Ebay - Buyers Beware!

I once made a purchase from a fairly large-volume dealer who does a lot of business on Ebay. They advertised "absolute auctions" which means that they will sell an item for whatever the high bid is at the end of the auction - no minimum or reserve price. This also implies that they actually have the item to sell. Their "guarantee" is "We guarantee that you will have a UPS tracking number or a full refund** by the 30th day".

This dealer, purewhitecat, sold around 200-300 items per month on Ebay. They had also racked up a whopping 161 negative "feedbacks" (complaints - as of 12/8/02) from customers who did not receive their purchases as promised or were otherwise disappointed. They had 79 negatives over the past month and 39 in the last 7 days. They always have an excuse; PayPal was not working, email was not working, shipments were backordered or delayed, the shipper or supplier screwed up. Strange how it only happened to them and all of my other purchases from other Ebay dealers went through flawlessly using the same resources.

Obviously, Ebay is more concerned with collecting it's commissions from the sellers, regardless of how unscrupulous, than protecting their subscribing buyers. Otherwise they would have giveen purewhitecat the boot. Anyone who has that many legitimate complaints should be banned. Of course, this will eventually bite Ebay in the ass when more and more rip-off artists learn that they can run their cons on Ebay and subscribers will no longer trust anything on Ebay.

Update 12/20/02: After numerous emails and complaints including filing formal complaints with Ebay and the National Fraud Information Center "purewhitecat" refunded my money after 40 days claiming the item was backordered from United Cutlery which, of course, is total BS. The item is available from numerous other sellers. Since my bid was not high enough to suite her, purewhitecat decided to sit on my money until I made enough noise for her to refund it. Purewhitecat has since left Ebay, at least under that name.

By the way, here is the official response from Ebay:

"Thank you for contacting eBay. I can understand your concern in this
situation and I appreciate the opportunity to address your report.

I have reviewed your report and have found that the member you reported
does not meet our internal guidelines for suspension at this time. Keep
in mind that eBay uses a number of factors to determine when to take
action in these types of situations. These factors include member
reports, the seller's feedback profile status, complaints filed through
the eBay Online Fraud Complaint reporting system, reports received
through law enforcement agencies, along with a number of other factors.

Dominic
eBay SafeHarbor
Investigations Team
______________________________
eBay
Your Personal Trading Community (tm)"

Some customer service, huh. As of this writing 12/23/02, purewhitecat has had 106 negative feedbacks in the last month and 29 in just the last week yet Ebay does not see any reason to take any action. Let's see, they get commissions from sellers, not from buyers. Do you think that might have something to do with it?

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