More And More Misdescribed Items On Ebay And Getting Very Upset

I buy a fair amount of stamps on ebay and over the last few months, am finding a lot of stuff misdescribed from sellers with large amounts of positive feedback and no negs.

examples:

Selling stamps as LMM or lightly hinged that have brown hinge marks, and hinge remnants.

Selling sets as UMM or never hinged and finding parts of the sets with hinge marks.

Calling standard albums with mounts a hingeless album.

It seems to be getting worse and some of these sellers have over 10,000 feedback

Are they just getting lazy, don't care, or want extra money for the sales. I don't want to keep giving out negs but I am getting really annoyed, to be polite.

To continually file INAD and ebay will soon void any money back guarantee.

To keep giving negs, and sellers will block you as a problem buyer.

What are peoples opinions on this?

Are you experiencing more of it?

How would you handle these things?

I thought of this post when I saw this, and thought it might make you laugh a little, being that it is so ridiculous. If only it was always as obvious as this case:

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/LOT-OF-CANAD...AOSwxg5XybD4

I would like to think this was a mistake or a joke, but has several other countries with similar stamps in similar conditions.

I am only a few weeks into collecting, but I know enough that this made me smile. Having said that I find ebay somewhat frustrating. I would love to be able to block sellers like this and those that charge outrageous shipping fees.

For me, it is more about finding sellers I like. I do wish there was a way to better filter the garbage sellers without having to exclude them from every search.

In some cases it may be ignorance, in others greed.

First of all, I'd forget about using ebay feedback as either a tool to flag bad practice or as a guide to seller quality. It's so utterly rigged as to be useless. I think in many cases what you are describing is simple ignorance, in a few cases deliberate greed. I also think that in many cases it is either laziness or simply the inability to examine every lot individually in a high-volume business. Many sellers who offer misdescribed items are simply passing along errors they have inherited without bothering to verify previous owner descriptions. I see a lot of this in my area of specialization, in which US Scott #24 is misdescribed as any one of a number of more valuable numbers. The real key for me is how the seller responds when this is pointed out.

The best way to avoid problem sellers is to buy from people you know are honest and reliable. I know this is "easier said than done". When I buy from a person unknown to me, I do it with the understanding that there could be problems with the material.

I keep a list of saved sellers. They come and they go, but this is a good technique for finding material which is NOT mis-described.

Look at this one, 69036 feedback 100 % and he is selling a type II $ 50 stamps making believe it's a CV£600 type I , good thing he put a clear image so we can see it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Austria-Emp...151168020107

I think it is ignorance with a dash of wishful thinking. However it does work both ways. I have made fantastic buys of mis-described items over the years on ebay.

There is no way to educate all of the sellers, so you must educate yourself. There is no point in getting frustrated, just enjoy the hunt.

Before you buy something off ebay - make sure to read the descriptions carefully and look at all the photos. If you see things like "as is" or "see photo" - those are red flags. Be weary. Also, before buying or bidding - ask the sellers questions to verify the quality or even ask for scans of the back of the stamps. Look for those sellers who are very detailed in their descriptions and have good customer service skills. I've learned as a seller long ago, that you are not just selling an item, but service.

As Dudley said, ebay feedback is pointless - ebay doesn't even care about it. What ebay does care about are returns and the defect rate. If you do get something not as described, make sure you do contact the seller. If the seller doesn't make amends in some manner, make sure to return it (seller will cover return shipping per ebay rules). As a buyer it is your right to return an item on ebay no matter what the seller wrote on the description. ebay rules trump seller rules. If ebay loses money the seller gets a strike on the defect rate which affects their ability to sell, i.e. status, visibility, restrictions, suspensions. It's the only way to knock out bad sellers.

Battlestamps - I had no idea that the seller had to pay return shipping costs regardless of what they state in their description. Fortunately I have not had to return anything yet, but only be buying stamps for a couple of weeks.

It is a shame the feedback system is so meaningless for buyers and sellers. I have heard of sellers losing money because people bid then won't pay. There does seem to be a whole group of sellers that pray on people who do not look at shipping charges. I have seen $39 shipping charges to send $2 of stamps!

Why is it a red flag if there isn't much of a description? I sell a lot on E-bay, yet I rarely put anything in the description. I am usually selling a sheet (or set of sheets) of stamps. There is not much to add to the title (which has the country name, name of the issue, the scott number(s), number of sheets, and the year) and the scans (which show each sheet being offered).

You can'y police e-bay, you have to police yourself. I won't buy stamps that have more than $2.00 shipping charge. I won't buy stamps that do not have a scan of the back. I won't buy stamps that are described VF and clearly are not. I use e-bay like a approval service. Looks good, I'll keep it. Looks bad? Back it goes! I have sent back about a dozen stamps last year, no problems, no hassle. I have even educated some sellers, I actually sent a color guide of the Canadian small Queens to a seller in Texas, he kept mis-identifing them. I put it in the same envelope as the stamp I was returning. He was grateful for the help.

This kind of thing is part of the reason for the price spread between your average ebay listing and buying from a more traditional full service dealer. While most sellers on ebay are honest, not all are knowledgeable enough to either properly ID a stamp or to find and describe various faults. This will tend to depress the prices of "better" stamps on ebay somewhat, relative to dealer prices. Dealers can misdescribe stamps as well, but at least in theory it should happen a lot less often. There are also other reasons for the ebay vs. dealer price difference, but this is definitely one of them.

The only problem I have with "see photo" is when the photo is either too small to see any detail or out of focus.

Too many lazy uninformed sellers listing stuff they know nothing about. At one time I used to surf ebay looking for gently used albums, especially hingeless ones. I got burned more than once on items listed as hingeless pages that turned out to be regular ones with a bunch of sloppy miscut black mounts. I notice a lot of sellers offering albums never show the pages, just several views of the binder and title page. That is usually a giveaway to move on.

Many of these sellers apparently do not know the difference between brands. I often see Lighthouse pages titled as 'Lindner' - apparently the seller thinks 'Lindner' is some generic name. I never bother with such things now.

Then there are the neophytes who know nothing about stamps and list an album as a 'stamp collecting book.'