I was the high bidder at $157 and I immediately emailed the seller within minutes of the auction closing. We exchanged some emails where I was asking him if he could use UPS rather than USPS and he pretty much ignored me and asked me to send the money thorugh paypal. Finally, because I am not sending the money as fast as he’d like, he sends me a rude email threatening to report me to ebay. Mind you, it hasn’t been three days since the auction closed and we’ve been in continuous contact by email.
I wrote him telling him I found his email quite rude and, since I pay for the shipping I get to chose who does it.
I have checked his history and he has sold 10 items worth about $20 each and has two negative feedbacks. There is no way I am sending money upfront with those credentials.
I have told him I want to use an escrow service (which I pay for) and he refuses. This makes me even more suspicious. I think I am quite entitled to use escrow as it just protects me and costs him nothing in money or effort.
I am in Washington DC and he is in Cherry Hill NJ so I considered driving there but that would waste a whole day.
This is only my second purchase on ebay. Any dopers have any advice? What’s the custom in a situation like this? Any ideas or advice?
Yup, I guess you are right, but I already got myself into this one and I need to get out.
I was ready to just send him the payment when I got the nasty email which made me think twice.
I do not think anyone can reasonably refuse to use escrow so I am quite comfortable insisting. I do not think my insistence on using escrow can be seen as placing a hurdle or trying to get out of completing the transaction.
OTOH I would like to know if there’s any advice. I would like to avoid a showdown if possible. Does eBay have some kind of mediation? (I don’t care what they say, I am not sending the cash upfront)
What does the negative feedback say? Did this seller flat-out stiff anyone, or were the complaints about something else? If the seller hasn’t stiffed anyone, you might want to re-think refusing to pay up front. The seller sounds like a first-class ass, but if he has a history of actually sending items, then he probable will with you as well. Does the eBay ad state that the seller will NOT take escrow? (They usually do, right at the top, near the bidder name and shipping info.) If the ad states that the seller will not take escrow, you can understand why the seller would be peevish that you insist on it anyway. (You should have never bid to begin with.)
If you don’t follow through with this sale, you will get negative feedback. Getting negative feedback isn’t the end of the world, but it does not look good to have it so soon into your eBay identity. You will may end up having other sellers cancel your bids in the future, because they’ll consider you a bad risk. Many sellers won’t, but some will. And that may end up to be a bummer. Of course, if you follow your negative feedback with a lot of good feedback, then you will regain some status, and the stigma will go away. Also, eBay puts takes note that you bailed out of a sale, and you get a point against you. I think if you get three bad points, you are booted out of eBay.
Go to eBay’s “Safe Harbour”, and read what they say. There is supposedly some sort of fraud insurance (up to $200, I believe, but check and make sure, I could be wrong about the amount.) If the seller does flat-out defraud you, you could collect the insurance from eBay. All-in-all, it may be just better to pay (if you are SURE you can collect the insurance from eBay if the seller defaults).
yosemitebabe, I checked and Ebay says they would cover it except a $25 deductible. This aside, I cannot see why he would refuse escrow which costs him nothing in money, effort, or otherwise.
The negative feedback thing doesn’t concern me much. This is my second purchase. First one was more than a year ago, and it is not like I intend to buy much.
On the listing, under payments, it did not say he did or did not accept escrow.
and nothing further under item description.
Although he says Visa/Mastercard, he really does not take them personally but through paypal, so I would have no protection there. I guess I could hold him to that and say I am willing to pay him directly with my credit card.
So, he does not say anything for or against escrow. At any rate and in my view, escrow is as good as cash unless he can come up with a good reason to refuse and I cannot think any. Can you think of one? The only one I can think of is that his intentions are less than the best because otherwise he loses nothing
Yes, the guy has shown to be a jerk and that is what concerns me now. He has sold some $20 items and he might be tempted to stiff me or give me hard time after what I said to him. I have heard of several cases of people who put up a few small items for sale to get good feedback and then stiff someone with a bigger item.
