Sorry about your bad experience but it's not just you, feeBay is getting REAL sketchy anymore, even with buying now-I have seen repeatedly sellers with "good" feedback seemingly but when you go to actually read the comments, you see they are getting numerous negatives EVERY MONTH and yet feeBay lets them stay.
For example, there is this one seller we recently experienced that is blatantly selling knock off manuals (for pinball and vintage video games) obviously printed out at Kinkos or similar print shop (down to the generic plastic ringed binder) and it says in their ads "excellent condition" (leading you to believe they are original and in good shape) but they arrive and it's clearly a modern laser copy (and crappy ones at that-the wiring diagrams are unreadable in parts). I reported them as fraudulent and left a negative and even reported them to the feeBay 'copyright violations' links but they are still in business cranking out copyright violating fake manuals en masse and selling dozens of them, every month. "Only" a few % of their customers neg them (a handful every month, probably only because most customers don't recognize the manuals as crappy knock offs) and feeBay lets them keep selling because they are still 99% on the feedback-it's so outrageous.
Basically, feeBay will do anything for extra revenue so they can keep hooking up their share holders with profit sharing and could care less about small fry buyers and sellers. REMEMBER THOUGH, BUYERS CANNOT GET NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ANYMORE! Sellers can only leave you positive (another change in the last year, that as a seller I can say S-U-C-K-S as we get now frequent non-pay buyers as there are apparently no ramifications anymore. I see the same scammers buying uninhibited after not paying us FOR THE SAME PRODUCT.
I can't believe Google or someone else has stepped up with a real feeBay challenger, feeBay has become such a bloated monopoly. Amazon is great but doesn't cover all of the same kind of merchandise (such as used parts, etc.) at least in the quantities that feeBay has.
sorry for the rant but feeBay just kills me that they are getting away with this kind of crap without challenge..... a few tips:
1. Always check seller's feedback. NOT just the %, but the actual comments. There is a great Firefox browser plug-in "show only eBay feedback negs" that will show JUST the crappy comments. It quickly becomes obvious if someone is frequently sending out crap or misrepresenting items, when you look at the negs, as the positives have become so generic now (lots of people use auto generated feedback for the positives)
2. When in doubt, contact the seller (via the eBay internal messaging, so that there's a copy of your correspondence) and get them to actually describe something that seems hazy in the ad. Otherwise, you may be (unpleasantly) surprised and have nothing to fall back upon.
3. If the seller is uncooperative with your complaints, FILE A COMPLAINT WITH PAYPAL. They generally are a pain in the arse to deal with and you will NEVER hear from an actual human, but given a valid complaint (especially if the item is not as described) you WILL get your money back and the seller can't do anything about it. This works both ways though, unfortunately, and as a seller I can tell you that a buyer can make up total bullsh!t and get a refund and as a seller, there is nothing you can do.
4. Leave the unscrupulous seller NEGATIVE feedback!!!-don't hesitate if you know they deserve it, it's the only way to document your dissatisfaction and the only way to eventually get the seller kicked off feeBay (though it takes a LOT of negs, apparently). Don't worry about revenge from them or something, SELLERS CANNOT LEAVE BUYERS NEGATIVES ANYMORE. Other buyers, who may be wavering in leaving negatives themselves, will (hopefully) see your bad comment and decide to do so, as well.
There are still many great deals to be had, but there are as many sketchy, obvious scam sellers on feeBay as ever. As a long time user (12+ years now!) I can tell you that the last couple of years, eBay has REALLY taken a slide downwards in policing the site of crappy sellers and obvious knock offs while at the same time, making it harder than ever for the good ones to survive.
Good luck!
