eBay sellers' tales

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I sell stuff on eBay - not much, mostly books & stuff I have lying around that I no longer use. I’ve occasionally sold things for friends who don’t want to navigate the process.

I take care that my listings are clear and accurate (“Never over-promise”). Seems to be working, as I don’t get many questions and almost never an item return. When I do get questions, they are, strangely, almost always ones for which the listing contains a specific detailed answer:

Listing: “This book includes a dust jacket, as the pictures show. It has no inscription.”
Question: “Is a dust jacket included? Is it signed by the author?”

I’ve had just one really bad buyer. I was selling a small on-demand water heater for a friend. I tested it before listing it - seemed to work fine. It sold for $55. Payment was delayed for almost a week. I shipped it promptly.

Buyer got back to me after he’d had it a week, reporting that he’d given it to someone to install, it didn’t work, he wanted his money back, and was threatening negative feedback. I said it worked for me, but no problem, just ship it back for a full refund.

He responded that he should not have to ship it - it should have worked. And he posted the negative feedback. I noted that the only option I had was to offer a refund - purchase price plus shipping cost - but I needed to receive the heater back first.

He responded “I feel scammed.” I said “Please return it for your refund.” Then, two days later, he said his installer had got it working, heater was installed and functioning properly, so he would keep it. But he would not withdraw the negative feedback.

I send all this to eBay, requesting that my 100% positive rating be restored. I got no response (which my mercifully limited experience dealing with them had told me to expect). The negative feedback persisted for about 5 months, then somehow magically disappeared.

Anyone have stories to add?

2

I would love to sell about 300 items I have (former hobby in which I have become uninterested) on eBay, but I am terrified of bad buyers, which seem to be especially bad (by report) in this particular hobby area. So I will be reading this thread with interest.

3

This isn’t the most exciting story, but just another data point…

I was an eBay seller & buyer for more than 20 years. They first recruited me in a focus group back in the dotcom days, when they were trying to test their website usability against Yahoo! Auctions, Craigslist, and early Google. They had me perform basic tests like making an account, trying to find and buy a product, and also trying to sell a product — all while they recorded my every eye and mouse movement. An interviewer then asked me questions after each step. (I don’t think they really did much with the feedback; and eBay remained one of the harder-to-use websites even many years later.)

Over the decades, I’ve sold a few dozen things, mostly items worth a few hundred to $2000 dollars (computers, cameras, other electronics). 100% feedback as well and never a bad experience, either as a seller or buyer. Like you I was always very careful to offer good descriptions, pictures, return policies, and communications.

But by the late 2010s and early 2020s, much easier to use alternatives started popping up, namely Facebook Marketplace and Amazon Marketplace. I started shipping all my UPC-ed items (i.e., commodities that could easily be listed on Amazon) there instead, because Amazon handled all the shipping and customer service for a commission not much higher than eBay was charging. That was much more convenient.

I still used eBay every now and then.

But that stopped this year. A few months ago, one of their automated checks falsely flagged one of my listings as attempting to do a transaction off eBay. It was no such thing. No problem, mistakes happen… I’d appeal it and get it fixed, I thought. I then spent several hours trying to sort it out. Despite several back and forths with their knowledge base and support systems, both automated and human and escalated to their managers, they could not explain what was actually wrong with it. Through much trial and error of my own, I finally figured out it was a link to a manufacturer’s specs sheet that the system wasn’t happy about. It was one of the worst customer service experiences I ever had, even with shitty tech companies. I took the listing down, sold it on Craigslist for less money (but way less hassle — one text message and it was sold a few hours later). I then wrote eBay requesting that my account be completely deleted. The manager begged me to stay, asking what they could do keep a 20+ year customer. I told him the truth: Stop enshittifying your service, using crappy AI to gatekeep and making live customer service nearly impossible to reach. They of course refused, and a few days later I got a confirmation that my account was wiped. I doubt anyone higher-up even noticed, but hey, it satisfied my self-righteous nerd rage. So that’s the end of my eBay journey.

These days, if I need to sell anything, I’d just put it up on Craigslist or bring it to my local “sell it on eBay for me” store, which charges a very high commission but takes care of everything for you.

