Pet Peeves in the world of ebay sellers and coins?

When I win an auction, I most generally pay within seconds. Not minutes, hours or days. Seconds. I get the item and leave positive feedback. Then I sometimes have to wait up to and sometimes over a month to receive any feedback from the seller. My ebay feedback is only 139 which I know is not that much but it is 100%. I guess I get a little impatient because I want to grow that number and don't feel I should have to send a note to the seller after a month requesting feedback.

Also sellers who mark an item shipped, then come to find out it was actually shipped 2-3 days later.

 

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feeBay no longer allows sellers of raw coins to state a numerical grade for a coin. While I am uncomfortable with feeBay highjacking a grading standard that belongs to all of us, I have to live with it if I want to continue to sell there. I just feel a little silly stating that, IMO, a coin is "Mint State" now. I rarely gave a numerical grade value anyway, just doing it when my photos weren't telling the whole story.

 

Yeah, they thought it would be cute to shut down a few of my previous auctions for listing a numerical value. There's an immense difference between VF 20 and VF 30.

 

I agree...to a point. Most sellers have capital at risk because they are in the business of buying inventory and then turning it around. Of course there are those who inherit granny's button box full of Walking Liberty halves, too where their risk is zero...it's all upside!

The problem sellers encounter is that sometimes they have coins for which there is a limited amount of interest. In other words, a very narrow market. Expecting a seller to list something like this with an opening bid of 1 cent, or 99 cents is just asking for trouble. However, if the seller has something popular, like a Morgan dollar to sell, they could risk having a very low opening bid because they should expect a flurry of bidding on an item like that.

I agree with you, Cherd that sellers that list everything at a "full retail" price is aggravating to no end. As a bidder, I enjoy the hunt for bargains and the competition of winning!

 

I mainly collect Canadian coins and my pet eBay peeve is the exhorbitant prices being asked on eBay for common (and I mean COMMON) date coins.
Insane people asking $40 for an MS65 modern cent is not unusual.
Of course, these things never sell but get listed and relisted in hopes, I suppose, of finding a sucker.
They'll quote low pops from the ICCS report but the fact is that modern date Canadian coins in mid MS are common and usually not worth the trouble or expense of grading.

 

Hopefully, this doesn't offend anyone here who "might" do this but, the word "WOW" attached to the title of an auction (Change it up once in a while to something like "Wheeee, Whoopee, Amazing or how about Phenomenal".

Also, like someone said above stating the price of this item is the same as a few pizza's or puts all those little smiley faces and comments on the photo.

 

None. If a seller doesn't post good pictures, I skip the auction. If the seller has a reserve higher than the starting price, I skip the auction and so on. I don't let any of the minor annoyances bother me when I can just skip and forget within a few nanoseconds.

 

*Buyers who never read the description.

*Buyers who are crazy, who you will never be able to please, and who will leave you negative feedback no matter what you do - and eBay does nothing to protect you, the seller from these people.

*Packages lost/stolen en route.

*Me screwing up the listing title or description because I'm listing too many things too quickly...then having someone bid on the item before I notice it, meaning I can't change the description without ending the item.

*Buyers who don't pay right away, turning it into a 7 day a week job, not a two day a week job...or buyers who win your auction and then never pay, never respond, and you can do nothing except wait four days, file a claim, wait a week, then cancel the sale. By that point I'd be furious if they paid for it...lol

*eBay and PayPal fees...especially taking a cut of the shipping costs. Tell me how THAT makes sense.

*Having to travel on a Sunday/Monday...means I have to take my eBay listings with me so I can ship them out once they end...lol

*That the eBay iPhone app doesn't let me send invoices to people once the auction ends.

*As mentioned before, buyers who don't just make an offer.

 

Over the years I've honed my coin buying skills on eBay by following a few simple guidelines
1: No pictures or poor pictures - ask for better pictures or DON'T BID
2: Poor seller FB rating - check the FB, not all neg FB is deserved but a pattern of dissatisfied buyers mean DON'T BID
3: No returns accepted (despite the ease of filing a SNAD) - DON'T BID
4: Very few coins are unique (and I probably can't afford those anyway), so if anything about the auction doesn't seem quite Kosher DON'T BID

 

Ridiculous shipping & failure to combine shipping.

I mean, when I sell on eBay, I pad the shipping price a bit to cover my time & packaging costs, but I think some sellers try to slip all their profit into the shipping. And they ruined it for everyone else - I think eBay is trying to get a piece of the shipping costs now due to constant attempts at fee evasion that way.

 

I always factor the cost of S&H in my bid, so the seller can charge whatever they choose, not combine shipping or anything else, it doesn't matter to me.

 

Don't look now, but eBay ALREADY takes 9% of the shipping you collect and then their brother, PayPal comes along and takes another 2.9%. It's a dirty little secret that I put in my listings, lest a buyer think about giving me something less than 5-stars for "high" shipping costs.

Sorry. Not trying to hijack the thread!

 

With coingeezer on this. It is also why I bid on very few coins on ebay. As a matter of fact very few coins even warrant a click on the auction. I have some other rules also on the stars, but I buy so few anymore they are not important.

 

The listings that say "L@@K! " are annoying - minor quibble.

 

This.

 

Sellers unable to leave negative feedback...:rollling:

 

eBay has to do something about that.
While bad sellers were indeed holding buyers hostage with the threat of neg FB, there has to be a solution.
One way would be to allow negative feedback to buyers who don't pay and neutrals to those who file SNAD claims.
At least future sellers would have some idea about the buyers then.

 

I use to like ebay when you could get a good deal. It seems like the deals are drying up on coins. I do get good deals on other things but not so much on coins anymore. It is a little strange, but I'm finding the best deals has become coin show. It use to be flea markets, local auctions, ebay, and then coin shows. It seems to have moved to coin shows, flea markets, ebay, and local auctions. Thus, my biggest gripe about ebay is price.

 

I actually cringe when I see cheap graphics, cartoon auctioneer swinging a mallet etc., added to a listing. Most of the time if you actually read the small print you will see they use a stock photo too.

 

The fact that most quality coins need to be slabbed. I know when a coin is cleaned and I can grade for myself.