eBay

Full review
In case you've been living in a hole for the last 10 years and do not know what eBay is, it is an auction site allowing users to buy and sell just about anything from snack foods shaped like holy figures to used gum claimed to be spit out by Britney Spears. A great tool for those, like me, allergic to just the thought of having a garage sale but always needing to unload unused items. But, eBay has grown so much over the years that there have been many policy changes to protect buyers (and sellers presumably) from scams. One feature is feedback, allowing buyers and sellers to leave feedback based on their transaction and allowing other eBay users to determine if they want to do business with another user based on feedback they've received from past transactions. I've been selling items on eBay for 5 years now and I only sell maybe a couple of items a month, by no means am I a power seller. But I've run into some serious problems since eBay's May 2008 feedback policy update:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-ov.html

Which no longer allows sellers to leave anything but positive feedback for buyers. Since then, I've had two deadbeat bidders - bidders who won my auction, but never paid or responded to any of my emails. What incentive do they have to pay when I can't warn other sellers with feedback? The only thing the seller can do is submit a non-payment dispute on the buyer and re-list the item taking more time to sell it. But, that non-paying buyer can still leave negative feedback on the seller if they choose to, at which point the seller has a time-consuming task of reporting the incident and hoping eBay will remove that feedback eventually.

But, that's easy compared to the next incident I encountered. I had one nightmare of a buyer who used negative feedback to attempt to boycott me into refunding the entire item amount after presumably lying to me about the condition of the item when they received it. And that buyer is allowed to do this under eBay's new policy! Buyers can leave negative feedback for sellers and remove it when the seller meets their demands. But, there is no guarantee that the buyer will remove the feedback once the demand has been met and nothing in eBay's policy obligating them to do so. In my case, the buyer left negative feedback right after I offered a refund for the item. The buyer then sent me a money request through PayPal for a refund for the item AND shipping both ways stating in PayPal that they would not remove the feedback until I provided the refund amount they were requesting.

The extent this buyer was going to get a nearly $20 refund for a $7 used book just shocked me. I did a little feedback research and found they had done something similar to the seller on the last auction before mine. In fact, the buyer had a perfect feedback rating, but had left quite a bit of negative feedback for sellers in the last few months, many of which have never received a negative prior to encountering this buyer. As I suspected, I was dealing with a problem buyer. I contacted the seller of the last auction to find out what happened, the seller told me they actually refunded this buyer the amount they requested, but the buyer never shipped the item back or removed the negative feedback. So why would I refund the buyer if I'm most likely destined to the same fate? I explained to the buyer that I need a guarantee that the feedback would be removed and item returned before refunding them and explained the feedback was unnecessary since I was working with them to resolve the issue in the first place.

The buyer responded by submitting a dispute on the PayPal transaction, causing PayPal to freeze the funds in my account, and constantly harass me via email and adding false claims as evidence to the PayPal dispute. I had to spend a lot of time reading through paragraph after paragraph of accusations from the buyer to put together my own case for the PayPal dispute (all this for a $7 item, seriously). In the process, the buyer has updated their demands to me providing the full refund amount, plus shipping both ways and they will "consider" removing the negative feedback only if I leave positive feedback for them. So, like the last seller, that feedback will never be removed and it does not matter that I was working to resolve the issue with the buyer when they left it. But the feedback policy continues to get better. I replied to the feedback trying to make my case in 60 characters, not easy. But, the buyer can then reply to my feedback reply and the seller is not able to reply to that reply. Nice, eh?

I have to give PayPal credit, they resolved the buyer-submitted dispute in 24 hours deciding that I was not required to refund the buyer until they ship the item back and I was not required to pay the return shipment as the buyer was demanding. eBay, on the other hand, was less than helpful for my complaints about the feedback and threatening messages from the buyer, taking an average of 3 days or more to respond with canned-policy answers, providing little evidence that anyone reviewed the specific details of my case and complaints.

Why does eBay feel the need to give the buyer this much power? It isn't enough that the seller's ability to leave negative feedback has been removed, the buyer can now use negative feedback to force a seller to meet their demands, while the seller will only get stuck with the negative feedback for scrambling to meet buyers needs as well as loosing more money than earned on the transaction. In my limited selling experience, I've seen a scary increase in buyer scams utilizing this new policy and that it takes too much time and effort for a seller to try to sort out the mess and get any kind of support from eBay. Having to constantly re-list items cuts into already meager profits and time, making eBay no longer worthwhile for the occasional seller. My advice to those still selling on eBay is to, when possible, monitor the feedback a high bidder has left for other seller's and constantly update your buyer block list through eBay. Of course, having an 8 page return policy/disclaimer notice on every auction page to attempt to protect yourself from problem buyers would be helpful too. Such effort is hardly practical when you're just trying to unload an unused video game, baby clothes or an old MP3 player.

The new policy has forced bitter sellers to seek outside feedback outlets for bad buyers. Here are a few of those:
http://blog.marketingtips.com/bad-buyers/selling-on-ebay

Use this link to block problem buyers from future auctions:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/manage_bidders_ov.html

Another helpful site where members can download a list of reported problem buyers based on custom search criteria and update their block list on eBay:
http://repxchange.com/

Let's say you're selling an item and a problem buyer is bidding on it. You can fill out this form to cancel the bid:
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CancelBidShow&guest=1

To report any problem to eBay:
http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/reportproblem.html

If you have any issues with eBay, report it as much as possible, be the squeaky wheel. My problem buyer incident prompted me to research what other sellers are going through with the policy updates and there is no shortage of unhappy sellers. I will no longer be selling or buying through eBay after this experience and I feel terribly sorry for any seller having to go through anything like this.