ebay: high seller rating in spite of fake products?

not to mention what you see when you ’oogle counterfeit trustfire - Google Search
or similar searches.

I guess once everything is digital, “reality” becomes meaningless.

Well, i ordered 14500 LiFePO4 batteries from *bay labeled 1200 mAh and on arrival they measured ~600 mAh, so i complained of false advertising, opened a paypal dispute and got 50% of the cost back. If everyone would do this consequently, this fraud business would dry out…

yep, we should all file disputes about false advertised and fake products, they are counting on us not doing it. Even though my wife just told me “leave the poor b*s alone, that money might be worth more to them than it is to you”

You have to remember, Ebay don’t care, why would they, and they only pay lip service to stopping fake or counterfeit items.
Fake or real they still get a $$ cut, so why should they care.
Plus few companies are willing to really take them on.

I remember talking to the owner of a medium size company in Germany, about people selling fakes of their products on ebay and why didn’t he try and stop it, he simply said “ebay have bigger lawyer’s than we do”

Also often when you buy something genuine and it turns out fake, the seller offers a full refund as soon as you question it, on the condition you leave good feedback, what do most buyers do, waste a lot of time dealing with it and risk losing a paypal dispute?, or just leave good feedback take the refund and move on?, most take the latter

I have mixed feelings about this.

I avoided ebay for years, but over the past six months or so, I’ve bought a lot of stuff from EBay.

I shop ebay looking for deals. I expect that any given item/transaction could be crap, and that over time, I’m going to have some bad experiences. I manage that risk by keeping my orders small and the items cheap. With the exception of a lot of untested (and very crappy dell batteries) I don’t think I’ve spent more than $30 or so in any one order, and I don’t think I’ve spent more than $25 on a single item. As a further mitigation, I expected that when I do get crap, some percentage of the time it will be redressed by the seller, or by paypal/ebay.

So far though, I’m actually doing better than expected. There were two USB bike lights that I won bids for that never arrived. Ebay quickly found in my favor. I’ve probably spend $5 on boards I thought would have a TP4056, but instead had a knockoff. A few items weren’t quite as described, and I quickly worked out a partial refund from the sellers. I also got a USB meter that didn’t work right. The seller sent me a new one right away. I just got an order of test leads that had apparently been confused with someone else’s. The seller told me to keep them and got me a tracking number on the replacement less than 12-hours from when I reported the problem.

So, as an informed consumer, I might buy something with inflated specs because I think I know what I’ll actually get, and find that is still a good deal. Having done that, it would be crappy for me to turn around and give the seller poor feedback.

On the other hand, I really wish EBay did provide a mechanism that would allow me to share my perspective with other buyers who might be interested in the same item from the same seller. Ebay would be more useful to me if I could better trust the listings, and the ratings.

I see lots of sellers go with “manufactured rated” that way “they” are not misleading you. While we all know that in stock form lumens are a bit like gas milage, “your lumens may vary”.

Remimber most sellers are acting as independent distributors not manufactures, “they” did not build the light and as long as what then sent you matches the photo. On the other hand ebay as a policy sides with the buyers, (I noticed the aliexpress is not buyer centric) I have had buyers open a case not even bother to explaine what happend (totally bank) and still win a dispute.

There are two sides, If you dont know, Sellers can no longer leave negtive feedback for buyers on ebay. when this change went through it back open season on ripping seller off on ebay. (feedback used to be a mutually assured destruction) kind of thing. once the seller lost “negitive feedback every buyer had 100% feedback even if they were professional scammers. So ebay came up with feedback extortion so if a seller makes refunding money contingent on positive feedback, bingo they have breaced policy (the same goes for buyers).

Shre shill bidding happens they buy each others stuff and say how good it is (and loose the transaction cost).

Also they set up account and get x numer of good deals and then try t cash in and blow out some too good to be true deals that never ship. I have no idea if ebay gets there money back on thoes but at least the buyer does (after 45 days).

I know that was the feedback origional intent. ebay is not perfect but trust me it is better to be a buyer then a seller with them.

