I Hate Ebay

I have finally come to the point where I do not see myself using Ebay again any time soon. I am most dissatisfied with what Ebay has become.

Some people are very good with Ebay. My wife is one of them. She used to get some very sweet deals on Ebay. She could scan the auctions, find what she likes, and come in at the last second to take the auction. When I have wanted things, she has in the past directed me to look for them on Ebay.

I'm not very good with Ebay though. I'm not that great with finding the best prices anywhere. Prior to meeting my wife, I would pay more for some items just for the convenience of buying them all at the same store and getting home to my computer faster. In the past, I have gotten in trouble on Ebay.

About two years ago, I decided that I wanted a Pocket PC. You may know from previous blog entries that I'm now on my second, but I had to start somewhere. I did a search on Ebay and found an ipaq listed for about $40. Sounds good, right? Well, I apparently misread the item description. The person said that he had access to a web site that puts you in a matrix after you buy some ebooks, and when you reach the top of the matrix in one to four months you can buy in HP (now Compaq) ipaq Pocket PC for $40. I somehow was under the impression that I would be paying him to handle the transaction. I'm not sure where I got the impression. I used my wife's tactics and won the auction, sparing all the people that I cut off the agony of what followed that morning. I logged in to Pay Pal, paid the person the $50 that I won the auction for, and watched my email. I received a URL. What? Well, it turns out that I had read the auction wrong, and what I actually paid this low life for was a URL to enter this matrix. I tried everything I could, browbeating, threatening, appealing to his sense of morality, but nothing worked. Finally I told him that I fell for his scam, and I am a man of honor, and I would honor my transaction, however, I was going to contact Ebay to see if they felt that was a legitimate auction. Now, Ebay does not make it easy to get in contact with them. You have to search through seeming Gigabytes of FAQ in order to find a form to contact customer service. I did. I received a Paypal refund with an email from this person that he "would not be dealing in this type of service any more". No kidding.

That's my Ebay scam story. Now on to my complaining. OK, reasons I hate Ebay are:

1) It is very difficult to contact Ebay, or at least it was the last time I tried. OK, I know there are a lot of morons out there, and a lot of other people who can dream up all manner of stupid questions, and Ebay would go broke if they had to pay someone to answer the same stupid question over and over and over again when it's already in the FAQ. But why should the rest of us have to suffer when we have a legitimate question or concern that is NOT covered by the FAQ? Therefore, I hate Ebay for this reason.

2) Item filtering. Try to do a search on laptops, for instance. How many power cable and accessories do you have to wade through just to find what you want? You have to seach through so much extraneous information you might as well use Yahoo.

3) Ebay is becoming a haven for con artists and scams. I hear all kinds of horror stories about auctions where the seller will only accept a service called "Bidpay". As far as I can tell, Bidpay exists for no other reason than to allow people to rip other people off. I haven't used it, and I won't use it, partly because I don't use Ebay anymore, but also because of the perception generated by the accounts I've read.

4) This is actually a part of 3, but still, people are using the term NOT to add their item to YOUR seach. I was trying to do a search for a particular cell phone model, and instead I got other models, listed as "NOT" my model. That's brilliant! I search for one item, and get their item which is NOT my item. I quit.

5) High shipping costs. The costs people are starting to charge for shipping are getting ridiculous. The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, and people who love money too much are taking over Ebay. Even my wife is not using Ebay as much any more because it's getting cheaper to just pay full price for items than to pay someone $20 to ship a $1 shirt.

Therefore, I hate Ebay and do not plan to use it any longer. If my wife really wants me to save money on Ebay, I will give her what I want and she can try it. I'm done. To the folks at Ebay, what was once a great idea has been perveted by the unscrupulous, and I would love to tell you this but you have made it nearly impossible for me to contact you.