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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1374423, member: 27832&quot;]Seriously? They chopped one foot off the feedback system, and their solution to &quot;improve&quot; it is to put the other foot in a bucket of cement?</p><p><br /></p><p>An imbalance of power is only <i>one</i> aspect of the feedback system&#039;s failure. The big problem is that there are malicious buyers out there, and there is NO way for sellers to identify them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s why I stopped selling on eBay.</p><p><br /></p><p>Several years ago, I listed a $1600 camera for a friend. The &quot;winner&quot; hit &quot;Buy It Now&quot;, sent PayPal, then <i>immediately</i> filed a complaint that I hadn&#039;t shipped the item, blocking the payment. Yep, PayPal let them file an &quot;item not received&quot; complaint <i>within a few seconds of making the purchase</i>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Within an hour or so, they canceled the complaint, and PayPal reported the funds cleared. At that point, PayPal said I should go ahead and ship the camera to their confirmed address. I was nervous, but my friend wanted to go ahead, so he hauled the camera off to the UPS affiliate and paid them to box it and ship it.</p><p><br /></p><p>The next day, AFTER my friend had dropped the camera off at the shipper, I got email from PayPal saying that the transaction may have been unauthorized, and that I probably shouldn&#039;t ship the camera. Within a few hours, I got a notice that the payment had been reversed due to non-delivery (26 hours after the auction closed!), then another notice that the payment had been reinstated and I should go ahead and ship.</p><p><br /></p><p>The camera had already gone out UPS. It got to the confirmed address (in TX), and threw an exception -- &quot;no longer at this address&quot;. It went back to UPS, then got redirected to the buyer&#039;s new address, in NC, less than 100 miles from us. Problem: the new address was NOT a PayPal confirmed address!</p><p><br /></p><p>I called PayPal, and after some escalation, got through to an actual, live, helpful person. The upshot: &quot;Seller Protection&quot; only applies if (a) you use trackable shipping [ok], (b) you ship to a confirmed address [ok], and (c) it&#039;s actually DELIVERED to that confirmed address. So, even though I shipped to a confirmed address, and even though the redirection to a new address happened without my approval or cooperation, I was <i>not</i> covered under Seller Protection, because the address to which the camera would finally be delivered was not a confirmed address. The recipient could&#039;ve taken the camera, told eBay &quot;well, <b>I</b> didn&#039;t get it!&quot;, and we would&#039;ve been out $1600+.</p><p><br /></p><p>We ended up recalling the shipment, and eating something like $60 in packing and shipping fees. We did get the FVF refunded; yay, I guess.</p><p><br /></p><p>And, after all this, I was offered the choice of leaving positive feedback or... nothing. As a seller, <b>you can&#039;t even leave NEUTRAL feedback</b> any more. So, there was absolutely no way for me to warn other sellers about this scammer and her neat end-run around &quot;Seller Protection&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>eBay is still a <i>great</i> place for buyers, and since there are still people selling stuff there, I have to assume that crooked buyers are a small minority. But, as things stand now, there&#039;s not a thing you as a seller can do to protect yourself from them. Brrr.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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