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Angry Seller Unfairly Denounces eBay
By Sydney Johnston
Recently, an angry eBay seller furiously denounced eBay for
cheating him out of listing fee credits.
eBay's stated policy is: "If your listing ends without a winning
buyer or results in an Unpaid Item (UPI), you may qualify for a
credit by relisting the item. If the item sells the second time, eBay
will refund the Insertion Fee for the relisting."
Unfortunately for the seller, this notice was all that he knew of
eBay's re-listing policy. He should have taken the time to read
more thoroughly and he would have discovered that eBay's has
limitations on this policy. In fact, he had broken not just one, but
two of eBay's rules.
1. eBay automatically credits the second listing fee - but only if the
seller uses eBay's official Relist feature. Sellers have the choice to
use the "Unsold - Relist" links. If they simply recopy the auction
and list it again eBay will not know that it's a re-listing and won't
credit the money. That is exactly what our irate seller did.
When he demanded that eBay compare his two items and see for
themselves that they were the same, in spite of the fact that he
didn't use their form, they rightly refused to do so. At any one
moment, eBay has tens of millions of items for sale and expecting
them to spend enormous amounts of time fulfilling requests for
special treatment are not reasonable. eBay is a business with
obligations to its stockholders and this use of employee time is not
cost efficient.
2. Both his original and relisted auctions were of multiple items,
known as a Dutch auction. eBay rules clearly state that refunds of
relisting fees only apply to single item auctions, not multiple ones.
There are other restrictions on this policy:
3. Relisting credits are only available in these formats:
* Auctions
* Buy It Now
Store owners cannot take advantage of this feature.
4. The starting price on the second listing must not exceed the
original one. That is, if your opening price on Auction #1 was $20,
the price on Auction #2 cannot be $25.
5. eBay offers sellers the option of adding a "Reserve" to their
auctions. This is a set price, declared by the seller. If the bidding
doesn't reach this price, the seller has no obligation to follow
through on the sale. If the reserve is $50 and the bidding only
reaches $48.65, no sale occurs.
* If Auction #1 didn't have a reserve, then Auction #2 cannot have
one, either.
* In the event of a reserve, the amount on Auction #2 must not
exceed the reserve on Auction #1. If the reserve on Auction #1
was $75, the reserve on Auction #2 cannot be $90.
6. Your merchandise must be relisted within 90 days of the closing
date of the first auction.
There is a special circumstance with relisting fees and that is the
problem of the unpaid buyer. Sometimes, for reasons that are hard
to fathom, there are buyers who bid - sometimes aggressively bid -
on auctions, or choose the Buy It Now option, but then never pay
for the merchandise they've won.
Naturally, this is a hardship on the seller since they've paid not
only to list the item originally, but have paid eBay's Final Value
Fees which are triggered in the event that an auction or Buy It
Now is successful. Thus, they're out two fees, instead of only one!
In this case, there are several steps to go through, which involve
contact between the seller and buyer, and eBay and the buyer.
But ultimately, eBay cannot force anyone to pay for merchandise,
so the best they can do is refund both fees to the original seller.
And what if you relist your merchandise and it doesn't sell the
second time around? Unfortunately, you're out two listing fees,
rather than one. That was certainly the case with the furious seller
who didn't take the time to educate himself on eBay's rules. The
irony is that his losses were under $1. Hopefully, this will be a
wake-up call to take more care in his business. After all, if we're
going to successfully play the auction game, we must know the
rules.
About the Author
Starting an eBay business is easier with mentoring from an eBay expert. Learn from our offers an 11 Day Course that teaches how to sell on ebay:
http://auction-genius-course.com/11days.shtml
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/19141.html
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| Some other articles by Sydney Johnston | |
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