E-Bay Horror Week
Published June 05, 2004
I head over to the site and leave him positive feedback. Later in the day, I come to find out the game is a CD-R. A copy. A burned, illegal copy. I'm furious. I had never actually seen an Amiga CD game before so it didn't hit me immediately. I noticed the "CD-R" imprint on the inner ring of the disc. I send him an extremely nasty E-mail. I got taken on this one and wasn't going to stand for it.
He E-mails me back in a few days with "All of that companies games are like that." Ok, yeah, sure they are. Well, to be perfectly honest, he was right. I did some research, and sure enough, he was telling the truth. I felt terrible but just couldn't bring myself to apologize. I didn't think I had a chance to make ammends and just let it go. Thankfully, he left me a positive and the deal went ok. I'm sure I'll get around to writing something to him, but I feel terrible right now (you should have seen the E-mail I sent).
To my credit, his auction is extremely deceiving making it even harder to believe. You would think he would save himself the agony and state something about the games origins in the description. Also, his feedback was private and was only about 95% with 30 or so negatives.
Idiot #4: I agree to sell an Atari Jaguar system for my friend. In return, I got a few new games to add to my collection. Fast forward to the final day of the auction. With just over an hour left to go, the current high bidder sends me an E-mail along the lines of "I've spent too much this week and can't pay. Can you cancel my bid?"
Simply put, no, I won't cancel your bid. It's not my fault nor is it my responsibility to do this. Since he is new to E-bay (his feedback rating is a meager 2) I tell him to look under help and learn how to retract your bid. He replies quickly and says "Just sell it to the second high bidder." No, it doesn't work this way. I begin to get frustrated and replay to tell him that if he ends up being the high bidder, it is his responsibility to pay. Either cancel your bid or pay the price. His quick reply is "I can't cancel my bid. The auction only has one hour to go. It won't let me."
Yeah, NOW it has a hour to go. It didn't twenty minutes ago when you started all of this. I E-mail him again and basically repeat what I said before. You have to pay; it's really that simple. I don't hear from him until auction end. He sends me a note saying that if shipping isn't $15-$20 (shipping would be determined based on location and weight of the package) he can pay, but only if I give him a total that night. It was 9:30 PM, I was tired, and I simply did not care at this point. I told him that I couldn't get a shipping quote without his address and was not about to do all of the work required that night. I would get everything together Monday and get back to him once I had his address. He quickly E-mailed me his address. I send him a shipping quote and have yet to hear from him yet in any form.
Matt Paprocki is the former reviews editor for Digital Press, a video game website with an appreciation for the retro side of the industry. The deep game collection which spans nearly 30 systems and 2,000 games line his walls for research purposes. Matt strives to bring credibility to video game journalism, and take it in a new direction to aid the industry in becoming respected with all forms entertainment media. He currently freelances for GameArgus.com and MultiPlayerGames.com.
- E-Bay Horror Week
- Published: June 05, 2004
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet
- Writer: Matt Paprocki
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Comments on this articleComments
eBay is fertile ground for classic videogamers. 3500 games? And to think we thought we had a big collection with our measly hundreds of games!
The Neo-Geo is still one of my favorite systems to play, even though graphically "better" machines have come along. They owned the 2D fighting market for fun factor.
About the first guy, you bought something from someone who has 70 + negatives? You should have checked that first. Any bad experience you have is your own fault if you don't check feedback.
i have to agree that it's not just the %age of positive feedback that's important.
Think about it this way: if a person has 70 negative feedback, that's about 70 (allow for some where the rater was just being an asshole like the one who gave you negative feedback) different people who've had bad experiences dealing with that person.
Myself, i've had one bad experience and been a bad bidder once. The bad experience, i won a book but then the guy didnt reply at all after my prompt payment, i complained to ebay and then a week later he'd been NARU'd (made Not A Registered User i.e. he got banned on that account). Luckily i only lost about £10 to that.
The time i was a bad buyer was ultimately my fault, but a mate let me down cos he was gonna provide transport for a Jamma cabinet that was being sold in london. I checked with him first, he said yeah he'd go with me to pick it up. So i bid, i won, i was ready to pay...and he turncoated on me and said no, he wouldn't go with me to get it. I was pissed off to say the least, and worse than that, I ended up being without 'net access for a month and a half or so cos i'd just moved in to a uni house and we had to wait that long for ntl to install it. Understandably, i got -ve feedback for that (only time i have though). I gave the seller +ve just for not actually reporting me to ebay.
What makes me laugh now is that they recently changed their terms saying that sellers are not allowed to charge bidders extra for paying via paypal/cheque/any other payment method. Well just try telling them that (or, more appropriately, realise just how few of them have read that email) cos i still see many auctions where the seller says there is an extra charge for using paypal. Far too many to report (i'm not going to do ebay's job for them, altho i may draw their attention to the overall problem)
I was a big ebay user in the early days. I got screwed twice last year, and the frustration is monumental.
I've quit using the place altogether, and there are more than a few concerns that it's turning into Fraud Central.
I'll apoligize Ken! Eventually....
Idiot #4 is no longer an idiot. I got paid for the system last night. Granted it was an E-Check which means it could still bounce, but he has apologized and been great ever since.
As for the first guy, I looked at his rating of around 10,000 and let it go. I'm not sure of the percentage, but it was super high. He was a Powerseller as well.
Without a doubt there are some categories of merchandise that may attract more problems than others, but I really think if you are dealing with a reputable seller with high feedback who allows a secure method of payment via credit card, you have protections.
I have been on eBay for seven years and I have not had more than one bad experience with a seller and it was resolved by charging back the payment.
Sincerely,
Christopher Matthew Spencer, Author
"The eBay Entrepreneur"
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Apologize to the guy Matt!