Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Byzantine Coins Discussion Forum

Another reason to never buy on eBay

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Obryzum:
No meaningful policing against fakes. Service is terrible. Fees have become too high. Shilling is rampant. Global shipping program is a ripoff. And this problem of duplicate listings (see below) just seems to be getting worse and worse. There ought to be a rule against this. What used to be a marketplace has become totally crapified over the years.  I rarely even browse there anymore, in part because of practices like this.

Kingston:
How can they be top rated seller with such multiple listing practice? Is it at least genuine?

Obryzum:
The eBay ratings system is a scam.  I stopped giving feedback years ago after an incident where I tried to leave negative feedback for a seller who cancelled the transaction because he was not satisfied with the price.  He claimed that the item was lost or otherwise no longer available, but then he immediately relisted the item.  eBay refused to let me leave negative feedback because the seller gave a full refund -- so what was there for me to complain about?  In eBay's mind, a buyer is not allowed to leave negative feedback if the seller gives a full refund without question.  That's when I gave up on the eBay feedback system.  They just use it as leverage over their sellers.  It has nothing to do with warning buyers. Having said that, if anyone's feedback is less than 97%, buyer beware.

I do not doubt that the coin is genuine, but I regard multiple listing practices like this to be annoying spam.  This seller is cluttering everything up.  I would never buy anything from him, and I have given up on a "marketplace" that allows these practices with no consequence.

SC:
If I understand it correctly, eBay generates revenue from the seller not the buyer.  So who are they likely to favour........

SC

Kevin P:
I am not going to defend eBay, but just note that eBay has many different sites around the world, almost certainly because of the wide range of laws/regulations governing internet sales.  Sellers have the option when listing items to do so only in their region (their local eBay site) or to have it duplicated for all eBay sites around the world. eBay does this for the seller, even converting the price to local currency.  However, it is just one listing, and once one of these sells, all of the listings show they are sold.

When you perform a search on eBay, the default setting is to search for coins only in your region of the world (that eBay site).  However, you do have the option to select the region as "Worldwide."  If you do, you will likely get all the instances of that listing from all regions - now converted back to your native currency (I have seen this many times).  What's crazy is as currency exchange rates change over time, the price that looked the same when the coin was listed will show differences from the different sites.  This makes it look even more suspicious, even when it is not.

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