Okay this in my mini-rant about eBay. ;)

DISCLAIMER
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The views expressed here reflect in NO WAY about any one person or persons in the countries mentioned - they are merely observations of behaviour I have witnessed on eBay in general. ::)

EBAY USERS AND THEIR BEHAVIOUR
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UK eBayers - are usually the least patient when waiting for goods (I know as I'm sometimes impatient too!). ;D

German eBayers - do not like PayPal or any other online payment system. ???

French eBayers - usually pretty deceitful, so beware of them. >:(

American eBayers - tend to ignore anyone who lives outside the USA when asked about shipping.
(to Europe for example) ::)

Australian eBayers - YAY for the good guys, seriously...I can't think of anything bad to say about them! :D

Japanese eBayers - always get the coolest items FIRST! 8)

I also do business with other countries, but these are the main ones... :)

Anyone else wants to add to my eBay rant - feel free! ;)

VENT THY FURY AT EBAY! ;D

LOL! ;D

Heh heh!

Yeah that's pretty accurate but most of the Germans I've sold to have paid with PayPal. I am amazed at how much 3dfx stuff is in Germany. Too bad it cost so much to ship things from there to here (US).

Ihave bent because Ebay has allowed a banned seller to resurface and sell items I won & paid for again!

WHOA! That's totally CACK! >:(

My experience:

UK ebayers - Friendly folk
US ebayers - Friendly folk too
Italian ebayers - Friendly folk three
German ebayers - General friendly folk but my advice is to inquire some more before bidding; about condition of packaging and the payment methods they accept. (I came across a German fellow who accepted foreign bank transfers but did not have IBAN or BIC. How you gonna accept foreign payments then? :P)

Hm, so far I've been lucky...

Asking friendly about potential problems in advance always seemed to work out... Alot of patience needed sometimes, but eventually, everything always arrived.

I did notice, however, that at least German Auctions often hold alot of trash, wrong information or plain deceit concerning the Item's condition.

With a bit of practice, you'll quickly identify those but it requires thorough knowledge of german language details (reading inbetween the lines makes all the difference).

Typical statements :
I'm a hardware dummy and don't know crap about what I'm selling here[...] Buyer takes all the risk and responsibility
Means : I know exactly what I'm trying to toss out and am looking for shiny-I'll-buy-it-all dummies with too much cash to waste.

I got this high-priced, cool Item but never had any chance to test it[...]
Means : I'm a n00b Overclocker, killed the Hardware and am looking for a Dummy believing it might still work

Because of the new EU law, I'm assuming no responsibility to what I'm selling here[...]
Means : I'm trying to fool a Dummy to believe there actually is such a law for private (!) sellers and volunteers to take all the risk for no real reason.

This is the greatest piece of Hardware existing on the market! Grab it while you can and boost your Performance to galactic levels!
Means : I was too lazy to actually research the capabilities of this 1998 vintage equipment and copied the Marketing text off the Retail Packaging.

Took this Video card off a retired System. I think it has 64MB, maybe 128MB but not sure, so I rather not claim it.
Means : I'm a complete dummy myself and don't realize a 1996 S3 PCI card usually did not ship with 64MB...

Sorry for the blurred Image, but tech experts will recognize what I'm selling here
Means : I know that I won't sell this worthless crap if the Image went through less than a 16x Blur filter.

CPU takn frm Computa. Good CPU. YoU Make offer!
Means : You wouldn't buy a single buck of generic paint from this guy. Why... on earth... would that be different with a CPU ?!

Australian eBayers , personally been burnt twice

Aussies can be as dodgy as anyone else , i should know lived here all my life !

eBay just trys to hush it up !

@Falcon - ROFL-LMAO-LOL! ;D

That's gotta' be some of the funniest eBay related stuff I've read in a LONG time! :D

A good laugh on a rainy day...but remember folks, there's a serious message to all of this stuff! ;)

Well ive only had 3 bad and 4 or 5 semi bad problems so far out of abot 150 things ive bought.

FIRST -  ive learned is it doesnt matter what it looks like or how its listed and what their feedback rating is.

SECOND - ebay/paypal could careless about anything but there money no matter how wrong the other guy is.

Just had a phone i sold turn into a giant f@#* dunghill of problems for me, sold a phone to a guy who after the 3rd day reported me for not sending it to him(no where did it say overnight or imediate shipping), i told him it was on its way but that wasnt good enough for him, he reported it to paypal who he told i said i would send phone right away and didnt(never said) then paypal  put a hold on my account so i had to put money back into paypay so i could even buy something if i wanted, the only option paypay gave me in my account was to give him his money back, i called paypal and their man told me the case was being dropped in 3 days because he got the phone so case closed. 5 days later paypal sends me a messege saying they are going to refund his money including shipping as soon as phone is shipped out of my papal account. week later phone shows up in a shirt bag(cheap punk took it outta box i shipped it in to save shipping for himself) and phone box is smashed, i call paypal and they say their sry but nothing they can do but that they are sorry, week later i get messege from buyer who is asking for his money back, i look up my paypal and see they havent paid him and have now denied his attempt for a refund..........so know i have a phone in damaged box and someone expecting their money returned, im wordering what paypay is gonna tell me to do next....heh this is better than the other 2 bad times ive had on ebay at least.

