That would be “words” not “worths”.
Pictures that are so huge, you have to scroll, and you can’t see the entire object at once.
So many unnecessary graphic elements that take forever to load.
Listings that don’t include the condition of the thing they’re selling.
Listings in which it’s obvious that the seller doesn’t know anything about the thing they’re selling.
Nude people visible in reflections in the photographs. Like an auction for a TV, there will be a photo of the TV but you can plainly see in the reflection the [nude] man taking the picture of the TV. The whole thing just screams, “I’m an exhibitionist and want to trick people into seeing me naked.” :mad:
I love when people spell stuff wrong. I tend to scroll thru categories more often than I do word searches, and you can great deals when some buyer doesn’t know how to spell the name of his product.
:rolleyes: If you don’t want to pay a handling charge, then don’t bid. Anything that’s set out in the description is fair game. Finding boxes and then skipping your lunch hour so you can go to a Post Office are not cost-less tasks, especially if you have a job that pays hourly as many people do.
–Cliffy
Although, to be fair, I have found a few really good deals from sellers who did not know what their item was or how to price it. I wouldn’t refuse to bid on all those auctions. Just 99% or so.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: sometimes I pick up a lot of something because I recognized one or two items, and the rest is a mystery to me. In that case, I sometimes do list the rest at a token amount; I got my money back, and researching a bunch of things I know nothing about takes time.
If you find one of my auctions for a mixed bag like this, you may get a neglected treasure, and I won’t begrudge it.
It’s one of the things that make auctions fun.
A vehement “amen” to the above.
I will add my personal annoyance:
“WILL SHIP TO USA ONLY.”
Numbnuts, do you realize that you’re missing the whole point of eBay? A worldwide market! Are you really so afraid of adding a blue airmail sticker to the envelope, and perhaps a small customs sticker on a parcel? Are you really so insular and ignorant that you can afford to tell probably 50% of your potential customers to piss off?
And when I send you a polite email asking if you will consider shipping to Canada and accept my bid on your auction (and this from a guy with 2600 positives, not a single negative), you send back a poorly-spelled, ALL CAPS rant about how risky it is to send to foreigners. This isn’t good PR for you, or your country.
[ul]
[li]Bad spelling. If you can’t be bothered to run your auction through a spell check I’m thinking what else can’t you be bothered to get right?[/li][li]Rotten photos that barely show the product. As above,[/li][li]Six paragraphs of guff that tell me why I need this product and suggestions of how I should use it. Guess what, if you need to tell me all this, then I don’t need it![/li][li]Any sympathy-string pulling. ebay is not a charity site, I’m only going to buy from you if I want the product and the price is good. Telling me you’re selling the contents of your house to pay for mother’s surgery is only going to make me feel guilty and I won’t bid.[/li][li]Inexplicably vague postal charges. I’m not committing myself to buying anything if you don’t tell me the postage![/li][li]Weasel words that try to disguise the fact that what you’re selling is pirated.[/li][li]Over detailed and enthusiastic descriptions of what you do to non-paying bidders. It just makes you sound like an aggressive seller that’ll turn nasty if there’s any problems with your product.[/li][li]Stupid ebay names. If your ebay name is smellydudez_rool, my confidence in your business behaviour is going to be dented.[/li][/ul]
I’m so glad you asked, I have one that makes me crazy.
Let me explain.
If you ship something to Canada, someone must vouch for it as it crosses the border. This person is called a freight forwarder, if moving large shipments internationally there are professional companies doing this. If it’s just a small parcel or package it still has to be done.
If you ship via UPS or FEDEX, in addition to their shipping fee, currency exchange, and any customs or duty (this fee remains unchanged regardless of how the package is shipped as it’s based on the contents), they charge a $35 (US) fee to act as your freight forwarder.
The US Postal System charges a far more reasonable $5.
When I’m purchasing one item. You can see why I’d prefer you use the post office. I know you have to fill out a form but surely you must fill out a form for UPS/FEDEX as well. I’m not asking you to misrepresent the contents or their value to same me a nickel.
If the seller doesn’t want to do that, I understand, but I’m not going to buy from you.
A 35 US$ fee in addition to the purchase price, shipping costs, currency exchange, and duty is just too much for me. Sorry. I purchase a fair number of items from international vendors and they don’t seem to mind in the least going to the post office. Americans seem to loathe it. Can’t claim I understand why.
Also, American vendors who will ship to anywhere in the US (Hawaii, Alaska) but not to Canada. Huh? I’m several thousand miles closer to you than either of those states, but whatever.
But the ones that really surprise me are the objects from various locations in China, all listed as .88, or .99, or .01 and when you check it’s a 45 -85 Us $ shipping fee for a small piece of jeweller. I wonder why Ebay tolerates this kind of thing too.
