Horrendous Ebay Experience Beware of this terrible seller with appalling customer service

[dodgerblue 0]

UPDATE 5/2: The seller is no longer registered on ebay!

 

 

(posted this on my online shopping blog as well, but modified to post on T17... and added remarks lol. I'm really mad!!! )

 

Everyone - beware this seller 4310cape

 

I bought a skirt on Ebay. I paid on 25 March. There was one email that came asking me about my address (I had not filled in "city" as my city is my country, but apparently people don't know that, well my bad.)

 

I waited for weeks and weeks. On the auction, it had clearly stated that shipping would take 4-6 days. I email the seller but only twice, didn't want to be naggy. Both times very polite, asking for the estimated time it would take.

 

After three weeks, and no response, I filed a dispute. Still no response. I contact Ebay Customer Service only to have them tell me that I have to wait 10 days after filing a dispute.

 

Finally, the item arrives. Guess why it took so long? It was only shipped on April 4.

 

Even though I?m sort of pacified now that I have my item, I?m still disgusted with the way sellers treat their customers. I have to pay within 7 days of winning the auction, but they can take their own sweet time to ship it? And not only that, when I don't get my item, I have to WAIT SOME MORE for them to respond??

 

And I was even nice, I didn?t give this guy a negative feedback, I gave him a neutral one. In the most objective manner possible. I didn't even attack him personally as some others did.

 

My feedback:

Item shipped rather late? More communication & consideration for buyer needed.

 

Reply by 4310cape:

Yet another newbie buyer in SINGAPORE.

 

Like hello? I paid you on the 25th of March, you ship out on the 4th of April, that is like, ten whole days after payment has been made. It?s not possible you need ten entire days just to fill in customs forms? For one skirt? What did he need to do, look up a dictionary? We speak English in Singapore. Oops, maybe he doesn?t understand British English or something.

 

And what is with SINGAPORE? So what? Does that mean it?s in the middle of nowhere? 4 April - 12th April that?s reasonable time frame to expect shipments to take. IF I HAD KNOWN IT WAS SHIPPED LATE.

 

Even the other sellers on the eBay community discussion boards said that it doesn?t take that long to ship to Singapore. Just because you?ve never heard of Singapore - I?m sorry, it?s SINGAPORE to you, it?s probably some country at the other end of the universe where they live in mud huts and drink river water eh? - and think it?s somewhere far off doesn?t mean you can use distance as an excuse for shoddy service.

 

I saw that another buyer from Singapore gave him a negative rating, to which he responded in a really hostile manner. If you don?t bother to reply emails, don?t expect good ratings.

 

You don?t reply emails at all, how are buyers supposed to know anything? With such extremely bad customer service, how are buyers supposed to trust that you aren?t scamming them? No response = hiding/running away. That is the normal course of things. If you are a honest seller, you would have nothing to hide. How hard could it be to reply emails? It?s not like we?re asking for the moon. We would just like to be shown some basic courtesy like you show to the other AMERICANS who give you good, positive feedback.

 

I was already very patient. I asked him how long it would take. I expected him to have the basic courtesy to let me know. But he didn?t even possess that. He ignored all my emails. He even ignored my dispute which I opened only at the end of three weeks waiting for my item. It was CLEARLY stated on the auction page that shipping worldwide takes only 4-6 days.

 

He replied my emails up till the point where I paid him. After he got my money, it was like, you can go to hell now. I bet if I had charged back payment, that would have gotten a reply out of him.

 

Newbie indeed. It?s precisely because he thinks I am a newbie that he thinks he can get away with such horrendous appalling customer service. I happen to have been on eBay longer than he has.

 

I should have slammed him with the negative feedback.

 

Now I am so tempted to post his telephone number so that telemarketers can have a field day with it.

Edited May 2, 2006 by dodgerblue (see edit history)

[Zythrix 0]

Wow, that's pretty bad. I have a worse story.I have a friend in Finland. He wanted to order this Barbie for his girlfriend off of Ebay (I guess she collects?) but the seller wouldn't ship International. So he had it shipped here to me on the west coast of the U.S. Three days after I got the package I moved. Go figure, it got lost. So, 8 months go by and I find it buried in a box of shoes in my storage..... ok.So I call up my friend, who by now is obviously quite angry, and tell him I'm read to ship it. He e-mailed me a few days ago and told me it arrived.hehe.. talk about a late shipment..

[dodgerblue 0]

Hm! You're some friend eh?

But that's kinda different, cos you were like doing him a favour. He didn't pay you to ship him the item did he?

I paid alot of money for the shipping. And I'm not even complaining that he overcharged me by US$5. I saw on the USPS website that it costs only $9.50 to ship and I paid $14.95

I'm just really disgusted that it seems Ebay would rather protect its sellers more than buyers.

Am not going to buy anything from Ebay ever again. I've switched to Yahoo now. Have had three very smooth transactions thus far.

Wow, that's pretty bad. I have a worse story.
I have a friend in Finland. He wanted to order this Barbie for his girlfriend off of Ebay (I guess she collects?) but the seller wouldn't ship International. So he had it shipped here to me on the west coast of the U.S.

Three days after I got the package I moved. Go figure, it got lost. So, 8 months go by and I find it buried in a box of shoes in my storage..... ok.

So I call up my friend, who by now is obviously quite angry, and tell him I'm read to ship it. He e-mailed me a few days ago and told me it arrived.

hehe.. talk about a late shipment..

