Can you believe this?!

[SouthBayPhoto]

I cannnnnot believe this. I'm sooo darn mad right now.

Back on March 15th, I bought a 4G Sandisk Extreme IV CF card off eBay so that I can use it in the new 40D. No problem, won the auction. All is good. I send my money via PayPal the SAME NIGHT and include the shipping location/instructions.

The person comes back on the 17th (Monday) asking me for shipping instructions. Okay, so I email her back and tell her. Then.....nothing.

I end up emailing twice via private email and twice via eBay email from the auction item listing. Nothing. So, after two weeks, I decided I want my money back. I file a grievence via PayPal to get my money back.

Meanwhile I put the following negative feedback on the auction: "Had to force refund via PayPal. Card never sent." And that was it.

The next day I received my funds back to PayPal with the following statement made by the seller, "item was not shipped due to unconfirmed address. sorry here is a full refunded." Yet, I was having her ship it to a confirmed PayPal address. And I had 4 emails going to her with the shipping address!!!!

So, all is said and done and I got my money back via PayPal...ya right.

I just got an email from eBay...this person put the following negative response to my negative feedback: "BUYER TOOK 3 WEEKS TO PAY AND THEN LEFT BAD FEEDBACK ON TOP OF IT" Then under it, here is the message from the seller asking for a "mutual withdrawl of feedback".

Message from seller: "withdraw the feedback and i will do a mutal withdraw please"

Sooooo...for me doing the right thing and warning people not to buy product from her because she didn't feel like sending it out (or didn't have it), she puts a negative feedback onto my account (fake feedback on top of it!!!!!) and then tries to "force" me to withdraw my feedback because she probably knows I don't want a negative feedback on a perfect positive feedback account.

WTF is this world coming to? I'm sorry but I had to rant about this somewhere and I figured you camera folks would understand!

Oh and the seller is: camrasforyou_2008

I should have known it since they didn't spell CAMERAS correctly. UGGGGHHH...

So...question to you all...what would you do? Is there a way to file a grievence with eBay about this? I do NOT want to pull my negative feedback off this auction because they were in the wrong. However, I really don't think it's fair for me to have a negative on my 100% positive feedback status. Especially since it's not correct. I even have the credit card info and PayPal info to prove it was sent that same night.

So, if anyone knows the best way to go about this, please....I'm all ears!

Thanks for letting me vent.

[charlie]

Personally....................... I would stay off of ebay, but that is just me.

[Poseidon]

Have you tried contacting E-bay yet?? I would provide the same level of detail you did here, and see what they say.

[zhenya]

Have you tried contacting E-bay yet?? I would provide the same level of detail you did here, and see what they say.

Mike, that won't help at all. Ebay won't police, or guarantee anything. I paid $600 for a lens that I never got about two years ago. Some dude from England stiffed me and I never got anywhere with the Ebay.
Charlie is right, stay away from the deals that looks too good on Ebay...

I was contemplating going over the pond to kick some arse but changed my mind due to me hating the airplane flights for more than 4 hours.

[Poseidon]

Well.... Then I would leave the feedback in place. Can you respond to the feedback they left you?

[SouthBayPhoto]

I think I can respond to their feedback, but then I don't know if they can respond to mine and so on and so on. I'm afraid of this continuing on and turning out stupid.

However, I also don't think it's right that I'm being blackmaled (in a matter of speaking) to mutually withdraw the darn comment.

I might sent an email to eBay in regards to it. The email that was sent to me is from support @ ebay.com, so maybe I'll just reply to that so they can see what was actually said to me and then give them my info and offer up the backup if they want.

Since eBay and Paypal are so close, I'm sure someone could find otu very easily when I paid the lady for the CF card.

Charlie - normally I do pretty much stay off eBay, especially for electronics. But, I have had some success in the past buying CF cards off eBay and they've been great. This is the first time I've ever been stiffed on eBay.

Anyway, maybe tomorrow after work I'll send that email out to eBay and see what they think. In reality, if they can prove the person was lying about the 3 weeks thing, they really should ban the person due to putting up false info in a comment...but then again, that's just me. LOL

[weez1959]

You can probably get eBay to do something, they are a PITA to deal with, takes forever to get them to actually read the whole message because they mostly just skim the email and send back form replies, but...
The seller you dealt with is very new (just over 2 months!) and has way too many negative feedbacks for them to ignore the problem.
I've had an account with eBay since '98 and I've learned a lot of things to watch out for and have never been stiffed in all my over 900 transactions.
I do however think eBay stinks too but there are lots of pros too...

[weez1959]

I Don't know if this will help but here's the eBay phone support: 1-800-209-3229

I would definately make a stink about this seller, I was looking at thier feedback which is terrible and then I looked at the feedback they are giving out to thier buyers!!! They are polluting the feedback of many good buyers, this shouldn't go unpunished!
Give them hell!

[SouthBayPhoto]

Louise,

Exactly my point. Because people are putting a negative feedback on her account, she is making false accusations via her feedback on your good account. Then she sends out a message to "mutually withdraw" both feedbacks.

Basically a blackmail to say, "Hey, if you don't remove the bad feedback, I'm going to tarnish your good name."

