A recent ebay experience taught me that ebay has policies that allow - and probably encourage - buyers to scam sellers.

I posted a pair of Bose headphones that were mine, were used only be me, were photographed for ebay by me, were posted on ebay by me. The buyer of these headphones demanded a refund after complaining that the ear cushion fell off and that the noise reduction sealant was broken. Bose doesn't make headphones with cushions that just fall off. I know those headphones and have pictures of the headphones with the stitching around the cushions showing that the cushions were intact. The buyer had a ruined pair, bought mine, replaced his ruined pair, kept mine, and got a refund. And, I end up with a broken pair of headphones.

I didn't agree to a refund because I knew those headphones and knew it was a scam, but the buyer escalated the issue, and Paypal (ie, ebay) refunded him his money and I get a broken headset with an explanation from Paypal that it is part of doing business.

I don't believe that it is fair that Paypal refunds buyers without reviewing, well, conducting a more stringent review, of the facts and evidence. Buyers ALWAYS get a refund! Regardless of whether or not you indicate such in your posting as required!

These complaints have happened in 2009 and 2010. Around July of 2009 I had 5 good feedback but now that is all gone because of Ebay/Pay Pal and the actor Joe Penny. First of all my Ebay account was suspended because someone from Ebay got into my account and purchased a stupid looking lap top without my permission. When I received the lap top I immediately returned it. It was nothing but a piece of junk. Then, I made a complaint to Ebay and Pay Pal because this piece of junk was charged to my bank account. Of course, As usual they did nothing to assist me. So I made a dispute to my bank then all of a sudden my account was suspended. Get this they wanted social security numbers, my bank statements, my rent receipts, where I worked, and everything but of course I wasn't stupid enough to give it to them. Then, I opened another account well Joe Penny the actor from Rip Tide and Jake and the Fatman has an auction which is JoePenny86studentbodyright. He is shill bidding which is having other people bid on his items to make the bidding go up. Well, anyways when I reported him Ebay and Pay pal would do nothing about him. Why? He is an actor and is rich, Of course! Anyways, Joe Penny has broken a number of contracts but is his account suspended. No, it's not! I left negative feedback for Joe Penny because he had my account suspended plus he cheated me out of money, pictures, c.d., and a jacket. Ebay says that it's a legal contract between two people however that is not quite true. They only make the poor people go by the rules and the rich get to do whatever they want to. I've even had to take Joe Penny to court in which he tried to counter sue me. Imagine that! Of course he didn't win and of course I didn't because he lied to the judge and the judge lapped it up as usual! So, now I am out of over $200.00 for pictures, c.d., jacket that I never received and Joe Penny, Pay Pal, and Ebay still has my money and refuses to give it back to me. I am going to take Pay Pal and Ebay to court over everything that I am out. If anyone would like to have their complaints entered into the court that I am filing for proof that Ebay and Pay Pal is doing nothing but scamming people then you can contact me at [email protected].

I am a private party who makes a small but useful amount of income on eBay, selling things for other people and for myself, etc. In 2006 or 20086, I had posted an ad on Craigslist advertsiing that I would sell thins for people; Scott Hawkins was one fo the respondents. He semeed liek a good guy and in fact I sold at least three items for him, so I had begun to trust him. He agreed to my normal ways of selling and getting money to him in all previous auctions (designed so that I would not get ripped off, basically!), so when he asked to do it differently on a 4th successful auction for a $1300 Oakley sunglasses case, I felt I could trust him and sent him some ( I think about $800) of the money for it before the item had been shipped. which I never would do normally, but you can see I thought I could trust him. Well, it turns out there never was an Oakley sunglasses case, which Scott had allegedly stored somewhere at a shipping center in Denver. and I ended up not only losing all the money that i forwarded him, but also additional funds out of my personal PayPal and bank accounts as the upset buyer who did not get the case ended up filing a PayPal complaint against me, and in the end I ended up paying over $1200 out of my pocket. Plus partially trashing my eBay business at the time!

And Scott had taken off to California. I tried and tried to reach him, he emailed me (2x) and said he was sorry and would pay me back, but I never have seen a penny of the money. It was soon after this that I discovered he had a habit of ripping others off, especially in regards to fake Rolex watches, etc... and then he completely disappeared after allegedly trying to start a Smart Car business in California somewhere, which true to the trail that Scott seems to leave behind him, did not succeed.