FTR, PayPal also has fraud insurance. I forget the limit, but I believe it to be up to either $200 or $400. Between that and eBay’s insurance, you should be in pretty good shape.
You should offer to pay direct by MasterCard. His listing shows that he accepts MasterCard, so he has to take it. Accepting it through PayPal would not be recognized by eBay, so if he refuses he is in trouble with eBay, not you. Offering him the choice of MasterCard or escrow might force him to choose the escrow to avoid trouble with eBay.
You have protection through your credit card (Visa, Mastercard, etc). If you pay through PayPal using your credit card and he does not come through with the goods, dispute the transaction and you will get a full refund, by one of two methods :
Firstly, a dispute - Mastercard or Visa will contact the merchant and debit their merchant facility.
Secondly, an insurance claim - Visa & Mastercard insure your transactions up to, I believe, $500. So if the goods are not up to scratch, there is the insurance option.
Then there are the eBay channels.
At the end of the day, you have several layers of protection if you use your credit card.
As for asking him to do escrow, that is fair enough, but you should have asked before bidding. I suppose that is the benefit of hindsight.
The lesson is - don’t bid if the seller looks dodgy, and make sure you ask questions before you bid. When you bid, you agree to the terms and conditions set out by the vendor, relating to postage, escrow, payment options, etc.
I got ripped for a paltry $35 on one Ebay.com auction in Dec 2000. So far I have got $5 back from ebay Lloyds insurance & I’m waiting for PayPal to come through, 6 months later!
It took so long because I used the reserve money in my PayPal acct to pay for it. Now Im going to not keep a balance & use only the direct credit card through PayPal cause Lloyds told me one has to contact the bank first to dispute the charges. sigh.
You might try the ebay newsgroup sailor through http://groups.google.com/ they have a database of messages back to 95. Search for ‘Ebay’
Wrong. If he says he accpets Mastercard, and does so through Paypal, there is nothing fraudulent going on there at all. Ebay has no beef with him in that situation.
Sailor, pretty much what cazzle, Purd Werfect, and yosemitebabe said. If in the middle of dealings someone suddenly wanted to do Escrow, I’m not sure I would do it either. The fact that it wasn’t mentioned in the auction should indicate that he will not do it, as there is no “I will not do escrow” option. If the seller wants to do it, there is a listing option which says so. Trying to hold him to escrow now (after you’ve bid)is unreasonable, IMO.
My personal opinion (and I’ve been buying and selling on E-bay for a long time with NO problems at all) is that if the seller refuses to use an escrow service, screw 'em. Yes, your bid is legally binding, blah, blah, blah, but if this guy is giving you a hard time and you’re getting a vib from his e-mails that he’s going to rip you off, don’t send money. What’s the worst that will happen? You’ll get bad feedback? Better then losing the money, in my opinion. I would not want to deal with the hassle of getting my money back should a problem arise.
That is what I would do in your shoes. That’s a lot of money to be messing with. That said, here’s some future advice if you want it:
NEVER place bids with a person who has any bad feedback, or at least check the feedback and see what the problem was with the transaction. There are lots of sellers out there and lots of items- you can likely find the same thing without having to worry about negative feedback. Sometimes a person ends up with a negative for a ridiculous reason, but you should be able to determine with the story is. A person with only 10 feedbacks and 2 are negative is someone I would never bid with, especially for a big ticket (to me, more then $50) item. Stick with people with loads of good feedback and no negs, for your own safety.
NEVER pay for an item of more then $100 without using escrow. (Which I know you’re trying to do) The only way I would pay for an item like that without escrow is if the seller has LOTS, as in a few hundred, positive feedbacks and no negs, or if I had done business with him before.
NEVER let a seller bully you into terms you are uncomfortable going along with.
ALWAYS ask questions in advance, such as use of escrow, payment and shipping options, etc.
