I’m at a loss, and for me it’s time to find something different. Six auctions and six fraud cancellations means there is something seriously wrong.
To top it off, if Ebay finds that someone has bid on your item with a stolen account – they will just delete the auction, so you lose the entire thing. There is no hope of you getting the content back, so you have to re-write it from scratch. That’s enough to put anyone off re-posting it.
I even make sure it’s perfectly clear that I would never ship to Africa or Asia, in the hope that it would stop some fraudsters. Of course that never works out.
Why don’t they just entirely block countries like Nigeria? It’s not like they have an “Ebay Nigeria” anyway. Perhaps that would be too harsh, but that seems the source for most fraud right now.
How has your experience been? If anyone can gladly point me in the direction of an auctioning site that isn’t riddled with fraud, I’d be happy to put my items up there.
Ken Boone 5:38 pm on July 7, 2007 Permalink |
When you list an item to sell, I think there is an area near the end of the listing page under Additional Information called Buyer Requirements. You can check the box that will block buyers who are registered in countries to which you don’t ship.
Andy Peatling 10:42 pm on July 7, 2007 Permalink |
No use Ken – I did that, but it made no difference, they just sign up with a US address and they’re in. Thanks for the help in any case.
Dixyt 2:20 am on July 9, 2007 Permalink |
Same experiences, Andy. And I’m also an ebay buyer, and this is the third time, I’m buying an item that doesn’t exist! And the sellers continue to spam me and trying to sell me other items out of ebay!
Selling or buying has become a stress full thing on ebay. Too bad that’s their business!
Nice day
Dixyt
PS :
one advice to new comers on ebay, create a specific email address just for ebay! It’ll save you some spam troubles!
Johnson 4:01 am on July 13, 2007 Permalink |
I’m from Nigeria, and I find it offensive what you say about Nigerians. Nigeria has more than 100.000 people online, you want them all blocked because some 20 spammers are causing you problems? And you know most of them are from other countries?
You silly you. You think that your country has some preordained right to use the internet, and ours not?
Andy Peatling 11:52 am on July 13, 2007 Permalink |
Not at all Johnson, all I’m saying is that there is no Ebay Nigeria – so why would it make a difference if you can’t access Ebay at all?
I’ve no doubt that it is only an extremely small fraction of Nigerians causing an issue, but that small fraction causes many issues with a large fraction of people who do have Ebay in their country.
Toxa 8:41 pm on September 15, 2009 Permalink |
eBay is pulling away from their business model of being an online-auction house. The reason for this is obvious: like many other dot-com-bubble startups they overestimated the inherit value of the market they were in business with. This naturally inflated the perceived value of eBay at the time they went public. We all have seen the share of eBay fall greatly over last few years, as it became clear to investors the used-goods-auction market is not that huge as it appear to be. eBay must show growth in profits or face a big sell out and eventual death. So, what do they do? They switch their business to a much larger but over-saturated market of new-goods retail. eBay figures they can capitalize on their brand-name and become a direct competitor to Amazon. It is as good of a plan as any in their position. It won’t be easy, it will take years, and there will be blood. First you have to get rid of all the little guys, which show up every spring to auction off the stuff they found in their attics. You see they are just muddying up the waters for the big boys. Then you have to entice all the big retailers to come to eBay and list their shiny new goodies. At the same time eBay needs to keep its main asset – the buyers. All of this is not easy, the site was conceived as an auction house not a web-store. This becomes very apparent when you want to purchase multiple items. There is not even a shopping cart! It all is very confusing for the shoppers. In addition, I don’t think people will consider eBay for their needs when shopping for a brand new gadget. I believe eBay is doomed. It’s demised has started a few years back and will continue for another few. But they will become another, albeit latent, casualty of dot-com bubble. If only they could be less greedy and embrace the position of being the leader in online-auction segment of e-commerce.