A Must Read Ebay Help Desk Exchange
 

Long but worth the read


http://www.rohanionline.com/stuff/ebay.txt

I've become very disenchanted with ebay over the last several years. Not sure that there are all that many good alternatives, though. I was just trying to buy an ipod for my wife on craigslist, and am having limited success. Of 3 people who had the color/style/size that she's looking for, one never replied to my e-mail, one has lent his "for sale" ipod to a friend and doesn't know when he'll get it back, and the 3rd is only interested in local transactions, and will only accept cash.

So if you can't get on ebay to find that ... whatever it is you need ... where do you go?

Dan

Wayne,
eBay is a competitor to Pelican in some sense. There are new parts for sale there. But I find the prices are many times over what you could purchase directly from you. The used items for sale on ebay are often much more expensive than what I can find on the for sale forums here. Even though fraud continues on the for sale forum here, the community seems to call out the crooks and make everyone aware of what is going on. eBay only cares about lining their pockets. I used to sell a bit on eBay, but found online forums such as Pelican to be a great place to sell. Even though I contiue to use eBay I am as careful as I can be and I use it less and less.
I also find eBay is the place where people with mostly usless Porsche items go to find somebody that is new to all this and unload their crap. Like used 911 (non turbo style) tensioners and the old style tensioner arms.
My .02 worth.

Paypal is 100X worse.

This is precisely what monopoly power leads to.

Reading that exchange was just hilarious. I completely sympathize with the guy, getting autobot responses. Ebay's help system is a complete joke - it makes dealing with the government seem painless and simple.

I too have recently sworn off ebay, though I've never been a huge user of it. I sold my 944 through ebay, and got completely raped with paypal and ebay fees. In the end I got $1750 for the car, and I'll end up paying probably over $250 in fees to actually get money. And that was after 2 auctions ended in flake bidders. What a joke.

The only way I see ebay as competition for Pelican is in used parts (i.e. ebay vs. Pelican classifieds), because I can often find the obscure used part I need faster on ebay then a WTB ad here. I would never look to ebay for new parts, because I don't want to go through the BS of waiting for an auction to end (if not a buy-it-now sale), paying through paypal, hoping the seller comes through, packages properly, etc. If I order through Pelican I know when it'll get shipped out, I know that will for sure happen, and I know it'll be packaged properly. So what if it's 5% or 10% expensive?

The only exception to this might be an ebay seller located in Canada, because it's so much cheaper and easier than shipping across the border. Even then, though, I'd probably try to locate and contact the seller outside ebay, so I don't have to deal with them.

I do wish there could be some way of Pelican having a Canadian distributor, so we could order directly from them and not deal with border delays, costs, added shipping expenses, etc.

As Ray says above, there is no substitute. People will come around once they've been burned enough.

That was a great read!

When I worked at the RNC, we developed a system similar to eBay's responses for answering members' mail, when it was a generic topic for which we had standard boilerplate responses. But in our defense, there was no email in those days and we actually did read every letter. The ones that couldn't be answered with some generic paragraphs got passed along for more personal attention.

A letter like this guy's would certainly have been caught and dealt with personally. How can eBay not afford to set something up like this? In my own eBay dispute experience, I did actually get a human involved, but it was in 2001. I did win a fraud dispute and got some money back out of it. But it took a while to get that far.

I thought they were very well written, considering they came all the way from India.

I have used E-bay successfully. I recently purchased some wheels for my road bike off E-bay.

I think the key is to forget that E-bay is there, and treat it like a person to person transaction. Look at their feedback carefully, ask them some questions and see if they seem sane. Buying blindly from the E-bay 'stores' is a fools game.

Considering that Ebay owns Pay Pal, should we expect anything more?

The next one I am worried about is Skype, which is excellent right now but purchased by Ebay a couple of years ago. Cannot wait for them to muck it up somehow...

Bought and sold many car parts online, never an issue, and never from Ebay. With so many horror stories, why bother? Pelican and similar enthusiast forums are a great way to buy and sell online, just so you are cautious and do your homework.

Wayne, ever consider a WTB section ?? I've often thought on a large scale an alternate to ebay would be a site that people looking for things could post. In the industrial world there are such things as chinese auctions via internet for yearly qty's of things ( castings, motors etc etc)...