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Comment by massysett | Hacker News Reader

I will never sell on eBay again and I don't even need to see what the delta is. Ebay is full of non-paying bidders and people waiting to rip you off. I sold a Thinkpad on ebay. I kept getting bidders from foreign countries even though I specified that I wanted bids from my country only. Why can't ebay screen these out?

One winning bidder emailed me and said "I don't want this anymore." Ok, you just wasted my 7-day auction, thanks. Another bidder simply did not pay.

Sellers get more on ebay because selling there is such a pain that a considerable premium is necessary to justify it. Maybe it's worth it for strange collectibles. For a commodity like an Apple computer? Never worth it. I would sell to Gazelle or MS and be happy with the huge discount.

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I had a similar problem a few years ago selling an old trusty graphing calculator. It's still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The auction was for the United States only, but I kept getting a guy from Russia he wanted to bid on it. So I made the mistake of letting him. And he won the auction. And he paid and I sent it to Russia. And then he claimed he never received it and eBay gave him his money back so quickly, and I never got my calculator back. I've done international shipments for many years all over the world, and this is the only one that got "lost". So you do the math.

EBay has so disproportionately put the bias in favor of buyers that it is a true market for scams.

In my experience, selling internationally means higher prices, which makes up for the occasional loss. It's like taking credit cards: You lose some revenue in fraud, and commissions, but make it back in additional sales.

I do choose which countries I sell to carefully, however.

My biggest "I didn't receive it" claim was from an American buyer, 3-4 days after the purchase.

I haven't sold on there for a while, but it sounds much worse than it used to be. Can't you filter by number of positive reviews?

Worth pointing out two things:

- Sellers cannot leave negative feedback on buyers

- A common fraud technique is for a scammer to take over the account of someone with a good history (i.e., hack into it)

Not very well. I wish I could restrict my items to users with 50+ feedback, but I think Ebay fears everyone would do that.

Ebay's solution to non-paying bidders is to allow sellers to "Require immediate paypal payment to purchase".

And you can restrict your shipping options on a (mostly) country-by-country basis. Though that hasn't stopped me from getting queries about shipping to high-fraud countries.

Items typically sell for more on a fixed-price basis, don't bother with auctions unless you need the money fast.

I restricted my shipping options. Still got bids from other countries.

I required immediate Paypal. There is nothing to enforce this. Got two nonpaying winners.

Ebay auctions are completely worthless. Ebay could fix these problems: actually screen bids by country. Take a bid deposit. They obviously do not care about fixing it.

If I were to sell on ebay again, I would never use an auction. But even without auctions, people can still run scams. Forget it. For a small seller ebay is not worth it. Maybe businesses find it worth it to deal with all the crap on ebay.

> I required immediate Paypal. There is nothing to enforce this. Got two nonpaying winners.

If you do a "Fixed price" listing and choose the "Require immediate Paypal payment" setting, the listing doesn't end until payment is received. This has been possible for years. `

They do not require auction winners to pay immediately. Thus, as I said, auctions are the problem.

I see all this dislike of ebay. Maybe Facebook marketplace is an option. I have great pretty good things.

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