DO NOT USE eBay buyer "protection",unless you want to loose your money! Open dispute on paypal directly!

Here is my case,I bought this item cca 45 days ago:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/160958163920?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

from UK seller betteries2udirect.

Since he is in UK I expected 10-15max. delivery time(5-7days is usual delivery time from UK seller to me),but I got package after almost a month(and I really needed those batteries).I opened package and seller sent me 2x4 AA digimax NiMh batteries,instead of 2x9V NiMh,well just great.I opened a case,Seller told me that I need to return wrong batteries back to him,he will pay return shipping cost and ship correct ones to me.So I returned wrong batteries and paid ~15$ for tracked shipping,sent a note to seller about that,but interestingly,seller was quiet from that point and just ignored my questions about refund for shipping.About 10 days later he responded that he sent correct batteries,but still no word about 15$ refund for shipping.

But problems doesn't stop there;eBay sent me a notice that if I want,I must escalate this case before 06 Feb,or else it will be automatically closed.Ok,I click "escalate" button,but "Oops,we had a technical hiccup. Please try later..." message pops out.I tried several hours later,same message.Next day,same thing,several times.Next few days-same thing.Strange? Then I googled that same message and found that it's not a techical hiccup,it's a stupid eBay scam,because everything works fine,except that "escalate case" button.Next logical thing was to contact eBay and tell them about that problem.

But when you click "Contact us" on ebay page,select "buying",contact options-zero,not a freaking customer support mail for multi-zillion dollar webpage. Found "chat with us" under seller option on ebay.uk page,and after several "please,I will switch this chat to my colleague,this is his area",they promised me they'll resolve that problem and escalate case for me.After two days they did that,and they quickly closed the case in seller's favor,of course!I didn't even have a chance to defend my case.

In the meantime correct batteries arrived,but seller still didn't refund me 15$ for shipping,and of course he never will.

So,after seller cheated me,I leaved negative feedback with explanation,but after few seconds ebay automatically erased it,with explanation that you basically can't leave a feedback after the case is closed! But this is ok to eBay-less negative feedback-more buyers-more to eBay.

And if you look seller's negative feedback profile,you'll see exactly the same thing for one buyer,no refund for return shipping,who knows how many people seller cheated,but eBay removed their feedback also.

So,the point is,if you have problems with eBay purchases,DO NOT USE eBay buyer "protection",open dispute directly on paypal.

Ebay has become so bloated with millions of scammers and fake sellers they just can’t keep up with it, and ebay has become an open window for the millions of fake and crap sellers an opportunity to take advantage of the unwary and vulnerable general consumer & online shopper. Its their way of doing business, and ebay has so many bad loop holes to allow it.

damn, thanks for sharing this one… my ebay buying has increased a lot, sooner or later I will run into similar issue.

i thought they changed rule, so seller can not leave negative feedback for buyer,

Personally under 99% for me is bad. After selling thousands of products, all these ratings get an average and in reality rarely you find someone with under 97%. I stick with 99 and something if i can find the product. I read plenty of feedbacks. Also a TOP rated seller is a plus. If you think about it, most sellers sell hundreds of DIFFERENT products. For example they sell good shirts and 1000 people buy these shirts and leave positive feedback. They also sell flashlights (which are clones and bad ones) but just a few people bought that ones and left a bad rating. If you make an average from that, in the end it will be pretty high :wink:

Doesn’t Ebay own Paypal? I heard it is kinda the same. Before the 45 days i always contact the seller. Even if the product is defective. The problem with their policy is that if they send you a bad/defective product, you HAVE to mail it back to the owner if you want a refund. This is bullshit! I had a bad experience over a product and i opened a dispute and they told me to send it back in order to get the money back, which would cost me the same as the product does, so i didn’t send it back. Now this annoys because it protects bad sellers. As far from all them, they could just send you a piece of rock in the box and later what can you do?
I know it sounds bad, but if the product is really defective and you have to throw it away, you should report it as “not delivered”. That way you will get your money back.

well said, this is exactly why i don’t use it anymore, most everything is a chinese knockoff, i assume everything is, and the odd genuine item is too rare for me to throw away money hoping to get.
If i were into vintage items i would consider it, things that have been out of production a long time, rare but not valuable, but i am still skeptical enough to usually not go after these items.

