Whats on mind? Thanks for asking, Facebook. More bullshit ebay shenanigans are on my mind. Heres the breakdown: I post a regular 7 day auction for a $15 item (with FREE shipping, to boot). On day four some lady bids on it. She wins with her opening bid of $14.99. As soon as the auction ended she sent me this message: I apologise I should not have placed a bid. I was able to find a item which suited my needs better and was hoping to get outbid. I will not be able to pay for this item. I deeply apologise for any inconvience! - Directly copied, BTW. Not my spelling. Folks, it seems that I run into crap like this more and more frequently these days, even to the point that - no exaggeration - I encounter some kind of customer idiocy literally every week. Up to this point I have generally just taken the loss (I do get my final value fees back, but not any insertion or extra value fees) and let it go, but for some reason this one chapped my ass more than usual. I immediately decided to NOT cancel the transaction, meaning that if she goes through with her plan to stiff me she will receive pretty much the only negative mark a buyer can still get on ebay (as sellers can no longer leave negative feedback), a non-paying bidder strike. NPB strikes are lame and toothless as youd have to have something like four in a two month period before ebay takes you out of the game, but its all Ive got. So I then sent this lady a note of my own explaining that shell end up with an NPB strike if she chooses to stiff me and more or less why I will think shes a shitty person if she goes through with it. Now that Ive written it and sent it, however, Im a little concerned that I might have hit it a bit too hard and she might get all ragey. Heres the note I sent: Hello, Ms. Herlastname (I presume). I am sorry to hear of your circumstances regarding this item, but Im even sorrier to hear that you do not intend to follow through on the transaction that you initiated. I see from your profile that you have been an ebay member for over five years. Normally, I would take this to mean that you are quite familiar with the practices and procedures regarding bidding and buying on this website. However, I also see from your profile that you have participated in only a handful of transactions in that time, so I suppose it might be a good idea to explain a bit about the general workings of ebay as a marketplace. First, these are all real, physical products (with the exception of services, of course) that are paid for and subsequently listed by real people - such as myself. There are many different kinds of sellers on ebay, ranging from people that list only a few items here and there (somewhat like an online yard sale) to people that run large and thriving businesses with thousands of transactions per month. I fall towards the low volume end of that scale with maybe 400 - 500 transactions per year. That said, there are some things that all ebay sellers have in common. The first is that we make a monetary investment in the products we sell. Nothing is free, as they say. The second is that we all must devote time and effort to designing, writing, and posting our listings. Some only take a few minutes, but some take much longer. It depends on the product, the complexity of explaining it properly and taking pictures of it, and whether or not a seller has sold a similar product in the past. Lastly, and for our purposes most importantly, is the fact that listing items for sale on ebay is not free. There are multiple fees involved in selling merchandise on ebay, some of which (such as insertion fees and added value fees) are non-refundable. This can mean that even if I were to somehow cancel your purchase, it can still cost me money. The next consideration we should discuss is that with your user history it really isnt a wise idea to not honor your purchase. While its true that youve been an ebay member for over five years, you have very few transactions to your credit (at a glance it looks like a total of seven, or barely more than one per year). Under such circumstances, unfavorable actions in your feedback and bidding history generally have a much greater effect on you than the same instance would on another ebay user that might have a few hundred transactions on their record. In other words, a small number of transactions followed by an NPB (non-paying bidder) strike doesnt look good to sellers and may cause some of them to prohibit you from participating in their sales. Lastly, I feel that its important to point out that according to the rules of ebay, a bid on an auction is viewed as a binding contract entered into in good faith. There are some circumstances under which it is permissible and acceptable to retract a bid, but most of them have to do with things like discovering the seller had misrepresented the merchandise in the auction listing or possibly the seller refuses to ship to your location. To the point, generally speaking, it is only acceptable to retract a bid when the seller has done something incorrectly or cant/wont offer related services the buyer needs. Furthermore, you did not retract your bid, or even attempt to. You simply placed your bid, changed your mind about the product, and then rather than contact me to see if anything could be done before the auction ended you simply hoped somebody would come along and outbid you. This suggests to me that you simply had no problem with the idea of leaving me on the hook for this sale if your plans fell through. I dont intend to come off as malicious or spiteful when I say any of this, but this all strikes me as being pretty inconsiderate. Ultimately, if you decide to push the issue, I will let this transaction be resolved without your payment. This will, of course, result in a non-paying bidder strike against you and some lost income for me. Instead, I ask you to reconsider your position here. From my perspective it seems that honoring the purchase that you agreed to make by placing your bid is the right thing to do. I realize that you have located a different item which you like better, but that is not my fault or, frankly, my concern. Whats more, I can honestly tell you that if our roles were reversed I would simply pay for my purchase and move on. In fact, under slightly different but overall similar circumstances, I have done exactly that in the past. After pondering a bit, please let me know what decision you come to so I may know how subsequent events will transpire. I appreciate the situation youre in and I want you to know that nothing of what Ive written here was meant to be angry, sarcastic, or spiteful. I just felt that given the situation it would be reasonable to air my feelings and concerns to you. Respectfully Yours, Scott ONeil Nervous Brickdown 1000! What say you, my people? Too much? Not enough? Just right?
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 07:35:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015