4

For what it’s worth, you could consider it selling it as a “lot” — all in one bundle, to a single buyer — at a sizable discount. Leave it to them to sort out the details and resell the individual parts to others.

5

I second that recommendation, especially if you’re more interested in getting rid of the stuff than maximizing the amount of money you get. One day I finally decided I was getting too old and feeble to use the lifetime accumulation of windsurfing gear that I’d accumulated, and rather than trouble to list each item individually I sold it as a single lot (I was clear that it included excellent stuff as well as old crap). Plenty of interest and everything was gone immediately.

6

I sell a couple dozen baseball cards every year or so - nothing serious. The fees are a big demotivator, but the absolute ease at which eBay makes it to put a listing up is frankly amazing.

I did have a guy local to me buy a card, and when he saw the return address on the envelope, he DMed me his phone number in case I wanted to sell anything in person. A month later he puts in a complaint that he never received the card! I was like “you DMed that you saw my address - of course you got the card!”

7

Well, both. It would cost me about half the current retail value* to sell it as a lot, and then the buyers who do this sort of thing won’t take everything, only what they can sell. Or there are consignment people, who will pay me somewhat more, but only after they sell each item.

*I estimate the loss would be around $10-15K.

8

How does one find one of these?

9

You search on Google Maps for “eBay consignment”.

10

There used to be several chains of them. The one’s that still around is this: iSOLD It on eBay Franchise | eBay Stores That Sell For You

If there isn’t that chain near you, yeah, you might have to see if there’s a local biz doing something similar. They’re not in every city…

11

Also, what exactly is the hobby you’re trying to sell for? If it’s, say, collectible cards, there might be specialized marketplaces just for that, and also buyers/resellers who would buy in bulk.

12

IMO, it still does, for sellers. I’m often impressed how things that seem simple prove otherwise.

I recently tried to “Sell similar” (i.e. list another copy of a book I’d sold before), which I’d done in the past with little trouble. A fair amount of rummaging around didn’t find the link. I ended up Googling this, which yielded instructions for the obsolete method … and then at last for the current one.

I don’t encounter this much when trying to buy something. But I do find it can be hard to do a sufficiently precise search. When I want something of a specific size, material, etc., I typically see lots of listings for things that ‘sort of’ match. You learn to be quite careful before committing to a purchase.

13

Yeah. When it first started, I used to use HTML to make entire mini websites for what I was selling. Took forever.

By contrast, Amazon let you ship a big bunch of items to them and provide a one sentence description for each (or just specify the condition from a dropdown) and that was it. They’d take care of the rest.

FB Marketplace and Craigslist were similarly minimal fuss. Only eBay took like half an hour or more per item with their never ending choices (do you want to highlight it? bold it? which sub sub category? which format?)

It didn’t really seem much different comparing my experience in 2025 vs 2002, except the customer service was much worse. Wonder what the company had been doing the past two decades…

But hey, looks like their stock is at an all-time high. Must be doing something right.

14

Those really exist? I thought it was just a joke from The 40 Year Old Virgin.

15

I rarely use eBay to sell things but I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid any major issues. Once I sold a game code and the person acted as though I never gave it to them. eBay doesn’t really do digital type sales so I took a print out of the code and mailed it to them with registered mail. Ate $5 from my take but it got them off my back since now I had a paper trail. Only been scammed once as a buyer and that was easily resolved in my favor. I still buy stuff off eBay but the fees and shipping make it undesirable for me as a selling platform as a casual seller. Anything I have going out these days is listed on Facebook Marketplace. I have to deal with more nitwits but at least I don’t have to pay to do it. Craigslist is a ghost town and I don’t know if sites like OfferUp are even still a thing or have faded away under FB Marketplace dominance.

16

There have been, right now they’re pretty thin on the ground, and those remaining seem pretty ineffective. Many of the ones remaining are Facebook interest groups. I’ve tried selling on there before, but it’s too flaky.

17

I haven’t tried to sell anything in just over a decade. But you all have convinced me that here in 2025 my nearest dumpster is much easier and nearly as profitable.

18

Have you considered an auction house?

19

How do you arrange to receive payment for an item that will be shipped to the buyer?

20

I don’t. I just sell local for cash in hand and call the transaction done.