BE SMART If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The mistake you made in this transaction was placing a bid with a person that has 2 out of 10 negative feedbacks (if I understood the OP correctly). Stay away from these people in the future, and be careful with your money!
cazzle, I believe you are mistaken. From what I understand, when you use Paypal, you are not protected like when you pay a merchant directly. The credit card considers it a cash advance and you got your cash which was deposited to your Paypal account and then transferred to the other guy. You are out of luck. Visa and Mastercard screen their merchants and can charge them back if you dispute a charge but they cannot do that in a case like this. Of course, if my dispute was with Paypal directly, then yes but if Paypal delivered their service (payment to the other party) then I have no claim against them.
Yes, I know Paypal and ebay offer some kind of insurance but I would rather not get ripped off in the first place and go through the hassle of filing a claim. Especially after reading Handy’s account. And also as a matter of principle. I do not want to let someone get away with fraud.
KKBattousai, I was preferring UPS because it offers tracking, I could pay them directly and I generally like them better. When he started acting like a jerk and I got suspicious I thought it was one more (minor I admit) guarantee as UPS would pick it up from his address. But he seems to prefer taking it to the Post Office or to UPS… They are too many warning signs… none are major but…
As I say, as long as he cannot come up with a good reason not to use escrow (other than he is trying to stiff me), I believe I am entitled to it as it means no cost or inconvenience to him. he gets his money just the same but through tradenable instead of paypal.
I guess the other option would be for me to drive there and back which would mean a whole day and about $25 of gas…
Zette, thanks for your advice. You confirm every one of my thoughts now. Yes, I would have absolutely no problem sending the money to a reputable business selling in ebay who has tons of positive feedback. Yes, they have the ocassional negative but that is inevitable with hundreds of items sold.
In fact, I was quite ready to pay this guy when he started acting as a jerk and I bad signs started to accummulate.
I agree that the money is worth more to me than any feedback. I don’t care much about that.
I just can’t see any valid reason why the guy would refuse to use escrow so that forces me to protect myself by insisting on using it.
We have not come to a frontal confrontation on this yet. I am just going to ask him, without confronting or antagonising him, what are his reasons for refusing to use escrow and see how he reacts. There is a good chance they guy is not trying to stiff me but is just a jerk but I am not taking chances.
As an occasional seller myself, I would be affronted is a buyer insisted that I use UPS over USPS. It’s not as convenient for me to get to UPS, and they don’t supply free packaging materials for priority mail. I think it’s up to the seller, who has to get the thing mailed out, to decide what way it will be sent (within certain guidelines, that is). If it helps, USPS also offers tracking via delivery confirmation. I had to check on an item once and it told me the last place it had been scanned (Denver, when it was on its way to Grand Junction from Detroit).
I once got negative feedback by mistake when the buyer confused me with another person she bought a similar item from. Ebay makes it very difficult to remove feedback so even though the buyer apologized and said she’d try to get it removed, it still sits on my damned record. As far as I can tell, it has never really hurt me.
If you’re willing to risk negative feedback, ask to be let out of the deal. Tell him that as far as you are concerned, he is violating E-bay’s terms of service (by not waiting a reasonable amount of time before sending hostile emails about nonpayment, and not answering your emails’ questions, and refusing escrow) and you want out without penalty. You might offer to pay the difference between your bid and the bid of the next-highest bidder, if he can get them to buy it. That way, this jerk is out NOTHING. And if he gives you negative feedback anyway, use the response comment field to say something like “He violated policies; check out HIS ratings” and leave it at that.
CrankyAsAnOldMan, I believe the rule is that if buyer pays for shipping, buyer gets to choose who does it. In any case, my proposal with UPS was that I call UPS, pay them directly and they go to his door and pick it up. I cannot see any inconvenience for him escept that he has to supply an address. He says he’d rather take it to the post office… hmmmm
I mean, I am reasonable and if the guy has a valid reason then I am willing to work something out which would be acceptable to both of us. But he just seems like he is a jerk or he is trying pull a fast one
I am not trying to get out of the deal. On the contrary, I am eager to complete the transaction, I just want to be safe.
