The Corner Penthouse

This is the first in a series of articles exposing eBay's shady business practices.

I have a love/hate relationship with eBay. I like the virtual yard sale aspect of buying from different sellers in one place, but I hate selling there because eBay does everything and anything to inhibit sales from small-time sellers (who used to be the heart and soul of the site). For starters, they limit us to 50 free listings per month. Why is this still a thing? Doesn't the eBay braintrust realize that if you allow people to list UNLIMITED FOR FREE, then more items will be listed on the site, and thus they have a higher chance of making profits when those items eventually sell?!? They misuse categories for things that aren't about organization, such as charging a higher final value fee (12% instead of 10%) in the Books, Blu-rays/DVDs, and Music categories; capping how much you can charge for shipping in certain categories; or removing certain features from certain categories. They hide listings by rigging the site's search engine. If you search for "Ghostbusters DVD" in "All Categories", the site will show results for the "DVDs & Blu-ray Discs" category, even though the user did a search for listings in ALL categories. That hides any listings that may exist in other categories.

Anyway, like I said, if you do your due diligence, buying on eBay is less problematic. At the beginning of December 2018, I spent $200 on items from 24 different sellers. I had very little problem with most of them, but a few of the transactions weren't quite perfect, so when I left feedback the other night for all of the sellers, a few got appropriately neutral (which is not a bad thing, despite what the site makes it out to be) and negative feedback. I didn't think much of it until I received this generic e-mail last night from eBay.


The first thing that popped into my mind was, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ABOUT???" You'll notice that the e-mail doesn't state what I supposedly did wrong. (Also, don't you love how eBay hides behind an e-mail address that doesn't accept replies, so you can't easily contact them to discuss the matter or appeal it.) It references "[my] actions" and "this eBay policy", but doesn't state what either is. It goes on to state that I "won't be able to buy or sell on eBay for 3 days" and that eBay "removed the feedback comment [I] left". It was this latter remark that made me believe this was some kind of retaliation from a seller I left negative feedback for. Sure enough, I looked at the feedback I left and found this.


Seller "us.go-fastrust" (PayPal name: "UD Artomoro Sejahtera") sold me an item that was not his own. He listed an item that was not part of his inventory. He took my money, bought the item on Amazon, and had Amazon send it to me as a "gift". I deplore such actions, and left him negative feedback that was near-exactly this: "Shipped from Amazon as a "gift". SHOULDN'T SELL MERCHANDISE THAT IS NOT THEIR OWN!" There was nothing wrong with this feedback. It serves as a warning to others that this guy doesn't sell his own merchandise. Another buyer left similar feedback, although neutral instead of negative and it's still there.


Yet, because "us.go-fastrust" is one of eBay's favorite sellers (unlike me, who they cripple every chance they get), they chose to punish me, the buyer, by prohibiting me from buying or selling on the site for three days. Of course, this is really a punishment for eBay, since they will lose money on items I could sell for these three days, and I'll just buy the items I want from Amazon Marketplace sellers, thus giving money to Amazon not eBay. eBay just keeps shooting themselves in the foot more and more each year. Is it any wonder they're losing buyers and sellers to Etsy and Amazon.

[UPDATE 1/1/2019]
As a test, I tried to buy a cheap DVD on eBay today, during this bullshit ban. I had no problem using the Buy It Now button on the listing, and was even shown the checkout page with all of the correct details, but once I clicked on "Commit and Pay" to place the order, I was shown this message.


The important part to note is this: "At this time, your buying and selling privileges have been restricted for a period of 14 days due to a violation of eBay policy." So, in two days time, the ban jumped from 3 days to 14 DAYS!!! WHAT THE HOLY FUCK!!! I spent over $200 on eBay last month; which is not the first time last year (or before that) that I spent that much (or more) at one time on the site. (eBay has made thousands of Dollars off of me in final value fees, both as a buyer and seller, in the 16 years I've been a member.) They should be bending over backwards to kiss my ass for being such a good customer of theirs, not punishing me because I exposed the dubious selling practices of one of their sellers. It's the seller "us.go-fastrust" who should be punished. For what it's worth, this "ban" is rather pointless as I had no problem placing the order today using guest checkout with the same contact details and payment methods. The only difference being that the order won't show up in my eBay account and I won't be able to leave feedback - though after this bullshit, I'll never leave feedback ever again for any sellers or buyers.

Leaving feedback is not mandatory, and it's a faulty system, so there is no reason to bother with it at all. Feedback from a seller to a buyer is pointless; not only because a seller can only leave positive feedback for a buyer, and some buyers do not deserve positive feedback, but also because a seller can't look up a buyer's feedback before that buyer has made a purchase from them. What's the point of buyer feedback when a seller can't use it to determine whether they want to accept an order from a buyer or not? The order's already been accepted as soon as the buyer initiates the purchase.

Honestly, eBay should do away with the feedback system. A much better way of determining if a seller is trustworthy is if eBay presented some statistics about the seller on their "feedback" page. As a potential buyer, eBay should tell me how many sales the seller has made in the past six to twelve months. How many of those sales were successful? How many had problems? On average, how long does it takes for buyers to receive their items from the seller? What shipping methods does the seller commonly use (First Class, Media Mail, etc.)? Providing all of these statistics to potential buyers is MUCH better than a subjective and optional feedback system.

Finally, when I was leaving feedback, I would never leave it for anyone that asked. That's an automatic way for someone to never receive feedback from me.

[UPDATE 1/5/2019]
I decided to see if it's a 3-day or 14-day ban by trying to re-list something for sale today. If it was a 3-day ban, as the e-mail I received on Sunday December 30, 2018 stated, then there wouldn't be a problem as the ban was instituted six days ago already. Well, as was the case four days ago (see last update), I was shown this message when I tried to submit the listing.


Yup, it's a 14-day bullshit ban. Not only does eBay hide behind vague e-mails that fail to explain ANYTHING, but they also flat-out lie in said e-mails. All because seller "us.go-fastrust" (PayPal name: "UD Artomoro Sejahtera") did not like that I exposed his dubious business practices.

[UPDATE 1/21/2019]
Upon further reflection, I am now 100% positive that it was my use of the name "Amazon" in the feedback text that caused this bullshit ban. eBay absolutely hates it when their competition is mentioned on their site. I've seen users refer to Amazon as "The River" on the eBay forums because they know that eBay will delete their posts if they mention Amazon by name. That's how petty eBay's (mis)management is. What I don't know is whether eBay instituted this ban themselves (perhaps automatically) because of "Amazon", or if the seller used the word as an excuse to get my feedback text removed. Either way, Amazon is where the seller ordered the item from, and so I was 100% right for mentioning Amazon by name in my feedback comment.

[UPDATE 7/1/2019]
I feel that an update is an order since some people seem to think that the reason for the punishment was because I "abused the negative feedback system".  I can easily prove that it was the feedback text, not the feedback type, that got me punished. As seen on the negative feedback page of "us.go-fastrust" (and the annotated screenshot below), my negative feedback (#25 on the list) is being counted towards the 27 negative feedbacks the seller received within the past year. The only thing that was removed was the text I wrote, which proves that it was the text, not the feedback type that caused the two-week ban.