I was recently watching an item on eBay, and the auction’s “small print” reminded me of something that brings me a bit of a chuckle. The auctioneer had posted that if you had zero feedback or if your account was less than 30 days old, to please contact him prior to bidding, otherwise, he might remove your bid. Fair enough; it seems reasonable, seeing as how many scams and con artists have worked their way onto the site.
What it reminded me of is something on eBay which is a little more troublesome. Namely, people who post that if you have zero feedback, they don’t want your bids – period. It luckily isn’t the case, but do these people realize what would happen if every seller set such a hard line? New users would essentially be locked out of eBay. Personally, I don’t really see the big deal about accepting bids from users with 0 feedback. If they don’t pay up, eBay has methods to deal with them. I suppose they could gain feedback by selling rather than buying, but again, they would run into a similar issue: most buyers I’ve ever spoken to tend to avoid sellers with 0 feedback, as they’re afraid they’ll pay up and never get the item. The solution to that problem would be to just use PayPal for payment, and you’re covered.
Sadly, though, I must say that, at least for the things I go after, eBay has become less and less useful over the years. It’s jam-packed with items listed at retail price, which is a bit baffling. The whole idea behind shopping at eBay is to get a decent deal, or at least, I thought it was. If I want to buy something at retail price, I’ll go to amazon.com. I’ve also grown increasingly tired of people listening items at $.99 with a shipping price of $15 or $20. If you feel that your item is worth $20, that’s cool with me. But list it as such, don’t try and trick people into bidding for a buck, only then to discover that they’ve just bid, in reality, $21. That’s just dirty.
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