If it comes down to the ropes I can always say he is not honoring the payment terms he offered as he offered to take credit cards and now it turns out he cannot take them directly, only through paypal.
Well, Sailor, the situation I see is this:
You bid on an auction without checking either the seller’s feedback or the terms and conditions closely. You communicate with the seller when the auction ends, and are told the payment options. After three days, payment has not yet come through, and the seller sends you a reminder notice that lets you know that if you don’t pay, you will get negative feedback. You decide to try and back out of the auction and come to the SD boards crying about how he sent you a rude email so you think he’s going to rip you off. At this point, while seeking justification for backing out of the deal, you check his feedback and discover he has two negatives amongst ten positives, so you tell us that without sharing exactly what the feedback was. You then plot and scheme to worm out of your side of the bargain while trying to get the vendor into trouble. You are convinced that the email he sent you is evidence of his intention to screw you over. That, and the fact that even though he never said he would accept escrow, you are demanding that he do so. Newsflash - I wouldn’t accept escrow either, unless we were talking big dollars. Why should he stuff around with escrow just for you? The other bidders on the auction would pay up without demanding the vendor jump through their hoops.
You yourself say that you have only used eBay once before. You also said that him leaving you negative feedback doesn’t really bother you. Well, as a seller who gets stiffed by buyers like you every so often, I can tell you that I would cancel your bid outright if you bid on one of my auctions with a rating of 1 positive, 1 negative. There is no way I would give you the chance to rip me off, and with a history like that, I would consider the odds of 50/50 too bad to chance.
Pay your money, and your stuff will show up. You’re carrying on like a baby. Methinks someone got carried away and bid too high, and is now looking for a reason to back out.
I personally don’t think a reminder notice about payment is unreasonable after three days. Many sellers give you seven days to pay as part of their conditions - three days means half of them are gone.
By the way, my earlier posting was written by Mr. Cazzle using my account.
>> You bid on an auction without checking either the seller’s feedback or the terms and conditions closely.
Not true. Where did I say that?
>>You communicate with the seller when the auction ends, and are told the payment options.
Yes, except that the “options” he gives me is only one and it is not what it said in the listing. The listing says he accepts credit cards but he doesn’t. He accepts paypal which is substantially different.
>>After three days, payment has not yet come through, and the seller sends you a reminder notice that lets you know that if you don’t pay, you will get negative feedback.
Yes, in very rude terms and totally uncalled for since we were still communicating
>>You decide to try and back out of the auction
Where the fuck did you read that? You must be smoking something. Here is what I said:
Is that not clear enough for you? what is your native language?
>> and come to the SD boards crying about how he sent you a rude email so you think he’s going to rip you off.
I was not “crying”. The OP is asking for advice and custom on ebay which I think is reasonable. I am not trying to impose my view so I will accept custom as guidance. I think I am being reasonable.
>> At this point, while seeking justification for backing out of the deal,
Are you mentally retarded or what?
>> you check his feedback and discover he has two negatives amongst ten positives, so you tell us that without sharing exactly what the feedback was. You then plot and scheme to worm out of your side of the bargain while trying to get the vendor into trouble.
What?
Get the vendor into trouble? Where do you get that?
>> You are convinced that the email he sent you is evidence of his intention to screw you over.
No, I did not say that. I said he seems like a jerk and I’d rather be safe.
>> That, and the fact that even though he never said he would accept escrow, you are demanding that he do so.
No, he treatened me first and I asked to use escrow after that fact. I am not trying to impose it on him as I have made clear, I am trying to work something out. He is not accpting forms of payment he listed
I have offered to pay by credit card (as that would protect me) but he cannot do it.
>> Newsflash - I wouldn’t accept escrow either, unless we were talking big dollars.
Well, I can understand that, I realize you are the same kind of jerk he is.
>>Why should he stuff around with escrow just for you?