I sent a big ole' email to eBay last night via their system (ya, you can't just send a normal email) and listed it under "report a user". I hope this helps. What's funny is I pointed out all the things that the seller did wrong. They put up the feedback that it took me three weeks to pay. The friggin auction ended on 3/15 and she put up that response on 4/1. How did it take me three weeks to pay when then that was just over 2? LOL

If they don't see this, then eBay is blind as hell and just doesn't give a crap. I know they will probably skim over the top of the email, but I had to try. I am not removing my response. I don't think I should have to. Normally I check out sellers prior to bidding and initially she didn't look that bad when I first was going after the auction. All of a sudden, after I won the auction, I was getting emails from other users tell me not to buy from her and that the cards were fake Sandisk cards and everything. Ugggghhh...

Up until this transaction, I've never had any issues on eBay. I even sold one of my cars on eBay before and didn't have a problem!

Looks like I'm just either going to have to buy a new CF or go through a very trusted source for it or something. It kills me cuz I bought several CF and SD cards via eBay with no issues what so ever and have been very happy...this is not one of those cases, however.

So, we'll see if eBay gets back to me and/or how long it will take.

[weez1959]

Did you try the phone #? I've never tried and it will probably make you listen to 2 hours of recordings to press 1, then press 6 and if your complaining press 3, then 4, then 1 again and would you like to do a survey, if so press 71, then press 9 to speak to an operator at which point the phone will hang up but sometimes it's worth a try

[SouthBayPhoto]

Heyyyy....how did you know the exact route to take on the automated phone???

I'm going to wait a couple of days first to see if they get back to me via email, if not, then I will call them and pimp slap them.

[weez1959]

Heyyyy....how did you know the exact route to take on the automated phone???

Uhhh, I dunno, I never tried it, ya that's it.... never tried it

Waiting a few days might save you quite a bit of frustration and you won't have to throw your phone across the room.

Up hear we have a really annoying Bell Canada customer support. I try to avoid it at all costs.
Goes something like this " Hi, my name is Emily and I'm your automated assistant, just tell me how I can help you"
you can't press 0 or she just starts over again and you have to talk to her or you get nowhere. So you say " my stupid phone is broken and she says I don't understand "stupid", please explain...

[SouthBayPhoto]

Been there, done that on the automated systems.

Well, come to find out I got the usual expected answer from eBay.

"Well, there isn't much we can do about that unless the user violates specific eBay user policies."

What a bunch of $h!t.

They told me to do what I didn't want to do in the first place...put in another response to the user's response to my initial response (feedback). Uggghhh...

I'll do it, but at this moment, I have no darn clue what to write. I want to find a way to cover myself so this doesn't keep going on and on. I want to put down, "Due to a false accusation by the seller, I have no reason to respond to her false feedback"

But I'm sure she'll write back (all this is public, by the way) and find some way to twist it.

I need to write something back...now I have to sit and think about it...oh joy.

[weez1959]

How about:
PLEASE CHECK THIS SELLERS FEEDBACK BEFORE BIDDING!
That usually lets everyone know the seller was in the wrong in the first place and judging from what I saw it won't be very hard to convince everyone that you were shafted!

[Squee]

Mat,

Sorry this happened to you. Ebay has been good to me for the most part, but I too have had a few transactions go bad, both as a buyer and a seller. I've managed to keep my perfect feedback record intact and I have never withdrawn a comment nor had one withdrawn. I have learned to be picky as a buyer because all sellers are not created equal. I do get fish supplies on EBay and get some great deals. (not livestock though)

Always check recent and overall feedback before you bid. I Don't accept sellers with less than 99%. If I just gotta have it and they have a 98%, sometimes I make an exception but carefully check recent feedback. If you want it fast, check for feedback comments that reflect that the seller ships fast. Always check shipping charges before you bid. Make sure they take PayPal so you can get your money back if there's a problem. (Good thing you did that) Feedback is the absolute last thing you should do after the transaction is completely over, meaning you received your money back and all communication with the seller is over. In this case it didn't matter, but sometimes negs are sent in anger and there ends up being a legitimate reason the seller couldn't ship. It does sound like you found a looney seller.

My advice is this... Don't retract the neg. It doesn't hurt you as a buyer to have a less than perfect record. A seller wont care as long as you pay them. It DOES hurt the seller as bidders will be less likely to trust a seller with bad feedback and their items will sell for less if at all. Follow up your comment with a calm factual reply.

"I paid same day, Seller negged me to ask for a mutual withdraw. Nope, U keep it!" (Most buyers will stay away from a seller like this)

If I get a neg, I've thought about something like this... "305 positive transactions, 1 idiot" :-)

Good Luck, Squee

[Future]

My wife does e-bay all the time, and usually the best approach to those people is to take the feedback they gave you with a grain of salt just to keep sticking it to them. Half the time the seller will turn out to be "no longer a member".

A few negatives will not hurt you to be honest. It just makes people read more and if it's my wife she'll read page after page of feedback before going through with a purchase.

[weez1959]

Hi Future,
Mat was in a terrible accident so he won't be replying right away, hopefully he'll be back soon!
I did bid on something on eBay recently (filter socks actually) and I found out that sellers can no longer give bad or neutral feedback to buyers no matter what! Now you don't have to be afraid to say what you think of a seller just because you might get neg feedback in retalliation!

[Future]

Hi Future,
Mat was in a terrible accident so he won't be replying right away, hopefully he'll be back soon!
I did bid on something on eBay recently (filter socks actually) and I found out that sellers can no longer give bad or neutral feedback to buyers no matter what! Now you don't have to be afraid to say what you think of a seller just because you might get neg feedback in retalliation!

Sorry to hear bout the guy, hope he does well.
As for ebay, I know, how cool is that now?

[kronos5]

Has anyone bought any marine livestock on Ebay ??