UGH! You're not kidding when you say it's a MESS... :P

...that's some nasty shiznit! :o

wrote on 15.08.07 at 00:21:03:

That's gotta' be some of the funniest eBay related stuff I've read in a LONG time! :D

unfortunatelly falconfly shows some sort of reality...but you grow up with those guys at ebay...

bought 130+ items via ebay,never been burnt even once (not counting minor stuff like broken off caps that take 3 seconds to fix) ;D

the biggest PITA are jerks from our customs office-we have a totally idiotic law over here that prohibits import of used hardware (new is ok),that means every time I buy 3dfx stuff from US or some other non-EU country,I have to do the oh pretty please mr officer lemme have my package and I will accidentally forget my nice bottle of vodka on your table dance.

been there today for the mercury,lucked out this time 'cause they were in friday mood already (too lazy to make trouble),so it was quick and painless (just yeah heres yer stamp,take your trash and dont bother us no more).

even I have lucky days I guess (on second thought,maybe not,two boards are busted) ::)

wrote on 21.09.07 at 19:46:23:

bought 130+ items via ebay,never been burnt even once (not counting minor stuff like broken off caps that take 3 seconds to fix) ;D the biggest PITA are jerks from our customs office-we have a totally idiotic law over here that prohibits import of used hardware (new is ok),that means every time I buy 3dfx stuff from US or some other non-EU country,I have to do the oh pretty please mr officer lemme have my package and I will accidentally forget my nice bottle of vodka on your table dance. been there today for the mercury,lucked out this time 'cause they were in friday mood already (too lazy to make trouble),so it was quick and painless (just yeah heres yer stamp,take your trash and dont bother us no more). even I have lucky days I guess (on second thought,maybe not,two boards are busted) ::)

The part about the "oh pretty please mr officer lemme have my package and I will accidentally forget my nice bottle of vodka on your table" was funny ;D

Not really but the way you told it was ;)


I'm sorry to hear about your Mercury sub-System. I have a cable coming soon. I hope mine works :-/


Same seller I think ???

wrote on 23.09.07 at 03:28:05:

I'm sorry to hear about your Mercury sub-System. I have a cable coming soon. I hope mine works :-/

Say the word and I'll drop it in the mail (I know, waiting for package from Germany which still has not arrived)

wrote on 23.09.07 at 15:47:25:

Say the word and I'll drop it in the mail (I know, waiting for package from Germany which still has not arrived)

If you don't mind sending both together... Yours would solve the lack of a medusa problem for testing. If the brick is good, I plan to make a medusa and use my black cable. I could then return yours ;)

I've been ebaying for almost 10 years... here's my experiences...

American Sellers - Generally decent, for some reason Texans in particular don't like shipping out of the US though.  Slightly high shipping charges.
UK Sellers - Decent too.  Shipping can be steep due to the difference in currency.
German Sellers - Don't usually take Paypal and prefer Bank Transfers and Money Orders.

Sorry for reviving such an old thread, but I recently went back to selling stuff on ebay after a 3 or 4 year hiatus and I'm about to say the heck with it.  Here's why:

1) Ebay fees are a complete rip-off - They take their cut twice from me (closing fees + paypal).  End up being about 10% of the total cost.

2) Ebay has simplified the shipping calculator and the seller can no longer have it compute the insurance cost  -  From reading the ebay boards, it sounds like the seller is now solely responsible for insurance no matter what.  OK, so what I have to do is over-estimate weight and hope that offsets the extra expense.   Oh, and paypal takes a cut of the shipping fees so I get hit twice on shipping too.

3) Buyers harass you about ending your auction early for way less than what the item is worth -  I low-ball the starting amount, but also include a reasonable buy-it-now price.  They always want me to make the starting price the BIN price.  I counter offer with maybe 10 - 20% off the BIN.  They then get ticked off at me because I didn't give in to their low-ball offer.

4) Criticism of shipping rates - I'm getting slammed with this right now with my current round of auctions.  Buyers want me to cram a full ATX motherboard box into a flat rate USPS box.  Not going to happen because I always double box my items with ample space to allow for post man crushing of the box (don't even get me started with UPS, they use table saw blades to drive boxes through their sorting machines).

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with using them for now just because I don't have time to wait around for folks to buy stuff from me using the Amazon marketplace.  Oh well, at least it felt good ranting a little.
 

I'm just about at the end of my rope with Ebay, good thing too.

Fees, fees and more fees.  Buying or selling, there are more and more fees.  Now I see that when you pay somebody that is not in the same country as you are, there is an extra fee now to send the money to the seller.  There is a choice to have the seller pay that fee to, but as a seller I know that there are enough fees to pay as it is.

There needs to be some real competition to ebay.  Yahoo auctions went by the way side years ago, and Craigslist and Kijiji are both owned by ebay.  What a joke.

So, my little experience here.

I am on ebay from 2002. I bought and sold a lot of stuff (I definitively prefer to buy), but not so much as you. I bought from Italy, Germany, UK, France, Switzerland, Beglium, Denmark, Spain, Holland and some other european countries. Also from USA, Canada, China and Australia.

Germans - Are good people. Usually they do not like talk about facts but like to do facts, and I prefer like that. Extremely patients. Often they are very helpful and kindly persons, more than others.

French - Generally are decents, but sometimes superficial...It may depends

English - Are good people too. Efficients and honest persons. Very quick. Sometimes you find someone is bored and not so cooperative as you would expected.

Canadians - Good and friendly, nothig wrong with them

Australians - Very good people. It seems they like communicate with buyers. Cooperative and kindly too.

Americans - Well, very similar to whatever good sellers you could find. Very patiens. But, I agree with paul when he said they tend to ignore anyone who lives outside the USA when asked about shipping. I found someone was very sweet!

Italians - Hahahaha...well, what I can say...They are perfectly able to be the best seller on ebay. Very cooperative, like to do a lot of bla bla bla ( ::)). Kindly, friendly, they can work hard in order to make you happy. But they perfectly can be the WORST on ebay. They are able to invent the worst bullshit to persuade you they are right ( ::)). I was frauded from italian ebayers one or two times... Someone say: Italians do it better...well, it is true, but it depends for whom is better :-X

The world is the same wherever you go!