eBay to Launch Escrow Service for High Value Items

by: Silver Ice King

@Pace

On occasion I do sell some high end items on Fleecebay but always do a thorough background check before the item leaves my hands to them.  I also check with the sellers they have recently done business with on high dollar items and see whether they had any issues with them at all.  So far I have been very fortunate to not lose anything on Feebay or any other site.I recently had an item out for $699 and was offered $250 for it.  After I finished laughing I countered and showed the person some comps and they once again countered with $250  as their max with  a note that i should be more than happy to get that amount for the item.

Then an hour or so later one of my friends in my facebook group connected me with a friend of his who is an avid collector of what I had available so I ended the listing on Feebay and sold it to this person through facebook PM's.  I also did a complete check on this person with others he has dealt with and the deal went off without a hitch.  Even though he had an Ebay account since he had not seen it on Ebay I had no issues with ending the listing and completing the deal through Paypal and Facebook PM's.  The lack of safety on Ebay for Sellers is why they lost their FVF on this item and many others in the past year.

I also sold an item early last year for $2800 after having it listed for $4500 just so I would ensure that i had a chance to check this person out.  One of the other sellers let me know the name of the person who was really buying it as the account being used was his personal assistants account.  It turns out he had spent over $100,000 on items in my category in one day the previous year with the highest item running over $14000.

If you are very careful with checking out people, even to the point of purchasing a complete background check on them you usually can sell high end items on Feebay.  But if you are not willing to put the time in to really check the buyers out then you are a fool listing any high end items on Ebay.  

One background check i ran saved me over $1000 because it showed that the buyer had been convicted of fraud in North Dakota on 4 occasions and both he had outstanding warrants on them for fraud.  I am guessing it was selling knockoff high end lighters and people filing charges and winning.  When they moved back to Colorado with mommy and daddy, they tried to switch categories and I discovered what they had done in North Dakota and blocked the account.  This person then went to their account and paid full price on the item so that i would be forced to sell it to him.  

I  managed to get through to upper management in the Trust and Safety Dept because the guy was refusing to cancel his order saying I would have to cancel it and lose the $100 FVF to Ebay.  I forwarded the information I had on them to the Trust and Safety department and they immediately sent him an email informing him that I was cancelling his purchase and if he contacted me or tried to buy anything from me in the future with another identity, they would close all of his accounts.  Its a good thing I ran that background check as at 29 days he filed SNADS on all of the high end items he had bought to try and resell on Ebay and when he returned the items, he had kept every one of the high end items and got away with it from Ebays side.  I told a couple of them what I had discovered and to file the Mail Fraud charges on these two as well as contacting their local police.  I also gave them the name of the person I had dealt with at Ebay and last i heard they had gotten their money back and those 2 accounts were no longer active.

I do not know if Trust and Safety would do that now as things have become so much more Buyer being protected even when they commit fraud,  I saved that Email in a word document just so I would always have the name of that person that helped me in the past as i doubt that i could ever get through to that level of any department anymore as Ebay does not want to lose their FVF.

by: pace306

Silver :)

Yes, but you are NOT the "common or average" eBay seller.

Putting aside your intelligence and work ethic, most eBay sellers (myself included) dont have the time or resources to do the leg work you described.

Being I sell $100-$300 electronic items - the turn over is quick, the profit (as it were) is short - and its on to the next thing. Investing that much time and diligence is generally not warranted for my items. Its of course understandable in the case(s) you described.

Im not blind to the fact that there are bad sellers, but Im also not blind to the fact that eBay has its thumb on the scale - and finds for buyers at every possible juncture.

Am I naive to think that there should be some parity - maybe - but I FIRMLY believe that there should be.

If eBay is in CA and Im in NJ and my buyer is in WI - eBay has never seen the item, and never saw the return - so why after doing $2 million+ on eBay since day 1, having a %100 positive feedback and being direct with many manufacturers - am I suddenly the bad guy vs the guy whos been on eBay for 6 months with a 26 feedback.

My own view is that eBay shouldnt be involved in returns at all, nor should they be involved in "verifying" anything - after all - what do THEY really know? I think as we have seen in many other cases - eBay knows nothing about most things.

I wont be using their services, I do my best to keep them out of as much of the sale as possible. I sell X, if you want it then fine - you pay and 1-3 days later it shows up in your mailbox in the condition I said it was, period.

eBay itself is King Midas in Reverse (nod to the Hollies - its a title of a song they wrote) - they turn gold into lead - and it shows. Between the greed and the view that every one is there to service them and make THEM rich and sellers should be damned - they wont succeed - see the constant drop is GMV as an example.

Im off to NY NOW, to find other items to sell - on and off eBay. Meanwhile they can lie, steal and cheat their way to oblivion.

by: eBay Shill Buster

This Escrow stuff is all for show, meanwhile sales are completely dead on eBay, the stock is down at this moment 2.51%, eBay is laying off employees.

All this talk about what eBay is going to do is the same as Wenig talking about velocity and moving boxes at eBay open along with all the technology eBay is working on, Blockchain, virtual reality, and using AI to completely destroy the search engine by listing millions of variation listings flooding the marketplace by China sellers instead of the actual item being searched for.

eBay needs common sense leaders, not more talk about technology.

by: toolguy

No Escrow Needed

I just sent a box of tools to a guy in Saudi Arabia

He's working on F-16's, he's keeping those aircraft ready for the next sortie.

These are the kind of guys I sell tools to. . . . .

by: Bill

Tool,
I thought you can not send any items out of country. Trump is going to come after you!

by: iheartjacksparrow

Yeah, Tool, what happened to the agreement you had with the place where you buy your tools that you could only sell them within the U.S.?  

by: Silver Ice King

@Pace

Thank you for the compliment but I am not sure how much of an advantage I have over the average seller as you stated.  If I was in your situation selling a lot of $100-$300 items I would not bother with the research either.  I only do this type of research on items that $500 or more as its usually not worth it for anything less than that.  But it I have an item out there with an asking price of $4500 and I get an offer for an amount I willing to at least really consider I usually have 2 days to consider whether to accept it to do some research and even after they accept it I have 2 day handling on all of my items so that gives me at least 2 days to check them out further assuming they pay on the 1st day.  I usually do not do any further research if they pay day 1, but if they are slower than that you better believe i start doing a lot more research to give a better feeling about things.

The legwork you speak of takes me around 10 - 15 minutes total and studying the background report only takes 5-10 minutes to do.  Remember I only do this on very high priced items for my category.  I probably do have a bit more time than most sellers do to do this research but find it well worth the time considering the money involved.  Background reports are so easy to obtain now from various companies and if you do a lot of them the pricing also comes way down.  I am very willing to spend $20 to $25 to save losing a $1000 sale, remember now that Paypal no longer returns fees on returns that alone would usually pay for the cost of the information.  

Again I do understand that i go about things differently than most sellers mainly because of my business background but it really does not take additional intelligence to do this just a will to put in the little extra effort on the high end sales.