap BIN in which the seller did not put the shipping costs in the auction and would not respond to my emails. Damn, another NPB. Two people have won auctions of mine where and got the money back from Paypal, even though they did recieve it. I charged $3 for shipping and used Media Mail. Paypal took my money because I could not provide a tracking number. Fucking bullshit so I left negatives and they neged back in response.

Another Negative 4 days after the end of an auction because I'm a "scammer" and they "did not get their game" More bullshit. Another time when I was selling an old SB Live sound card. It ended at like $2 or $3 and the bidder left negative because it wasn't 5.1 even though I never said it swas 5.1 in the title of description. 3 more negatives for NPB from way back who neged back. In summary my feedback is fucked up.

Why is it that so many people can have 100% and never have a problem and I hit the damn tard bus of bad ebayers.

[evil_genius]

I have had a few things not come in the past. Nothing big, a DVD and a basketball card I think...

[NESaholic]

A friend of mine bought a broken NEO-GEO console once,he lives in The Netherlands and he bought it from a seller in Australia claiming that it worked perfectly.
My freind paid $500 including eveything,got the console and it did not work,he showed the console to his friend (who is a technician) and he told him the motherboard was totally dead (that means the seller knew!).
He mailed seller and he did not wanna refund, then he mailed ebay and paypal, indeed paypal takes a while but after that they went after the seller like a pitbull!!
He got all his money back from paypal without a problem,then paypal dealt with the seller.
Only thing my friend had to do is send back the broken console and that was it, it took a couple of months but it worked.

[felix]

I have many bad experiences... one NPB negative after I did pay... he left the NPB 3 days after the end of the auction and the seller only accepted money orders. I guess I should have spent $20 on overnight express for a $5 game. Another time I won a cheap BIN in which the seller did not put the shipping costs in the auction and would not respond to my emails. Damn, another NPB. Two people have won auctions of mine where and got the money back from Paypal, even though they did recieve it. I charged $3 for shipping and used Media Mail. Paypal took my money because I could not provide a tracking number. Fucking bullshit so I left negatives and they neged back in response.

Another Negative 4 days after the end of an auction because I'm a "scammer" and they "did not get their game" More bullshit. Another time when I was selling an old SB Live sound card. It ended at like $2 or $3 and the bidder left negative because it wasn't 5.1 even though I never said it swas 5.1 in the title of description. 3 more negatives for NPB from way back who neged back. In summary my feedback is fucked up.

Why is it that so many people can have 100% and never have a problem and I hit the damn tard bus of bad ebayers.

Im one of those lucky ones who still has their 100% positive FB score.. I dont think its going to last long. I have had a string of newbies who email 2 times a day about why their tracking number hasnt shown up on the site or when its going to arrive or bla bla bla.. I have gotten to the point where I dont really care about feedback anymore because I know some idiot is going to ruin it. Too bad you cant put a limit on who can buy from you (like they cant bid on your item unless they have +50 feedbacks and 100% positive.)

[Promophile]

I have many bad experiences... one NPB negative after I did pay... he left the NPB 3 days after the end of the auction and the seller only accepted money orders. I guess I should have spent $20 on overnight express for a $5 game. Another time I won a cheap BIN in which the seller did not put the shipping costs in the auction and would not respond to my emails. Damn, another NPB. Two people have won auctions of mine where and got the money back from Paypal, even though they did recieve it. I charged $3 for shipping and used Media Mail. Paypal took my money because I could not provide a tracking number. Fucking bullshit so I left negatives and they neged back in response.

Another Negative 4 days after the end of an auction because I'm a "scammer" and they "did not get their game" More bullshit. Another time when I was selling an old SB Live sound card. It ended at like $2 or $3 and the bidder left negative because it wasn't 5.1 even though I never said it swas 5.1 in the title of description. 3 more negatives for NPB from way back who neged back. In summary my feedback is fucked up.

Why is it that so many people can have 100% and never have a problem and I hit the damn tard bus of bad ebayers.

Im one of those lucky ones who still has their 100% positive FB score.. I dont think its going to last long. I have had a string of newbies who email 2 times a day about why their tracking number hasnt shown up on the site or when its going to arrive or bla bla bla.. I have gotten to the point where I dont really care about feedback anymore because I know some idiot is going to ruin it. Too bad you cant put a limit on who can buy from you (like they cant bid on your item unless they have +50 feedbacks and 100% positive.)

Well you CAN put limits who bids, but the only limits are

do not allow bidders with < than 0 feedback

and

do not allow bidders who have recieved more than X NPB strikes in the last x period of time.

[Bluteg]

I've clearly put in my listings that sellers with under 10 positive feedback must email me to confirm before they bid... but they still did it anyway usually an hour before it ends or on a BIN

I've heard tons of stories months after an auctions end... one NPB acted like she was her boyfriend and said she was in the hospital with cancer. I felt bad and left her positive and ate the ebay fees. Later she left a nuetral 2 and 1/2 months after the auctions end of which she never payed. It was some old 12" records so she was probably drunk and bid it up and wanted out of it.

[zektor]

I have been a member of Ebay since 12/98, and honestly have had no bad experiences in purchasing. I have had a few people complain about shipping time and so forth while I was the seller...but mostly because they were just impatient and wanted their package right away.

As for purchasing, you should have no problem as long as you keep a good eye on the feedback of the person you decide to purchase from. Usually, if the feedback is very low (under 10) and even worse they have some bad ones in there...it is risky and I would personally stay away...unless it is some odd deal. I once bid and won an Atari Jaguar with CD unit and a ton of games for like $40...because it looked like a fake auction. Turned out it was not...but I was lucky....

If you stick with purchases from people with good feedback (95%-100%) you'll be in good shape. Also, invvestigate and read their feedbacks, check what people say regarding the transaction, and click on their purchases to see what they successfully purchased from the person.

This is probably the best advice I can give you, and I've been doing the ebay thing for 7 years. Without ebay I would not have purchased all of the great things I did....or sell all of the great things I sold for that matter!