Ebay Sellers Please Reply To Messages From Buyers

That makes sense Terry, but is not quite what I meant - sorry if it was unclear. They may prefer to update the listing in a careful and thoughtful way that addresses the fault -- which is apparently what happened with your two Favorites -- rather than replying in a way that appears to create a specific assurance to you. All I'm saying is it's often "safer" legally for a seller to adjust the listing rather than get into a dialog with one buyer who may misinterpret what is said.

cjpalermo1964: I understand what you are saying. I would consider the seller updating the listing as a response and choose to buy or not based upon the new information. The sellers I avoid are those who don't respond in any manner. I'm dealing with just such a case right now on bidStart. I sent the same message twice about an item with no response while I did get a response from that seller on another item in between the other messages.

Terry

CJ,
Does a retailer have a right to discriminate which customers they chose to sell to? (My wife and I owned a retail store for 25 years, we were under the impression that if it is a retail store then you could not refuse to sell to most people who walked in the store. Obvious exceptions were someone who had a restraining order against them or had previously been thrown out of the store for stealing.)

No matter what legal trouble someone might make for a retailer, I would think that a retailer who might 'pick and chose' which customers to support would be making a bad business decision. Frankly I never could figure out which customers had a pocket full of cash and was r4eady to spend. Sometimes some of the folks didn't look like they had two dimes to rub together but turned out to be the biggest spenders.

While I understand your point about not wanting to define or further describe an item (which ebay supports with their dumb terms and conditions of siding with the buyer for even the most minor description error) I support those sellers which post two images and include a short description. I interpret a lack of description in a listing as a pig in the poke.
Don

Don, we are in agreement. My comments sought to explain the behavior rather than justify it.

As for discrimination in dealing with customers, there's definitely considerable legally protected scope to do that. Federal law prohibits places of public accommodation, which includes retail stores, from discriminating arbitrarily based upon race, color, religion, national origin or disability. With the internet, it's almost always impossible to tell whether a prospective customer is in one of these protected classes. And even if the merchant knows, they can discriminate for a non-arbitrary reason, such as suspicion that the prospective customer is fishing for a fraud claim. Consequently, declining to deal with all customers who appear to be excessively fussy, as revealed by their questions, is unlikely to be actionable.

I've made this decision a hundred times in my business (it's a service business) - when the prospect uses phrases like "I need assurance that I am completely protected" or "the service you will provide is mission-critical for me," after further qualification I may well tell the prospect, "Sorry, I can't meet your expectations for service," and move on to someone else; it's not worth the liability risk as I have plenty of other business.

While I always reply to questions, anecdotal evidence indicates that,in my experience, buyers often ask questions where the answer is readily apparent in the description. And those who ask questions seldom buy.

Amen! What a wisdon-filled post this is! If every buyer followed this advice, it *might* start to weed out those sellers - some who have been discussed here often - who are generally trying to pull the wool over buyer's eyes.

One of the worst decisions ebay ever made was to allow/encourage sellers to simply post pictures, with no requirement for them to provide any word descriptions. Ostensibly, this allows really big sellers to not be "burdoned" to have to spend extra time writing a word description - which then extrapolates into the sellers being able to list MORE items, which extrapolates into more fees for ebay to collect!

But ebay will also argue that since they generally offer full protection to buyers through their Buyer Protection Plan, that any item that is not up to the buyer's expectation can be returned for a "guaranteed" refund. Of course, the problem with all that is that the BPP is only useful **IF** the buyer is able (has the skill) to KNOW that the product isn't sound or to be able to accurately identify the things that might be wrong with it. Thus, the BPP is useless to these buyers.