Why eBay Sucks

Michael Schrage makes a great point in a q/a on Tony Perkins' blog about eBay's quality control: that eBay's big flaw is that quality control depends on external vendors.

"If I'm eBay, why do I want to bear the costs of doing quality control for the
thousands or tens of thousands of auctions I have running at any given time
and the thousands if not tens of thousands of buyers and sellers? That's too
expensive. But I realize I need some sort of mechanism for quality control, so
I turn it over to the community. That's taking a bug and turning it into a
feature. "

Schrage is exactly right, as any of us who've been burned by an eBay auction well know. I'm going through one of these right now. In early November, I won an auction for a antique coffee table, paying $100 for the table and $50 for shipping. The seller only accepted checks & money orders. When the table arrived from UPS, it was in pieces; all four legs were snapped off. So I wrote the seller and he said 'UPS's fault; file a damage report and collect the insurance.' A pain, I thought, since it was his packaging that failed. But I dutifully filed the claim and waited. Two weeks later, called UPS and they tell me company policy is only to deal with the shipper (who pays UPS) - not the receiver. I relate this to the seller - and wait. A month goes by, I call UPS, they say they've 'closed the file,' but can't tell me what the determination of the report was. So I ask the seller. And wait. Now all this time I have held off on filing any feedback - my only recourse under eBay. But I do notice that in the meantime, another guy has posted negative feedback for the same thing - broken merchandise. But the seller then swatted back with his own negative feedback. So now I am in a quandary: the seller says he's still hassling UPS, but I have no way to determine the truth of that. And he won't respond to my requests that he just reimburse me my $100 and cash the UPS check when/if it comes. And now I've got 1 week before my window to leave feedback closes.

So I ask you: What should I do? And at what point does it make no sense for me to keep trying to get my $100 back and just do a tit/tat of negative feedback? The only thing I can say is that I'm much less a fan of eBay now - I know it's caveat emptor, but really, how much risk should a buyer take on?

Posted by thomasgoetz, February 4, 2004 07:53 PM | | TrackBack