eBay

Full review
Feedback is one of the most important tools to use. However, Ebay.com does keep the public in the dark on every single transaction. For example; say you bought three things on Ebay and left positive feedback and received positive feedback back by the three different sellers. Your rating would show a '3' and you'd have a 100% rating. Now say you bought your fourth item on Ebay and it never arrived or it's substantially different than what you purchased and you e-mail/contact the seller and the seller doesn't fix the complaint. Now you have 2-choices. Leave the seller a negative rating, which in turn he/she will leave you one too. And contact Ebay, which directs you to (Ebay's sister company) Paypal's claim dispute link, which is basically a series of stall tactics to thwart off any claims. A lot of Ebay buyers don't want a permanent negative rating, so they'll refrain from leaving feedback in fear of being retaliated against and thus Ebay's feedback rating system really is a skewed or false set of numbers because basically only the 'happy' transactions are being listed. Ebay has tried to fine-tune their feedback, but it's the same format..still not accurate at all. Amazon.com has a great rating system, they only allow the sellers to receive feedback and don't need to harass the Amazon buyers because they're dialed into Amazon.com/Payments with all their credit card and banking information. So, once the buyer pays the seller that's all that's asked of the buyer and that buyer comes back & back to Amazon.com. At Ebay if the buyer gets spooged or screwed out of their money. They also can lose their rating and go through pain-staking efforts to file a claim and quite often cut their shopping experience way down on Ebay.com by one seller that frauded them.

Paypal is an Ebay owned company and when you file your claim, Paypal has their system set up for you to explain your dispute/claim much like this box i'm typing in now, but what PayPal doesn't tell you is that after a couple minutes they'll time you out and once you go to send your complaint in to them for review you're timed-out and it vanishes. Paypal does this on purpose because they know people will get so frustrated that they'll often not re-type their complaint. I copy/cut my complaint and then once I get timed out, I re-log on and paste my complaint and it goes through. Once it goes through the process begins and now you and the seller communicate back and forth and if you two can't come up with a reasonable refund or settlement. You have to escalate the dispute to a 'claim'. Now Paypal becomes the judge & jury and they'll do anything to keep away from paying you the money if the seller won't refund you. The first tactic Paypal uses is the stall tactic, they wait a couple weeks claiming they're reviewing your claim. Then they'll want you to call them and explain it making it more difficult on you... Then after all of the e-mails & phone calls and just a couple days before the claim deadline is up and they either are going to pay you (You get 2 claims a year up to $2,000), or they'll decide against you. Either way, just a couple days before the claim is finalized they'll pull a real stinker and ask you to go to your local police station and file a report/complaint and then fax that police report to them in 10-days and if you fail to do so, your claim will be voided. And this they do, not on a car or a motorcycle claim, they do this on box of football cards valued at $15.00

It's too bad Google Checkouts couldn't be allowed on Ebay.

So Ebay is great..it has it all... buying is averaging because it's loaded with fraudsters and con-artists...the shipping & handling fees can be enormous....And Ebay will turn & run on any dispute.

The good transactions are great!!! I pity the Ebayer who's got took on an automobile only to find out the seller really doesn't live where they say and the buyers money is gone.

Just be careful, use caution.