an eBay rant

[uosipa llamxew]

Forgive me for this rant. I'm sure it's all been said before, but I don't really pay much attention to these things and so I'm taking a turn to blow off some steam.

 

I have strayed away from eBay for some time now, but occasionally I look for things that I can't seem to find elsewhere. One of those things I've been looking for... for like forever... is a Minestorm overlay for my Vectrex.

 

Today I happened upon this auction: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 270524871790

 

Looks nice at a glance. The seller has 99.8% positive feedback... not too much of a risk, right? Well, one thing I learned (after being hosed repeatedly) when using eBay is that the feedback percentage can be misleading. So I pulled up toolhaus.org and plugged the guy's name in:

 

http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=comet77&Dirn=Received+by&ref=home

 

That 98.8% doesn't look so hot now. 77 questionable feedback ratings. Perhaps that's where the 77 in Comet77 comes from? I guess I'll keep waiting for a good Minestorm overlay to become available!

 

...

 

I guess I may as well ask while I'm at it... does anyone have a Minestorm Overlay they want to sell me?

[jetset]

Ya, when Ebay fixed the feedback system, they also made it easier for sellers like this one to slip through with tons of bad feedback (something the sellers, not surprisingly forgot to applaud when they whined about not being able to leave retaliatory negs anymore).

IIRC, any negs or neutrals after 12 months don't count against you, so this guy, who should probably be in the lower 90% is close too 100%.

So what Ebay did was make the feedback system so buyers can leave a justifiable neg without fear of the seller playing games and leaving one back, but in the end unless a seller goes totally bad in a short timeframe, without really researching a seller you have no real idea.

Can't blame you for ranting.

[SoulBlazer]

While I happen to agree with the OP, if this was a item that I had been looking for for a long time and it wasn't that expensive, I'd take a risk and buy it anyway. Right now the price is not that bad.

[+poobah]

77 on over 8000 isn't a lot.

[the-topdog]

77 negatives and over 7,900 positives? ...and only 3 negatives out of the last 1,000 sales in the past 12 months? Well that's a pretty darn good rating. I'd bid and wouldn't worry about it one bit.

[lemoncurry]

77 negatives and over 7,900 positives? ...and only 3 negatives out of the last 1,000 sales in the past 12 months? Well that's a pretty darn good rating. I'd bid and wouldn't worry about it one bit.

 

Yeah, and a lot of them were for "slow" overseas shipping.

 

Refusing a returned package to force a buyer to pay the shipping 3x is questionable though.

[Almost Rice]

 

Yeah, and a lot of them were for "slow" overseas shipping.

 

Refusing a returned package to force a buyer to pay the shipping 3x is questionable though.

 

I have read the negs and that would be enough for me not to bid. I do remember the seller from somewhere and may have watched a few of his items.