[jlhaslip 4]

I'm sorry you had such a poor experience on Ebay. At least you got the goods. I have found most sellers are pretty good about communicating, but every once in a while you run into a situation like this.Best advise I can give is to be certain to read the Seller's feedback before you bid and determine the attitude they have towards negative and or neutral Buyers. Also, watch for negatives in their feedback, of course.There is never any guarantee that the seller is legitimate, but their Feedback ratings will give you an indicatioin of how they respond to Buyers and problems. Hope the skirt looks good.

[fedew 0]

I use MercadoLibre at Argentina and is quite bad.. my expirience is the same than you

[terminal2k 0]

ebay is something i use with caution these days, there are plenty of people who make a living doing scams on there. Also sellers can be very un-reliable and thats when you need to leave them negative feedback, neutral feedback doesn't really do anything. Also shipping costs are something I hate with ebay, sometimes people with purposly inflate the postage cost so they can sell their item for $1 but still make profit from the shipping (for example one camera I came across seemed like a good deal for around $20 until you realise the postage he wanted to charge was $45) and some others don't even list the shipping costs on the auction (I've been caught out this way on a number of occasions when the cost was more than double what i was expecting and the shipping would have actually cost) the best thing to do is avoid ebay when you can and not believe their buyer protection program (i've only heard of people who've lodged things through this and had a negative experience).as far as your experience goes, ebay should have some accountability as far as correspondance goes. for example they could have it setup so you send all e-mails between buyer and seller via their website and they keep copies of it all so if a dispute comes up they have something to refer to. the follow up option on feedback doesn't seem to ever work, bad sellers just make an excuse as was in your case..

Edited April 16, 2006 by terminal2k (see edit history)

[Jesse 0]

I myself have had several bad experiences on Ebay from sellers when I purchase items. I have even had items not turn up at all and I have lost approx. 500$ (Australian) in total for several purchases. So after the last time I made a decision never to use Ebay again. And I never have. I think people need to treat people the way they want to be. And there are some people on Ebay that don't really care about manners or how long it takes to get something to someone when they pay for it.So beware, Ebay can be Evil at times. But at the same time, if you strike a good Ebayer, you can get a bargain and make some news friends at the same time. But you have to be careful with this.

[Chez 0]

Did you pay by check? If you did, then he'd have to wait for the check to clear before he starts shipping your item. A lot of people get caught up on that one and give bad ratings for misunderstandings. But his response to your fair review was childish. Not only was it slanderous (or libel, w/e you consider message posting), but it was pretty racist too. Though it sounds like you're a more-than-far guy in both patience and reviewing, I'd contatc ebay customer service to report him. Last thing we need is another racist teen on ebay.

[dodgerblue 0]

Chez: Nope, I paid with credit card through auctioncheckout.com. No problems with the payment. I even grant him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps packaging may have cost a bit (it came in a box).I contacted Live Help, and spoke briefly to someone who told me to report it using the feedback form thingy.I've already done as he (the customer service dude) suggested, but I doubt they will do anything about it. It's probably going to be classified as "opinion" and as America is a free country, blah blah blah...The thing is I would have been annoyed if he had told me it would be late but at least I would KNOW that it's going to be late instead of worrying all the time whether he was a scammer.How can my expectations be unrealistic when I'm not even TOLD what to expect, see what I mean?

Edited April 17, 2006 by dodgerblue (see edit history)

[FLaKes 0]

My worst ebay experience was when I order the Nintendo GameCube when it came out a couple of years ago. It costed >$500 dollars in stores here when it just came out (about 3 -4 months after the US), so I thought I would save some cash and buy it from ebay. I bought a used one for about $300 dollars, it had two controllers, tony hawks pro skater 3, and was in excellent condition in its original box. Everything went perfect at the beginning, the payment was received and the seller shipped it...... Until it entered Mexico. These 2 legged rats from a service called mexpost, intercepted the package and were holding it until I pay them $250 dollars for customs and their stinking services (intercepting services), and not only did they do that, they were supposedly threatening me to return my package if I did not pay them (they werent going to return anything, eventually one of their employees would misteriously disappear it...) so I had to borrow the money from my mom, and got grounded and stuff but I got my Gamecube... Now Im more carefull with shipping, there are services from other shipping companies that have a place you can use to send the things you buy, and before you buy them you can ask for an estimate of how much it will cost with everything included.

[mama_soap 0]

Did you pay by check? If you did, then he'd have to wait for the check to clear before he starts shipping your item. A lot of people get caught up on that one and give bad ratings for misunderstandings.

 

Whaever the case may be, I'm afraid there is really no excuse for not responding to e-mails! I am sure that does not take too much of an effort... I think I would be less angry or even reasonably calm if I got a couple of e-mails saying yada, yada, your stuff is on it's way <some explaination>.

 

But his response to your fair review was childish. Not only was it slanderous (or libel, w/e you consider message posting), but it was pretty racist too. Though it sounds like you're a more-than-far guy in both patience and reviewing, I'd contatc ebay customer service to report him. Last thing we need is another racist teen on ebay.

Exactly...

 

It's plain unprofessional (crudely so) to keep in touch up to the point of payment and then disappear.

 

Trouble is, I am not sure if it's any better on Y!. While I am sure the overall service may be better, it is impossible to completely eliminate any chances of running into people/situations like this

 

Like jlhaslip pointed out, hope the skirt, at least, looks good