Stuff around what? It requires nothing on his part. It works the same as Paypal. Have you used it? Similar to Paypal at tradenable.com
>>The other bidders on the auction would pay up without demanding the vendor jump through their hoops.
You don’t know that and neither do I
>>You yourself say that you have only used eBay once before.
Yes, that is why I ask for helpful advice here. I will consider the advice of veterans on ebay. Needles to say I have not found anything useful in your posting yet.
>> You also said that him leaving you negative feedback doesn’t really bother you.
It bothers me less than losing $170, yes
>> Well, as a seller who gets stiffed by buyers like you every so often, I can tell you that I would cancel your bid outright if you bid on one of my auctions with a rating of 1 positive, 1 negative. There is no way I would give you the chance to rip me off, and with a history like that, I would consider the odds of 50/50 too bad to chance.
Pay your money, and your stuff will show up. You’re carrying on like a baby. Methinks someone got carried away and bid too high, and is now looking for a reason to back out.
>> Did you already gather my impression that you are a jerk? Why don’t you read the thread before you post such idiocy?
>> I personally don’t think a reminder notice about payment is unreasonable after three days.
In very rude terms when we are still communicating yes, it is unreasonable.
>> Many sellers give you seven days to pay as part of their conditions - three days means half of them are gone.
A rude email is unjustified after any number of days. after three days it is absolutely uncalled for.
>> By the way, my earlier posting was written by Mr. Cazzle using my account.
Well, I already answered that. He was partly mistaken in the information he provided but at least he seems like a nice person who was trying to help, very unlike yourself.
Your post was of absolutely no help whatsoever to me. I made it clear in the OP I am looking for help in resolving the situation not your idiotic and baseless rant.
By the way, my apologies to the other posters for the tone of my earlier message but cazzle’s post is an attack on my integrity which I could not leave unanswered. Especially since it is clear the purpose of my OP was to seek help in resolving the matter honorably and not backing out, as she suggests I was trying to do.
I also said if nothing better works out I am considering driving 150 miles to Cherry Hill to complete the transaction. Does that sound like I am trying to back out of the deal?
I have not posed a greater attack on your integrity than you have on his.
You haven’t allowed him to speak for himself. What do you consider rude? Did his email say “Pay up now or else”, or did it say “If you don’t pay up, I will rate you negatively” - because I think there is a big difference between the two.
Where did I get the idea that you didn’t read the conditions?
If this was such an issue, why would you even bid on his auction? Therefore, I assume you only checked AFTER you bid, won, got his email, and decided you didn’t like him. And you’d have known he didn’t accept escrow if you’d checked for it before the auction ended.
Why do I think you’re trying to worm out of it? Because of this:
Accepting credit cards through PayPal is accepting credit cards. To imply that he lied is wrong; it is a fact that most of the credit card accepting merchants on eBay do so through PayPal. PayPal enable him to accept credit cards, therefore he accepts credit cards, and the payment is processed through his fulfilment company. You’re being a jerk, complaining that “technically” he doesn’t accept credit cards because a third party processes the transaction.
I saw that. Nothing wrong with my eyesight. I saw it, and I thought “Yeah, right! What a weasel!!”. I think this is lipservice. No matter what we say, this guy won’t be able to please you, and you will consider him priviledged to get a neutral rating for his trouble.
How can you say something like that? This poor guy is being verbally slaughtered on this thread, when all he has done is put an object up for auction. You decided that he was going to rip you off, and wouldn’t give him a chance. Your statement above shows that you aren’t expecting him to fulfil his side of the bargain. Then you say
Are you saying that I am the kind of person to rip people off? That’s what you’ve said about him. Yet I have participated in over 100 online auctions, and have never renegged on a deal. I have always fulfilled my side of the bargain in a timely manner, and I have nothing but positive feedback to my name. So, who is the jerk here, Sailor - cazzle with 103 positive, no negative, or Sailor with 1 positive, and what appears to be brewing up to 1 negative? It’s a shame that your partner in this transaction won’t know about this whole conversation to aid him in rating you.