Hacker News Reader

Comment by gertrunde | Hacker News Reader

I tend to find ebay less shady than Amazon these days, which is a bit disapointing really.

I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.

Haha, I ordered my car wing mirror cowl and it arrived in a box with an Amazon gift receipt. I suppose the eBay fellow was solving a discovery problem for me for a cut. Good for him.

IIRC that's against eBay's rules. But people still do it when the spread is enough to make it worth the risk.

eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.

EBay is the worst website someone can use for shopping…they just got it all wrong. Seems lead by people who don’t use it

I found Ryan cohens account

Worst except for Amazon.

Amazon has never shown a modal asking me to use the app instead of the website.

Ebay is no less shady. Buy something(from China) that takes a long time to arrive, reviewing is disabled. Ebay is junk.

You 60 days from delivery or 90 days from ordering if there is no expected delivery date.

How long is your stuff from China taking to arrive?

AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.

I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep.

Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Recently I attempted to return an item to AliExpress. They gave me a USPS return label with a domestic address that Google Maps showed as some generic office building. This address turned out to be an undeliverable and the package bounced back to me. Support couldn't explain it and said I'd have to pay for a replacement label since I guess they only pay for one return per order. I filed a chargeback instead. It was approved immediately. Surprisingly, AliExpress didn't ban my account or card, and I still shop there instead of equally terrible Amazon or eBay.

YMMV a lot with Aliexpress. I bought a $700 chiller that arrived without a small attachment fitting for the return inlet line. I complained, received another chiller (with the fitting) free. Go figure.

>but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel

How does that help them?

A particular number goes up which matters too much to someone with too much power, conceivably.

It’s as if all the people working at physical stores, who we decided were pointless waste of money, actually had some function.

25 years ago if you wanted to sell a product you had to ship samples to buyers who would beat the crap out of it and if they liked it they'd place orders for 100s of thousands a month.

Amazon got it's start in that world undercutting the brick and mortar stores with their carefully curated manufacturers and buyers. In the process they completely destroyed it. Which is why 80% of the stuff for sale now is shitty.

> Literally every unmanaged…

> This is why we can’t have nice things.

i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”

how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?

oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.

I don't think anything can be done, without regulation, which the USA is allergic to.

Why have customer service when the market doesn't seem to care and still buys your shit? Why crack down on scams when the market just does chargebacks, and yet keeps buying your shit?

So, we just deal with scammers, counterfeiters, drop shippers, fake brands, fake companies, fake products, all because regulation is seen as the worst thing that you could ever do to a business.

If only they would sort out their language / shipping country / currency model and make it so I can actually select what I want rather than their wrong assumption.

(And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)

As a Canadian with a no forex credit card, I’ve found it cheaper to pay in USD, so it is.

I also get a lot of “Dear CA Customer” type emails.

I only had good experiences with the customer service. Do they wanna have long conversations? Nope. But they are quick to just give you a refund.

Same experience here. That is the most-correct answer, isn't it?

When the whole thing goes like this, then I really do find that I have no reason to complain:

Customer: "Hey, this widget is broken/never showed up/etc"

Rep: "Refunded"

Ebay would be a lot more fun to use if

a) You could search for keywords without also matching keywords that have your keyword as a sub-string

b) "Sort by lowest price including shipping" actually did what it says

As it is you often have to wade through tons of undesired crap to get to what you want.

I also don't like that eBay sellers can see that you viewed their product and send you price offers.

Oh and let's not forget the popup nagging you to use their app for a discount ... while you are typing something into the search bar.

Exact keyword match in quotes doesnt work for you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com