So I’m still in dispute over fake TP4056 charging board, total value of shipment is practically insignificant $3. We’re going in circles, unbelievable. Now the seller claims that they spend a lot of money shipping this. My wife told me I should leave them be, perhaps it’s a lot of money for them. I’m kind of angry that there are 100s of cases like this, with so many fakes and so many giving-up scammed buyers. What would you do?

I would not give them an inch, they straight up lied to you that they where genuine, and then sent you something else.

It is not allowed (of course, but sometimes it looks like the sellers don’t even know that) to have pictures in the listing that is not of the actual product.

Those times i have gotten something other than was in the listing i have gotten a refund, if they refuse i guess you can always escalate, but even that i am unsure of now because ebay have changed the dispute process so many times over the years, it is hard to know what the current rules are, and it was a while i did it last time now.

But don’t let them get to you, this is all part of the game for the bad sellers out there, if they make it annoying enough for you, you think twice next time you get a bad product and then they have won.
Just learn to accept that sometimes you get burned the trick is not to let it affect you emotionally and just deal with it :wink:

In the end we still save crazy amount of money by buying from the cheapest seller, i know i do :slight_smile:

It wouldn’t matter if they had to spend 10x the price on shipping. If shipping is that much of an issue, then more reason to ensure orders never need resending. Its on them, not you. Value has nothing to do with it, its a principle.

I mean dont do your head in but dont just not bother. I tmattered enough to post, so surely it matters enough to put it in PayPals hands.

My advice is never, ever, use bank transfer on PayPal®, always use a credit card. Basically when you allow PayPal to directly debit your bank account, you have a transaction in which you have no recourse. PayPal isn’t the seller, so PayPal didn’t commit the fraud. Even when PayPal screws up (and they do from time to time and debit your account more than once for a single transaction), they will NOT Accept any responsibility for the bank charges that result.

However PayPal is also a credit card merchant, and 9 out of 10 times if you dispute a credit card transaction with them, they will find in your favor. It has nothing to do with being right or wrong, it has to do with what happens to PayPal if their chargebacks (involuntary refunds) exceed a very small per centage. Rather than have that happen, they simply screw the seller.

While the PayPal terms an conditions say that you agree not to challenge PayPal charges with your credit card issuer, the reality is that Federal Law says otherwise. As a matter of law, a contract cannot override Federal Law, so any conflict between PayPal Terms and Conditions and Federal Law is automatically resolved in favor of Federal Law. Consequently as a buyer, if you use a credit card, you can almost always challenge the transaction with the Credit Card company even if PayPal refuses the refund. What PayPal is deathly afraid of is that chargebacks will exceed the threshold, and when that happens, the merchant bank (I believe it is Wells Fargo) begins holding a portion of the proceeds from credit card sales in escrow to cover potential chargebacks.

So my advice is to use a credit card for PayPal purchases whenever possible. In addition if you are a seller, have a bank account specifically for PayPal deposits, and move any money from that account to another account ASAP when PayPal desposits it. In addition, you can opt out of the eBay/PayPal refund scheme (by default they simply take money from your PayPal account and/or the bank account linked to PayPal), You can also opt out of PayPal’s binding arbitration in San Jose as well. I have done both, but you have to do so in writing.

ok, not letting them go then. Although I do feel a bit childish, exchanging 20 mails so far over 3$, but after reading the other negative feedback, seems that is the strategy that the seller often uses, bore the buyer to death with endless emails not resolving anything.

The seller just tried to leverage feedback with the refund.

Update: now I understand how their ratings are unrealistically high, it’s basically scamming, and unless you agree to their terms, you can’t get your money back.
After 40 fruitless emails this is how far we have come: