What Would You Do To Improve Ebay?

Yes, sir -- greed, exploitation, and manipulation, all great ways to make money; you need look no further than the dozen "too-big-to-fail" banks in this country.

You will see the fruits of all this deception in your lifetime. And as regards eBay, the very fact that the OP saw the need to improve the auction biz suggests they have many, many anti-consumer, anti-customer policies and procedures.

Nearly all the subsequent posters' ideas in this thread have been kicked around for years, but can you name any positive steps taken by eBay to address them?? No, I didn't think so.

 

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They should hire a respected coin guy do oversee coin portion of ebay

 

Great, but fair is fair since NONE of us are forced to use them.

So how much are you guys willing to increase fees to have eBay take action on the suggestions? Maybe $3 extra for each coin transaction to help prevent counterfeits , $.50 extra each transaction to profile buyers and sellers? It is easy to make suggestions but they will continue well without the educated and honest sellers and buyers, so it has to be wrth their while.

 

Again, eBay's prime directive is to make money. In any free society, it is a requirement for all business and no society has succeeded today without it. If you need to carry this any further, try http://www.partisanlines.com/.

 

One great reason to use delivery confirmation on every package. This protects you and the buyer. But if a buyer does not pay or answer emails, block them, and non payers are also recieving a strike by ebay. You can also set your filters to automatically block these kind of ebayer's.

 

I count around 2 million current active listings in the Coins and Paper Money section. Make sure he has a fast Internet connection.

 

You didn't count the ones on ebay Canada, ebay Germany, ebay everyother country they operate in did you??????

 

That's not what I mean. Over see policy's to make eBay a better place to buy and sell coins.

 

Allow leaving remarks about the item/s auctioned and/or the seller on the bottom of the item's page...

 

The problem with these is neither is 100% indicative of a problem buyer.

For parcel not received, it could be a problem with the mail carrier. I stopped using UPS entirely because they would routinely deliver my packages somewhere other than my house and tell me they were "delivered".

For returned items, it could be a problem with the sellers, with the handling by the delivery service, or the type of goods the buyer is purchasing. Certain categories of collectibles (coins included) that are either very fragile and/or highly value dependent based on condition (condition isn't always obvious from pictures) would legitimately have high return rates.

 

That other stuff is nice, but I'd just like them to get more and more buyers, which would bring more sales (yes, I am one of those greedy capitalists who likes to make money, sorry).

 

Get rid of sellers of fakes/non communicators(buyers+sellers) and lower the fee costs for buyers......

 

I don't think sellers should be allowed to leave negative feedback. I think it's ridiculous that there're NPB strikes... but they can't be seen publicly.

My solution would be to have NPB strikes be publicly accessible, and if you have strikes removed, that should show also. It could be similar to the DSRs for sellers.

 

I strongly disagree.

In a case that I've described here, a buyer paid in full, but told UPS that the recipient was no longer at the specified (and verified) address, telling them to forward the package to a non-verified address. This was not a NPB, but it was attempted fraud -- had I let the package continue to its non-verified destination, the buyer could (and almost certainly would) have filed "item not received", and since it was not delivered to a verified address, I would've been out $1600 or so.

I was ready to leave negative feedback warning other sellers about this buyer. There was no way to do so. Since I (on the advice of PayPal) recalled the shipment, as far as eBay policy was concerned, the seller did nothing wrong.

I've thought long and hard about how sellers, absent the ability to leave negative feedback, can act to prevent abuse like this. So far, I'm coming up blank.

 

Get rid of taking a percentage of the postage if the seller wants to add postage to his auction. Doesn't do any good to get a "discounted" shipping rate from ebay if they ding you on the postage also.

 

I would remove the liability of seller if a foreign postal system loses the package. Liability should be just in the borders of the USA.

 

No, this isn't true. eBay has a clear policy about refused and redirected packages. If a buyer refuses a package at the verified address, they're ineligible for buyer protection. I believe the policy was created for the exact reason you describe above.

eBay has that. It's called US shipping center.

 

Here are a few ideas that are based on selling items on eBay since 1998. During the past 17 years I have sold over 10,000 individual items, have 3700+ positive feedback, currently have an eBay store with approx 100 items listed, and sell items via "Auction" and "Buy It Now" venues.

First remove "Shipping Time" and "Shipping and Handling Charges" from the Feedback criteria. Once I give a package to a shipper I have no control over when it gets delivered, and yes I have had packages totally lost in the mail that were never received. Also the shipping charges are set by the carriers, again totally beyond my control. As long as the shipping and handling charges are clearly stated in the listing, and the buyer agrees to these charges and makes the purchase; he should not be able to down grade the seller in this criteria.

Sellers should be allowed to leave negative feedback. This would provide a level playing field for all. A good customer is a valuable asset to a business. No seller would want to bash a payer. But as currently configured all sellers are at the mercy of the buyer, and shady buyers know this.

Ebay needs to hire customer service staff that understands the items being sold. Coins, stamps, political buttons, vintage comic books, etc are not the same as cell phones, sneakers, and brand new items. The current customer service employees are brain dead for the most part, and do not completely comprehend a nuances of a particular item.

The eBay commission on shipping charges should be abolished. This is a total ripoff.

 

Instead of that, they could stop taking a percentage of the actual postage if the buyer purchases the postage through ebay. That way even the folks offering "free shipping" benefit. The amount you pay for postage thru ebay is easily verifiable.

 

My case happened in 2008. It's possible that policy has changed since then, perhaps in response to scams like the one my buyer attempted; if so, that's great news. It's also possible that I just got bad advice from the eBay and PayPal reps I spoke with; heaven knows that's happened before.

It's also possible that you're wrong, though. Google yields numerous pages confirming that buyers lose Buyer Protection if they refuse a package (although I'm not sure exactly what that loss of protection means), but that's different from redirection or forwarding.

Here's the current PayPal Seller Protection policy, indicating that PayPal seller protection (which may differ from eBay's) DOES NOT cover this sort of redirection:

https://www.paypal.com/en/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full

I haven't been able to find a definitive statement in eBay's policy documents. But given the way eBay and PayPal are (still, for now) bound together, PayPal's explicit "no, you aren't covered" makes me doubt that eBay would protect me.

Here's a post from 2010 echoing my concerns:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2010/2/1266689413.html

Here's one from 2014 indicating a variation of the scam, where a buyer manipulates mail forwarding to indicate that a package was undeliverable, and then tries to bully the seller into sending a replacement:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2014/8/1407341574.html

It looks to me like this is still very much an open loophole. No, most buyers aren't scammers. But if you're selling high-value, high-demand items, your listings are more likely to attract scammers. Your risk still appears to be very real.