He gained my trust, then when he saw that I trusted him, he scammed me. I have had one contact with him in the last 12 months after searching forever on the net to find him (I got lucky, I guess) ; he claims he is unable to pay me anything at all, and aid he would help me with SEO marketing for my (wedding) photography website. Well, he forwarded me one email with a few pretty much generic and useless pointers, then I never heard from him again. Here was his chance to do $1200 in business to promote me, and to finally after 3 years pay me back, and he blew it-once again, not a man of integrity. I even once told him I would be happy if he sent me $900 just to settle.
So I made a mistake, he scammed me, and I had to pay for it.

There are more than a few complaints about him on the web as well, especially in regards to not completed web-design after he had been paid for it (!)(through another company that he ended up bailing on on) and something to do with Rolex watches. Fakes or fake auctions for the real thing. Also he had been kicked off eBay previous to using my services; now I know why.

Please, if anyone knows how to get to this guy and get my money out of him, I would be delighted! He is a full time scammer, as far as I can tell, and he needs to be stopped
Thanks
Michael
Boulder, CO

I suspect if they reviewed a restaurant that served nothing by glass shards, it would get higher marks from many people than EBay .

First of all, despite the popularity of complaining about the high fees (EBay takes around 20% of the sale between listing fees, picture fees, final value fees and PAYPal fees to accept the money.) I understand that EBay has a monopoly on the auction market and given their customer exposure, they could probably charge 30% and get away with it. So I am not going to complain about the ever raising fees because that is part of the beauty of doing business with an industry leader. Thank you sir, may I have another? (I will admit to secretly crossing my fingers that some knight in shining armor other auction site will come and bump EBay out of the market with lower fees and more customer service.

My biggest problem with EBay is that they are so large, nobody calls them on their unfair practices. EBay can pretty much do whatever they want to in terms of business ... stuff that would get other companies in a lot of trouble for market fixing, price fixing, etc.

An example of this happened to me recently as a seller on EBay. I am not a high volume seller and admit that EBay is more of a hobby than anything else. I see an item for sale at a really low price at a store, I pick it up and list it on EBay. Usually I will buy a pizza with the profits. Sometimes, the item doesn't sell and I'm forced to keep it (which is why I buy stuff that I can use myself.)

I have a decent amount of feedbacks on EBay. Out of 1255 transactions, 100% of the people I've dealt with have given me positive feedback. And EBay does a star rating to see how good you actually are, and in all of the 4 categories, I received 5 stars ... which is actually quite hard to do.

Recently, EBay cancelled one of my listings and suspended my account. It gave me no reason for doing this and when I emailed to see why, they said they could not tell me why my auction was ended due to security reasons. I called customer service and spoke to a representative who told me that he too could not tell me why my account was suspended and my listing was cancelled. He said that it violated an EBay policy and that is all he could say.

I contacted another person from EBay by email who told me that he could not say why the item was cancelled by mentioned that it was roughly because EBay thought the item was fake based on the price being too low. The item I was selling was a very expensive Nike soccer shoe. It retails for $185. They were on sale at a popular department store because the model is a year old for $50. I bought a pair (with a 20% off coupon) and wore them one time and decided I didn't like the feel, so I would list them on EBay.

Within 2 days of listing, EBay cancelled the auction and suspended my account. This is even that I have been an EBay member for 10 YEARS!!! I have 100% positive feedback!!! Not a single person has ever accused me in 1255+ transactions of ever offering anything but the real thing.

I spoke with another customer service rep. 3 days after the suspension/listing cancellation. The first rep. told me that I could appeal the suspension and EBay would get back to me in 24 hours. They never did. I explained this to the second rep. who told me that they weren't sure why nobody got back to me. I pressed the second rep. for details about the listing ending and after about 30 minutes of go around, she told me she thought it was because the price was too low for the item.

I don't understand how in a fair market, a company can suspend you from their site for listing an item at TOO low a price. What if I was given an item as a gift that was worth $100 and I wanted to sell it quick and get $20? $20 is better to have than a gift you don't want. That would be the equivalent to if there was a store in the mall that was selling polo shirts for $10 and 2 other stores in the same mall were selling the same shirts for $50, so the mall manager destroyed all the shirts at the less expensive store and told them if they didn't start raising their prices, they would lose their lease. This is more like communism.

I did a search of similar shoes and found that while most of the cleats were listed at around $80 to $120 (mine were listed at $59.) ... even at $80 ... similar cleats only sold 1 in every 25 times they were listed at that price. 90% of the cleats that were listed on EBay did not sell at all. Why would I want to price my cleats the same as all the other cleats that were not selling and had to re-listed (each time you relist an item on EBay witha fixed price, you have to pay $.35 + $.15 per picture + $1.50 for a subtitle if you want an extra sentence in the item title. (this went from $.50 to $1.50 during EBay's last round of fee increases.)

