eBay Gougers
Happens all the time. One time I won a garden-variety Electrolux XXX. The seller tried to charge me $150 for shipping on it! I reported her to eBay for value-adding which while not technically forbidden, they do frown upon it in extreme cases and particularly when no shipping charge is divulged up-front, which was the case here. I did not leave her negative feedback because she threatened to leave retaliatory neg for me if I did. Lovely little creeps on eBay nowadays, eh.
And speaking of eBay...
Just when you think eBay can't get any more convoluted and mucked-up, things are getting stoopider and stoopider there. Yesterday I listed a reed organ and used the same standard "boilerplate" text I have used for the past eight years.
Well, when I got the entire (far too laborious) process completed and pressed LIST, I got an error message smacking my hand saying I could not accept Western Union payments. WFT?? The listing said that I DO NOT accept Western Union. I tried again to list it ... same result.
So I contacted eBay's (typically lame) help center and explained what happened. Well, do you know, even ANY reference to "Western Union" in an auction listing will cause their system to reject it!! You cannot say, "I do not accept Western Union." You have to actually remove any reference to it!
I asked the person, "So what if I am selling a stack of vintage Western Union telegram messages, or, say, an antique Western Union telegram-typewriter?" long pause....... "Well, I suppose at the present time you could not sell such items.
All together now: "Duuuu-uuuuh....."
Furthermore, they have now, without notice, instituted a new policy whereby sellers who accept PayPal MUST also accept payments via credit cards and not just debit transfers as before. Sellers used to be able to restrict PayPal payments to cash transfers only ... but no more.
When I finally went through all the above-described hassle and got the damn thing listed, the next day I got a notice that my listing had been DELETED! The reason? Because I stated that for PayPal payments, I would accept cash debit transfers only, and no credit cards.
Sheeeeee-itt!
Yes, boys and girls, you can't do that anymore!
Many sellers -- myself included -- do not wish to accept credit card payments because of the high incidence of chargeback fraud. Oh sure, PayPal claims it's got your back if you're scammed, but my experience in having to avail myself of PayPal's customer service is that they slow to respond and frequently loathe to respond at all; and if you have not jumped through the precise center of every one of the many hoops they throw in front of you, well, you're gonna be S.O.L. "Been dere - done dat."
If ebay MUST have this asinine policy in the first place - which I do not understand because it means sellers really cannot protect themselves from scammers who buy and then commit fraudulent chargebacks - then why can't they contact the seller and advise them of this policy and give them a chance to revise the listing instead of just CANCELING THE @#$@#$# LISTING and making them look like idiots in front of the eBay community?
I swear, the longer eBay exists, the lamer and stupider it is getting. Oh how great it was in the old days when it was first launched.
