allankintz.com

I have always thought that eBay’s change to buyer/seller feedback was dumb. The most retarded part was that sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for a buyer.

While I understand that this kind of combats some of the “retaliation” feedback some sellers were leaving, what about the legitimate cases when a buyer needs to get that mark of shame? What then? An “unpaid item strike”? Ya, that sticks out. I don’t ever seem to find one of those – even on profiles that I know have one.

As some of you know, I tried to sell my iPhone 3GS a while back. It eventually “sold” for $280 for eBay user: gold_finga. At the time he had 100% positive feedback (based on 40 ratings).

All of my auctions use the same general info template… and it says that buyers have 5 business days to either contact me or complete checkout for the item. After 2 days, I knew this was going to be a problem. Who bids on an iPhone at the very last second (literally, I was watching it) and then doesn’t pay for 2 days?

Regardless, fast forward a few more days to me opening a Resolution Center case for him not paying. Basically at that point eBay tries to contact the person for a few more days and if the buyer still doesn’t pay, you can close that case marking it as not paid. OK, that’s fine. I waited a few days (four I think), still never heard anything, and closed the case.

eBay now says this guy will have an “unpaid item strike” on his account. Um… OK… wtf does that mean? Because if I look at “gold_finga’s” feedback profile, I see NO SIGN of any unpaid item or anything. As a matter of fact, there is zero sign of my transaction at all (at least that I can find). And to me, that is bullshit.

If this guy is not going to pay for something – now there is no sign of him doing that. And if I try to leave feedback – I STILL cannot leave negative feedback – even though I have a legit, closed, resolution case of the guy not paying. So what good did the Resolution Center case do? Other than get my final value fee credit returned? There is still no sign of this guy being a deadbeat bidder on his profile. That’s just plain wrong.

Stupid eBay.

So just a word of caution… if a buyer with the username of gold_finga bids on your items… cancel his bids and tell him to fuck off.

I’ve been on eBay for what feels like an eternity… but what in reality is about 10 years. I’ve got a feedback rating of 315 – 100% positive. I don’t think I’ve ever had a negative feedback, ever. Though I think I may have had one neutral from some douche who didn’t know what he was doing – but that was a long time ago.

I wouldn’t say I buy and sell a lot… but I know where to look when I want something or have something to get rid of. I’ve applied a lot of common sense and logic to my auctions – both buying and selling.

Frankly, I only deal in Buy it Now offers – when both buying and selling. I don’t care too much about getting absolute top dollar for my sales so I will usually look up completed listings and see what things have been actually selling for and then compare those for current listings waiting to sell. Then I undercut all of them by a few $$. Bam, item sold.

I have a good example from yesterday. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently purchased a battery pack for my iPhone. IMO, it was crap. I just wasn’t satisfied. So I used it for my trip and planned to get rid of it when I got home. Got around to listing it last night.

I think I had the auction up around 6pm. They’re like $80 new… decided on $50 with free shipping (this is another thing I like using – include shipping – people like that).

Woke up this morning and it was sold already. Awesome. Since I keep a stash of padded bubble envelopes, I packed it up, printed a label, and dropped it in the outgoing mailbox at work. Done.

Listed to sold to mailed in about 14 hours. I’ll take it.

Sure, I could have probably squeezed out a few more $$ – but honestly when I sell on eBay it is more to get things out of the house than to make a huge profit. If I can give someone a good deal, while picking up a few $$ in the process, lucky them. Hopefully this guy likes his case more than I did.

Most feedback… for anything at all… is negative. People like to complain. If things are going well, no one thinks about it. If things are going badly – we’ve got problems.

So in a minor bid to change that a little, here is a little positive feedback in terms of “word of mouth.”

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently had to deal with Progressive with regard to my insurance policy continuing to skyrocket (up to $1028 for 6 months if I renewed straight up – for 2 cars, 2 clean drivers – crazy). After an ordeal of calling up and essentially “complaining” about my policy continuing to climb, they worked with me to start essentially a new policy with all of the same info – which saved me something like $240/six months. And even beyond that – the payments are now every month (instead of 5 on and 1 off) so that’s spread out further, thus making the payment even lower. Suffice to say I’m going from what would have been about $212/mo to $130/mo.

Anyway… after the new policy started and I made the first deposit payment, my online policy kept reminding me to submit proof of my security system and such for the discount. Uh whaaa? The guy that setup my new policy assured me everything would transfer and I’d be good to go.

Well I emailed Progressive again and basically said “I was told this… and it says this.” That was last night.

Got a reply this morning confirming that I’m set. Nothing to mail/fax in or prove. The policy is ready to go and I’m all done with having to fight for a lower rate (for now).

So nothing big. But it’s nice to contact someone about something you think is a problem and then are assured that it is actually OK in the end and you don’t have to worry about it. So thank you, Progressive. You are still showing me that you’d like to keep my business (even though I had to essentially call and ask if you still wanted it after you kept jacking my rates up).