Ebay claims that they encourage feedback from the parties involved in any given transaction. Furthermore, they claim that the existence of this feedback forum provides their users with quality information that they can use in order to have a better idea about the reliability of a particular seller and, therefore, ultimately protect themselves from getting ripped-off by unscrupulous sellers.
Yeah, well that all sounds nice in theory, but let’s look at it in practice. Anytime I ever left legitimate negative feedback regarding a seller who didn’t fulfill their commitments (you know, the kind Ebay claims you're supposed to leave so future prospective customers can have some vaguely reasonable idea regarding the people they're preparing to deal with!), I then received (contrary to Ebay's policies, but, despite that fact, they refuse to remove them) undeserved, retaliatory negative feedback. That's complete and utter bullshit and what it causes unhappy buyers to do is just not leave any feedback at all. After all, it’s better to say nothing and not get unfairly tarred, yourself, in the process, than it is to state your legitimate complaints and then have your feedback score unfairly (and, again, contrary to Ebay’s own stated policy!) hit. This, of course, totally undermines the entire validity of their feedback system. The only way you can then get this undeserved, retaliatory negative feedback off your record is to agree to have the legitimate negative feedback that you left for the scum bag seller removed, which, again, only serves to further undermine the validity of their feedback forum.
Of course, this is what Ebay (and their sellers) really want - a system in which people will only post positive feedback, which will, in turn, give the FALSE impression to everybody out there that Ebay is just this wonderful conduit, hooking up happy buyers with honest sellers of merchandise of only the highest calibre. That makes both Ebay and its sellers look both attractive and safe. Unfortunately, the truth is that Ebay is actually a financially dangerous place to shop, populated with an equal number of honest people and scum bag scam artists. 100's of people daily are either ripped off by unscruplous, but real, sellers and/or out right scam artists working the net.
That’s why I say - FUCK Ebay!!!!! I can get almost anything offered there someplace else and, if I can’t, I’ll bet it’s not something that is that important to me anyway.
And I’m not even going to get into the fact that the scumbags who run Ebay also try to encourage as many transactions as possible to go through their subsidiary, Paypal, who collects a percentage of each transaction, in addition to what Ebay already gets in listing and sales fees! There's also been a lot of people who became identity theft victims as a result of using Paypal.
Yep, FUCK Ebay. I don’t use them anymore (and I can’t think of one item I was looking for that I’ve failed to find elsewhere, and often for less the the mania driven price on Ebay!) and you shouldn’t be played for a sucka by using them either. Do a little more surfing the net and you’ll still score that rare psych record or ‘69 Triumph Bonneville you’re looking for!
No comments:
Post a Comment