Selling on ebay has done one thing: taken the car trunk out of the equation.

Still a back-alley deal. "Hey buddy, need a VCR, DVD, blah, blah, blah..." No recourse there, either.

These people need to stop whining. EbayersThatSuck.com just puts a face to the great whine-fest the Internet has become.

Posted by: Wolf on March 14, 2003 09:13 AM

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It seems to be a good site for people to get information about eBay, but I was amazed to read stories from people who ordered from merchants who had already racked up hundreds of negative feedbacks. I have ordered from sellers with a few negative feedbacks, but it depends on what the feedback says.

My mantra when shopping on eBay (which, admittedly, I don't do often) is "Buyer Beware" - I have only had one sale where I didn't get the merchandise, but the seller promptly refunded the money so I left positive feedback. I've never bid on anything I wasn't willing to lose money on.

If the site can alert potential buyers to strategys for scams such as hacking IDs with a lot of positive feedback, taking over dormant accounts, and so on, then it is worth it.

Posted by: Lydia on March 14, 2003 04:23 PM

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Lydia gets it, Wolf doesn't (sorry, Wolf, nothing personal).

e-Bay lowers transaction costs, getting us nearer to the kind of optimum envisaged by classical economics. eBayersThatSuck helps by reducing the risk, which is a kind of transaction cost.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on March 14, 2003 05:09 PM

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I don't live in USA, so I don't buy anything from EBay.

What I'd like to understand is how people buy stuff they've never seen, stuff they haven't examined for quality, from people they don't know, where the only thing to go on is the seller's description of the product.

Perhaps it's just my suspicious nature, but I would never buy anything (unless it's a brand new stock item like a book) unless I could check it.

All your experiences and opinions are welcome.

Posted by: MadMan on March 15, 2003 05:34 AM

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It's a risk, but one worth taking if you're highly interested in the item and unable to find it by other means, or if you can get it more cheaply than by other means.

Posted by: Boyink on March 15, 2003 08:20 AM

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Re: MadMan's incredulity at people buying stuff essentially "sight unseen". I am not from the States, and had a similar prejudice against sending money into the ether and waiting by the mailbox.

However, when I lived in the US and Canada, many of my friends bought a lot of clothing through catalogs (J Crew, et al) and never gave it a second thought. 0800 + credit card = goods on doorstep. You no like + postage-paid return = refund.

Cultural/Historical difference? What role did Catalog-based buying have in the development of the American interior?

Of course, this is probably all bullshit. eBay-alikes such as http://www.trademe.co.nz are now doing a roaring trade here in New Zealand.

Posted by: Che Tamahori on March 16, 2003 06:27 PM

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Philip -

You're right; I don't get it.
I also don't ascribe his site with benevolence, either.

The site owner had a view, wanted to make it, and the internet provided his pulpit. I'm using this thread the same way.

Anyway, no offense taken.

Posted by: Wolf on March 17, 2003 09:21 AM

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