I’ll walk right past anything with L@@K, LQQK or similar in the title, as well as anything that’s “shabby chic” or screams RARE!!
Reserves don’t automatically chase me away, but the ones that are listed with an opening price of $48.99 and a Buy It Now of $49.99 just confuse me.
My pet peeves:
[ul]
[li]Bad pictures. Out of focus, tiny little object in a great big field of vision, too dark - what the hell is wrong with people? It isn’t like it takes a lot of effort to get a good picture.[/li][li]Open-ended shipping fees. Tell me what they are UP FRONT, or use the shipping calculator eBay offers, or do without my bid.[/li][li]Cute, glurgy animated gifs and, especially, animated cursors.[/li][li]Pictures of your kids or grandchildren or pets. I really don’t care about your lurrrve.[/li][li]Five-thousand-word treatises about how much you hate non-paying bidders or slow payers and detailing all the badass things you’ll do to me if I’m one of the above. Screw that, you’re a high-maintenance seller.[/li][li]Lousy spelling and/or grammar.[/li][li]Title spamming - that “X NOT Y” thing again.[/li][li]Hugely inappropriate shipping fees. Hey, I understand handling charges. It takes time to find boxes and drive to the post office and stand in line. But if your auction states that the postcard I just bought is going to cost $5 to ship, I’m not bidding.[/li][li]Reserve auctions. List it at your minimum price.[/li][li]Music, unrelated graphic elements, fancy-ass layouts.[/li][/ul]
I’m a seller more than I am a buyer. I try to keep all these things in mind when I’m writing my auctions, and I wish more people would, too.
I do wish, though, that so many dickheads hadn’t ruined the use of the word “Rare.” Occasionally, I do sell something that really is rare, and I’m almost afraid to mention it anymore because of all the “rare” McDonald’s Souvenir Glasses, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, and Super Mario Bubble Gum.
Wow… my first post!
Ebay is just another thing that has gotten way too out of hand like any major company. Granted, when used as intended, ebay is great! It’s just, there are too many people out there who don’t use a system as it was intended. A “minor scratch” on something that someone is selling on ebay may turn out to be a huge gash. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… or in ebay’s case, the seller. My few experiences with ebay have been okay, but I only rely on ebay for things that I can’t find anywhere else.
I once bought the whole DVD collection of the X-Files from somebody in Hong Kong. And it was actually a sealed boxset with Chinese characters, but the DVDs were in English and all in all, it was a great deal; however, I heard that a good number of DVDs being sold from China are pirated, and so now I’m very wary. I don’t know if I just got lucky or what, but I’d rather not risk buying a pirated version of Angel or something.
I also check out the other items people are selling, and if anything else is HAUNTED, MYSTERIOUS, or CURSED, I just choose not to buy from that seller.
You’ve not been to the post office, apparently. I can print up FedEx airbills at home and drop off packages at a FedEx/Kinkos location 24 hours a day without standing in line. If I’m really lazy or have a mountain of packages, they’ll come out and pick them up for a modest fee.
As for the post office, the lines are always long and slow. Just to retrieve an incoming package (because the carrier was too lazy to take it to the apartment building office and lied, saying that the office was closed) at the post office just this Saturday took half an hour round trip to get to the post office, plus half an hour in line, then five minutes for them to find the package.
No forms, for one. Not sure about parcel rates, but a letter costs 37 cents whether it’s going across town or all the way off to Alaska. They may be far-off places, but they’re still in the same country.
Also, my experience has been that the US Postal Service is especially adept at destroying things. Better than half of the eBay things I’ve received via USPS were damaged. Damage at the hands of UPS or FedEx is much less common. Whether that means the USPS really is rougher on packages, or eBay sellers that use USPS don’t know how to pack things right is a valid question. But still, if someone says they use USPS only, my desire to bid will plummet.
If there is no picture or a crappy picture, I’m going to assume you’re trying to hide a defect in the product.
If you’re a Canadian seller with a Canadian address selling to me in Canada, and you expect $15 USD to ship to me via Canada Post, I won’t bid. Greedy bastards.
If the item is worth more than $20, I won’t purchase from the US due to customs and brokerage fees. It’s never worth it.
If you don’t respond to my questions in less than a day, I won’t bid.
If you don’t have damn near perfect feedback, I won’t bid. I will ignore negative / neutral feedback that seems ridiculous, however.
Another thing I forgot. I don’t know if this happens only with cars and other high dollar items or not, but there are sellers who use what I call shadow bidders. These are bidders who have zero feedback, but seem to bid on every car that a certain seller is trying to sell. They are either the seller under another name, or some friend of the sellers. I actually was the underbidder for one of these, and after looking at the sellers auctions, noticed this guy bidding on several of his cars. I should probably have reported him.