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Lo and behold eBay invoiced me last week for the Final Value Fee. Called them and nicely asked them to correct their error before my PayPal account was charged - after a half hour on hold I was told it would be corrected and I would receive a call back to confirm.
No call received. Called again three days later and spoke to a second person. Told this time that the mistake would be corrected and the correction would be made before my Paypal account was charged.
Lo and behold I check this morning and they didn't fix the error and my Paypal account was charged. Now on hold after another half hour of back and forth with an ebay customer service representative without any resolution. They are struggling to validate the "officialness" of the offer, which I received in my personal email inbox. This is frustrating, because:
(1) The email is clearly from eBay based on the detailed sender information.
(2) The links in the email all lead to legitimate eBay website -- following those links, I actually not only checked the terms and conditions but also listed and sold the item!
(3) Their invoice clearly notes that a "promotion" was applied to my invoice to waive the listing fee and buy it now fee, so their promotion clearly applied on the front half of the deal but not the back half.
Anyone else experience a similar problem? Any suggestions for how to resolve the issue?
It's not a lot of money, but it does bug me...I won't be taking advantage of any future offers from them. I swear they must have deleted the e-mail right out of my msg box..that, or I imagined the whole thing (which is possible I suppose..but if I'm going to imagine stuff, I think my subconscious would pick something more grand to makeup then just getting the FVF reimbursed on one Ebay auction).
I did get to speak with a manager. The bottom line is that if you don't have an email in your MyEbay inbox, they do not consider it legitimate. Even if you have an email in your Gmail account or what have you. They did let me forward the personal email I received to their spoof department to verify whether it is real. (If it turns out to be real they will relent.) Fake emails claiming free listings are apparently not an uncommon experience for them. (Supposedly spammers use them to collect info -- I'd get that except that I did actually legitimately list and sell an item on their site and all the links were legit!)
I sold Market Street and so the final fee was considerable ($59.40) and all else equal I would like it back. I probably would have sold the item for about the same price, after discounting the final fee, on Bricklink or on here, so I don't think it was actually an economic loss, but it is still frustrating and I feel used.
I did strongly suggest that the only way I would consider using eBay again was if I were to receive a "legitimate" free listing opportunity from them. The manager did think that was a very good idea. We'll see what happens.
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/topic/Auction-Listings/Did-Anyone-Else/5200098935
Looks like I wasn't the only one that had the June promo issue...the last person's post looks very similar, even down to having their msg removed by Ebay.
Oh well, lesson learned. Good luck @hoyatables, hopefully they do the right thing for you especially since you still have the e-mail for your promo.
Also strikes me as dodgy, as in both cases the bids where fundamentally sound (the items later sold for more) and were each time retracted several hours after they had been entered (I would expect an immediate withdrawal if somebody entered the wrong amount).
There used to be a way to see how many retractions any bidder had, and from whose auctions. Unfortunately I think that went away a couple of years back.
Bottom line, I don't know about the items above specifically, but there can be some malfeasance sometimes.
On another auction, the buyer who won sent me these strange note saying that she would never pay the amount she paid for it (it was a low-priced auction, around $20), and something about another buyer bidding $450, and then (I think) retracting. No idea. For such a low-priced item, it isn't worth the trouble!
But it made me start thinking about the strategic use of bid retractions, and the stories in this thread only confirm that.
Thanks.
Ive only retracted a couple of times and its because ive discovered I cant afford to pay for that item. Life tends to get in the way. I did get in trouble for it once as the woman kicked off that I had retracted a bid. She had dreams of her making a fortune from the set I had bid on.
So if you increased the price of the item $10 and know shipping via priority to worldwide is $40, just drop that price to $30.
Also, please keep in mind most sellers on eBay include eBay/Paypal fees in their shipping cost. All of my items I sell include at least $1 handling fee on top of shipping cost and international I charge $3 minimum over exact shipping costs.
Depending on the price/size of the item, and how many are available from other sellers, I'll offer free shipping. This is mainly done to get more towards the top of the page when lots of other sellers have their items on or if its a seasonal item (ie Christmas is coming up).
