Cheating By Ebay Users -How Bad Is It ?

One of the members of our local stamp club has quit selling on ebay. He had a active stamp and coin business as a ebay seller , he stated that too much of his mailings are claimed as never received. These break down to items that he sells that are valued over $20.00 ,he rarely looses items worth under $10.00 in the postal system . They are stamps mailed overseas and U.S. coins sold in the U.S.
He always leaves feedback right after he mails the item .So there is no way he can leave a note that a purchased item was lost in the mail to the buyer . Sort of a heads up to other sellers. It is unsettling that over 3,000 transaction that a pattern has developed. He says he try to use insurance and tracking but found both too expensive and customers stay away from bidding due to the additional cost especially on cheaper items .
Back in the early 1980's there was a guy who ran a news letter service to his "members " that advertised stamps in the major philatelic newspaper . As a member he asked you to detail out any problems you had with a customer and he would include that in his news letter . Well after six months ,you would be surprised by his listing showing the same problems from a few dealers being listed like NSF checks ,returns with stamps missing ,undelivered packages and threats to the newspapers for cheating customers from the same customer .
I wish someone would start up a service like that with a hit list of problem customers ,he always added that each dealer had to make his own choice to deal with each customer on his member news letter and NEVER past judgment to each listing .
I found a big percentage of my problem customers already on his list from other dealers .

I've noticed that a number of sellers I recently purchased from left me positive feedback immediately which doesn't make sense to me. It always seems to me that the buyer leaves feedback that the item was delivered as described and then the seller leaves feedback as the close of the transaction.

floor,
ebay has made an effort to increase the listing value and discourage low price listings with their policies. The choice is fairly simple; increase the listing value so that the shipping/tracking is not a significant percentage, assume the risk and don't do tracking, or find another place to sell. Might suck for sellers/buyers but the ebay stockholders are happy as clams.
Don

I'm sure 99%+ of ebay transaction are just fine. My percentage of lost shipments is under 1% and I ship to any country.

I always check StampSmarter to see what - if any - record a potential seller has before I buy anything for more than $50.

I'm especially interested in the percentage of corrected listings a dealer has. For example, drbobstamps has 11 reviews; all 11 were corrected; that's 100%. This is a seller I can trust.

Naturally, the greater the number of items for sale a seller offers, the greater their chances of an error, so raw numbers alone don't tell the whole story. I still give priority to the % of listings corrected. Here's an example, ranking sellers by the total number of reviews (aka questionable listings):



Here, art-dealer-cal only has 14 reviews, but he corrected 12 of them for 85%. Here is another seller I can trust.

YMMV.

Beware the cartel.

floortrader

You can do a follow up to any feedback left.. Your original feedback for the buyer must be positive of course, but the follow up can be negative.

I have done it in the past as a seller and no problems

That pretty well sums it up. If one wants to sell low-cost items without tracking, they simply have to accept the risks or just not sell low-cost items. Retailers figure on losing a certain amount to shoplifters every year and they figure that into their pricing, ebay sellers should do the same. If you figure you'll lose 5% of your sales because of "shoplifting", raise your prices by 5% across the board to compensate.

I was listening to an older episode of the http://stampshowheretoday.com podcast and Caj on the show said he does 150 ebay transactions a week and has 1%-2% loss rate mostly for overseas transactions. He also refuses to ship to certain countries that are notorious for lost mail.

I don't remember which countries he quoted, but I know Italy, Mexico, and Greece are know problem countries.

Some of my worst loses while selling have been to overseas customers. I absolutely will not sell to anyone in Eastern Europe, period. Also to Italy, anywhere in Latin America. I will sell to W Europe and the UK, Canad and Japan, also Australia and NZ. I will not sell outside the US at all on anything larger than a stamp, no out of country sales of collections, albums or books.

What does "corrected listings" mean? If it is just a measure of whether or not a listing was edited, that doesn't automatically equate with bad behavior. If it means 'corrected orders' that's different. Those percentages would be horrible.

I haven't lost any in the mail yet, but I'm pretty low volume. I just have 350 feedback, only about 200 as seller. I started about 2 years ago. I thought I lost one item in the mail. It was a confederate early issue - sold for $12. It took a month, I was about to refund and it was found and no issue. But I do see the risk. For more expensive items I'm considering at what point do I add signature required.

Rlsny,
Corrected Listings are when a seller was contacted with an suggestion for improvement and they would either update/change/end the listing. This percentage is the total number of Reviews for the seller where they were notified divided by the total number of listings that were improved/removed. There are a few exceptions; in some cases such as disputes over the suggested improvement or opinion, the seller would get credit for responding professionally even if the listing was not updated.

Uboatnut is correct, a seller who is responsive is a good sign of a quality seller.
Don

afternoon! I do not ship overseas at all....I know it kills my income for selling stamps. The addresses, the forms the headaches-I can't even understand the addresses half the time. Its sad because there is good money in England-one more point I only accept paypal-no checks,food stamps or chickens in trade.. I always leave feedback after the customer---

Thanks, I get it now. I would guess these are the highest volume dealers of stamps on ebay.

The loss numbers quoted above seems quite high to me. International losses have been minimal running well under one percent. I can recall only one case where the buyer may have received the stamp and told ebay it never arrived. I believe that proper packaging is important. A number 6 envelope containing an approval card and a protective stiffener works well as would a rigid StayFlat envelope. Since all of the US mailings are tracked, international postage rates are less than First Class Parcel rates. However, it should be noted the cost of mailing larger or heavier items triples if the threshold between First Class Mail and a First Class Package is crossed above 3 ounces. Also, items valued at more than 400 dollars will cost much more to ship. It is unfortunate that ebay Global Shipping can't be selectively applied to high value listings. As ebay has set up the program, one has to opt listings out of the GSP instead of being able to specify when the listing is submitted. It is also possible to select GSP for problem countries and use normal mailing to better organized countries. However, GSP fees to the buyer are so high that anyone seeing that shipping rate would be unlikely to by items costing less than one or two hundred dollars.

I haven't tried tailoring the GSP program to single out problem countries because I don't trust ebay or their ability to retain and preserve settings after I set them up. I don't want to see customers in Canada suddenly faced with shipping fees in excess of ten or twenty dollars for a ten dollar stamp.