Think before selling on eBay. Take a look at eBay policies. There is a lot of protection for the buyers, what protection is there for the sellers, not much. If there is insurance for buyers, why not insurance for sellers?
As people may have noticed there has been quite a few problems for E-Bay sellers with fraud. Be it fake bids such as the Playstation 3 game system just before Christmas and the General Lee car in the last few weeks or just out and out theft. A person buys an item, then pays and gets you to ship the item, then cancels payment. Or you get what just happened to us.
I put my Grandmothers ring out eBay as an auction and a buy it now. We were contacted by a buyer who wanted the ring as a gift and wanted to know if we could ship it right away, they would pay extra for two or three day shipping. We said sure, we will ship as soon as the money went through Paypal. The person had been on eBay for years and had 100% rating, some one you can trust. It is Mothers day weekend, nothing odd about some one buying a last minute gift and asking for us to ship it directly to the person. Money shows up in Paypal, item is shipped that day.
We rush the Ring to FedEx and send it out right away. I just made it to the office for the last pick up of the day. Next morning we received an e-mail from PayPal saying the funds have been held and an investigation has been started as the funds may have been stolen. I called FedEx and had them stop the delivery and send it back to me after explaining what had happened. At this time I am told that the shipping is not refundable so I am out $116.51 now. I then receive another e-mail from another eBay seller, mrs2620, who was also taken by the same person. They too were scammed and are trying to get their item sent back before delivery.
So here we have two small business owners trying to make some extra money selling good quality items on eBay being taken for a ride by crooks. Some people say that is the cost of doing business. However, I would like to point out that the ring we were selling was not part of Medieval Magic stock, but was my Grandmothers ring valued at about $1,200.00 ten years ago, more now. So this is not a case of a business sale, covered under insurance, this is me loosing my Grandmothers ring. This is personal.
Even though we are getting our ring back, this is not a harmless victimless crime or a joke, we are out $116.00, some thing we cannot afford. We are selling the ring because we need the money, we have some bills coming up and with two little kids things are a little tight. I was not expecting to sell the ring, but it would have been nice. Now things are even harder on us, we are out $116.00 about ¼ of our budget for food and diapers for the month. On top of that we used part of the money in Paypal to buy some thing. So now we are about $130.00 in debt to Paypal. We have to come up with the money to pay for the item that has already been shipped. So that is about ¼ of our food and diaper budget that means 50% of our budget is now gone. Thank you very much.
It is my sons fourth birthday this month, so if you think this crime has no effect on any one, just a business, you are wrong. So now I have a budget of about $200.00, about $100.00 of that has to go to diapers, wipes, and $100.00 for food for two weeks for a family of four. So much for my sons birthday, some one want to come and explain to my four year old why he is not having a birthday party, and why he is not getting that gift Mommy told him he was getting.
So this crime or joke has a very strong impact on my family. I am not telling people this so they feel sorry for me, but because I want people to understand what this person has done to my family. What the impact of this one act has had on us. Crime costs people like us every day. We are not some big corporation that can absorb a loss like this, we are hard working people trying to do our best and one person just kicked us in the teeth, took food out of my kids’ mouths. You don’t want to know what I want to do to this person if I could find them. Making them pay the $116.00 is not enough for the worry and anger I have right now.
It is time that we the consumers and sellers start to put our foot down and stop this. New rules and procedures must be put into place on all the auction sites and payment sites to protect us all. We have to ask for them. People have to look at what the effect will be on eBay and other auction sites if thing like this continue. Who wants to sell items on eBay if there is no protection for them? Look at John Schneider, he has decided to go with a bricks-and-mortar auction firm that strictly screens buyers to sell the General Lee. This would have been a great achievement for eBay. If this keeps up there will be no place for every day people to sell and buy as it will destroy peoples trust in being able to sell on eBay. At this point in time we have changed our shipping policies to protect ourselves from this happening again. But I have to admit I am rethinking about selling on eBay as I have an online store Medieval Magic I am already selling on.
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