Ebay Scam Artists Exposed E

1) Square Trade - Square trade is a service Ebay offers. It mediates by sending an email to the buyer or seller stating the problem and asks for the person receiving the email to respond. An email is sent showing the result. PROBLEMS: If you do not pay 29.99, you will not get more involvement than that first email. Who would spend 29.99 on items 30.00 or below? If you buy and item for 10.00, you are essentially having to pay them more than three times the money to clear it up and even that is not guaranteed. All that gets you is another email or possible phone call. They don't guarantee your refund! Even if an item you bought was 60.00, you have to pay 29.99 so the item costs you now 99.99! Far cry from a bargain. Square trade is only good for items of many hundreds or thousands of dollars and doesn't guarantee anything. What this high price does, is create an "under the radar" scam artist. Those who feed off of selling dozens or hundreds for low amounts of money and ripping people off. Since the price is low, people don't think they can get back their money and give up. They can't sue as it costs more than it's worth. So Ebay creates the small time scammer. Here's the thing: if you add up the money stolen from small time amounts like 5.00, 10.00 etc, verses the amounts stolen on high priced items like a thousand up, the figure will most likely be a LOT larger on the smaller items. Why? Because they can get away with it more. It's much easier to recoup large dollar amounts (credit card and Pay Pal protection, small claims court, lawsuits, and other such things. However, who's going through all that problem for 5.00? I think this is appalling. It think Ebay should not charge more than the long distance phone call to their clients. 30.00 is a ridiculous price and make for a breeding ground. Good customer service = more business. Bad customer service means people leaving Ebay or trying to expose them...like this page! Not good for business. Pure and simple.

2) Ebay customer Service: People have said and Ebay admits (and this is according to an Ebay two hour special that aired in July 2005, that they lack in customer service. Most of the people answering phones there do not understand what you are saying and offer little to no help. Via email, it's worse. I have had a few problems. I have emailed Ebay to state my problem. I get back "standard" pre-formatted answers that have nothing to do with my question. This service is useless.

3) Follow up emails when they didn't answer your question right. Ebay will send answers to your questions that don't answer your question! You are instructed NOT to hit reply usually and to submit the question over, putting you in a loop of Deja Vu. Even if you hit respond, and reply with a follow up telling them it didn't answer your question, you are usually ignored. Most problems will never be resolved and you are left frustrated and give up. This is obviously what they want to accomplish.

C) If you do fill it out, where does it go? Is it reviewed? I personally believe they file 13 it, or chuck it. Why? Because they don't let us know where it's going and no results are seen. Do they ever come out and state these problems to the public? No. What they need to do is save these and put them in categories. So if the problem is that people are not getting responses to certain issues and that's leading the pack with 60% complaint rate, that's where their focus needs to be shifted. But they don't announce this to the public, which leaves even LESS incentive to fill out the "Customer Support Survey" form. How about offering us points or something for doing this? Or sending it when the result was finished (say a week's time). How about an email back that says "We're happy your problem was resolved" or "We no longer can help you, but here are some options to explore..." SOMETHING to give us hope or make us feel like we are being listened to!

5) Practically hidden help and contact email addresses. It's slightly better recently, but it seems Ebay is deliberately trying to hid emails or information that brings you to live people, emails or other things that have to do with problems. For example, if you type in how to sell something, set up a new account, set up a store, boy is the information EASY to find! Great stuff. Now go and try to complain. Get back with me after you do the research. How many links do you need to get information that leads Ebay to make money off of you (like selling something or signing up for a storefront) and now how many steps and tiny links do you have to his to find a place to complain or contact information for Ebay departments! Privacy excluded, you will notice a huge difference. It appears Ebay is trying to HIDE this inforamtion. Why? Because it costs money to answer questions about being ripped off. But the other questions do to making them money. That's why!

6) Trying to recover entitled fee reimbursement: Did you know you can get your listing fees back if your item did not sell or if you had a non paying bidder, you can get back your final value fee? Probably not, but even if you do, try to figure out HOW to get that money back! I couldn't figure it out and Ebay charged me two listing fees for items that did not sell twice. I gave up and that's what Ebay wants you to do. I have to list them even a third time if I want to try again. So in effect, I am charged THREE times for the same item! This could easily surpass the items worth. Add to final value fee and the myriad of other things they charge (and let's not even mention Pay Pal yet) and you're talking about LOSING money. Like the contact emails, the protocol for getting your money back is convoluted, vague and hard to get to.

7) No monitoring of shipping gouging/lack of getting what is promised: I don't know if responsible for this or not, but Ebay has never to my knowledge attempted to address the issue of sellers gouging on shipping. For example, people who claim to mail items Priority, or fed ex and who charge 10-15 for shipping a piece of paper and you get it with a 37 cent stamp on it. Does that happen? You bet. I personally have lost many hundreds of dollars on shipping. Ebay arranges Pay Pal, sees the shipping there and the person sends the item and you have proof what it costs, as you have the envelope or box... There should be shipping limitations. They are not watching out for their customers. At least a look into this would be beneficial to customers. In addition, other issues like paying for insurance or delivery confirmation when not receiving said service... How can this be resolved? If it states specifically in the auction that Ebay ACCEPTED and let fly by you must pay insurance and you pay by Pay Pal all the applied charges, you are entitled to that. If the item comes with the name and address of the person and NO insurance, tracking etc, and photos are supplied as proof, Ebay should reimburse. They ought to recover their fees by charging to the seller's charge account.