So, my choices are ... if I don't want my listing pulled and my account suspended ... I can put my cleats, that I don't want and used once at $79 - $120 like everyone else and keep relisting them because they don't sell. Or, I can not list them at all because EBay thinks they are priced too low.

Another strange thing is that if I go on EBay and type in 'Nike Air Jordan' ... most of the pairs of Air Jordans for sale on EBay are fake. They are obvious fakes as well. There are sellers who are selling 100 pairs of Air Jordan shoes, which are extremely rare and many of the most popular series were made 10 - 20 years ago. Yet these sellers have an unlimited supply of brand new, sparkling white shoes that were not available for sale since 1992. Also, Tiffany recently sued EBay because they found that 80% or more of the pieces they bought on EBay through a random sampling of sellers were counterfiet. Abercrombie clothing is frequently counterfietted and I've even seen obvuious fake Rolexes sold on EBay for thousands of dollars.

Another thing about EBay is the total lack of customer service. During this issue, my problem was not resolved because nobody at EBay would tell me why my item was removed. Nobody would lift the account suspension when I offered to show a receipt from Nike for the shoes I was selling. And nobody got back to me when they were supposed to.

I made 3 phone calls to EBay's customer service and spoke to 3 different reps. who gave me different information. The only thing they agreed upon is that I could not talk to anyone else from any other department about my question, yet they could not answer my question. The total time on the phone with these reps was around 1 1/2 hours.

I sent 5 emails. Two of them were answered with a discourteous form letter type of email telling me that they were not able to provide any information. One even went so far as to warn me 'selling unauthorized products is illegal'. Even though I explained I had receipts for the items and my feedback should speak for itself. Three emails when unanswered.

I was even given a link to a Live Chat Session with an agent on EBay who told me within 2 minutes that he was not allowed to address specific cases and that I should try to email someone. (which obviously yielded no results.)

EBay's customer service is a complete joke. It is a time wasting process that runs you around in circles and accomplishes nothing. What amazed me most is that every single person seems to have the same script about not being able to talk to anyone else.

I wish there was an alternative to EBay, but there is not for designer clothing. Amazon is better (buying and selling-wise) for media, books, etc. Overstock auctions is not gaining any ground and has only a few listings here and there. Amazon auctions is a bit more confusing in terms of the price structure and is not the place to sell designer clothing. I am stuck with EBay ... but from now on, I am only selling what I have left and will not sell after that is gone. I am also boycotting EBay for buying. I used to like to shop around a little bit on EBay, but now I refuse to.

Honestly, most of the clothes I bought off EBay were described inaccurately (described as recent manufacture and came and were from the 70s and 80s.) One time I bought a suit that someone claimed they bought recently at Brooks Brothers and didn't want anymore and I found a label inside the suit suggesting it was made in the late 70s. many times items come stained or smelling like cigarettes, mildew or other things.

I fell like EBay often penalizes the sellers who do good, maintain good feedback, etc. I pay about $200 in EBay fees each month for the auctions and have never been treated so badly by any company, even those I do not give $200 every month. On EBay it seems that the bad guys always get away with being bad and the good guys are the ones that EBay ensnares in its web to try to trap the bad guys. The ones who know their way around the system prosper, while those who follow the rules and have many repeat buyers and good feedback get the problems.

I would avoid EBay as a seller or a buyer. Too much hassle and problems. I wish I wasn't stuck using EBay and won't be much longer once EBay removes my ridiculous suspension and allows me to sell items again. Apparently though, I am not allowed to offer great deals. So I have to watch how good of a deal I give my buyers or EBay might suspend me again for offering buyers good discounts on items I can prove are authentic.

I opened an ad on eBay & decided to purchase the vehicle. Was in contact with the seller & thought I was doing all the right things. Once I opened the site, without my knowledge, this buyer had taken over my whole ebay account and operating as eBay, answering my Live Chat, telling me all the right information, explaining how this was the the correct method to operate. They sent me emails under eBay. They then told me how to send money to be protected by eBays' new protection plan, which I fell for & did. $8563.75 gone. I wired the money to a woman's name that was suppose to be eBays' agent; which eBay verified when I contacted the live chat. It was all done under eBay's name, format, titles. These people took over my whole system. Big Scam that should be stopped