The way I look at it, everyone wants a "bargain" to justify their purchase and boast to their friends. When you sell a lego set for $50 and free shipping, all they can say is they paid $50 for it. But if you sell it for $35 and $15 shipping, 90% of the people will say "wow, this item is normally $60 but I paid only $35 for it!"
Similar to the person who goes to Vegas and says "I just won $400!!!", but fails to tell you he lost $400 before he made $400.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-practices.html
"What you're not allowed to charge
Insurance: You can't charge a separate fee for insurance, although you still need to make sure your item arrives as described.
Tip: You should incorporate any insurance fees into an item's price or handling cost.
Tariffs, duties, and customs fees: For cross-border transactions, you're not allowed to collect tariffs, duties, or customs fees. (Buyers may be responsible for paying these fees as required by country laws.)
Tip: Remember not to inappropriately classify an item as a gift as a way to avoid certain duties, tariffs, or customs fees. US law prohibits submitting false or misleading customs information.
Related fees: Things like gas, mileage, time spent at a carrier, employee wages, or eBay and PayPal fees shouldn't be added."
Regardless, if that is still the "rule", everyone does it. I consider my added fees mainly as "insurance": while I don't purchase 3rd party insurance on my packages since (as discussed in other threads) its mostly BS and is a pain to actually collect on, I have calculated the likelihood of the USPS to lose packages and fraudulent buyers who attempt to cheat sellers out of money (ie return used items, claim they didn't receive a package, credit card chargebacks) and incorporate those.
With the new fees, it's moot whether you tack your fees onto the item cost or on the shipping cost.
For folks that want to stick to the 'rules' however, I suppose it's still important to know that you could potentially be reprimanded for tacking fee reimbursement onto handling.
eBay gets annoyed when you sell a $100 item inc p&h for $1 with postage of $99 and I understand why, but I can sell it for $70 + $30 or $80 + $20 and they do not care, (from my experience any way) nor should anyone else.
I find it annoying when people complain about postage charges that are clearly stated. Any one who does not factor in shipping charges when buying really have no one to blame but them self if they feel they were ripped off.
Saying that I find it better to have a set postage price listed, so this is normally in the middle range of what it will cost me to send the item any where in Australia. On sales close buy I may make a few dollars and on those I send
further afield I lose a few dollars,It all evens out in the end.
Not to mention the boost in international sales that can happen (as this thread talked about).
I've taken to looking at the past selling histories of sets I am either currently selling, or interested in selling in the near future, and I've notice a huge disparity in the sale prices of all currently discontinued sets...
For example.. The Harry Potter Knight Bus NISB usually sells for around $40 to $50, but there is an instance where someone paid over $160 for it! I want to know why in the world anyone would do that! What drives people to spend that kind of money on a set that is more or less available at near retail prices?
Basically you have 3 options on Ebay as a seller.
- List as a buy-it-now, smack on exactly the price you want. Good for niche items or basically anything where its a supply is much larger than demand. Also good for people that are in a rush and need the product quickly. Downside to this method is if your bin is even just a few dollars too high it may be completely ignored.
- List as an auction with starting price just below where your buy it now price would be. This is kind of inbetween the two other ways. Fairly safe, but unlikely to incite a bidding war.
- List as an auction at 50% or less of what you actually want to sell the set for. This is the high stakes listing format. Starting at 99 cents always seems to get far more watchers. More watchers equates to more and higher bids. But of course, the downside is the risk of having to sell at a loss if things go badly.
And yes, I agree Best Match is unfair, and part of ebays larger plan to push the little guys out of the game.
I wrote .... If a parent looks on lego.com, sees it as out of stock then they go to ebay and buy there. They don't go back every few hours to check if it is back in stock. Especially as christmas approaches.
That is, they pay a few pounds / dollars more since they think it is out of stock on lego.com and they will miss out for Christmas. I know not everyone has the time to keep checking stock, which is why they just go on ebay and buy from there.
Same thing with the USC Falcon. You can get it NISB for around $2000 or a little less! So why would anyone pay $3500? Is it cause they ship overseas or something?