OT: How NOT to do Business on eBay

[Thomas Rogers]

Okay, that's it, Rusty gets all my part business from now on.



Thought I was getting a good deal on AutoVentShade Vent Visors for the Trac. Did a "Buy It Now" on 7/11 for $39 + $9 shipping.



Still no vent shades and its three weeks later. Shipping from Fla warehouse to my house in PA should be 3 days, tops, a week for some delay in processing the order.



Anyway, the seller has a good feedback rating of 98.4%, but if you actually read the feedback from the past few months you find he is screwing people left and right with: really slow shipping, no email responses, no shipping emails, not answering their phone, no refunds, etc. It's as if he is using Paypal and "Buy It Now" as his own business loan.



I already filed a dispute with PayPal, and I suspect I will get my money back because this guy doesn't seem like the type to reply to the dispute, meaning the money gets forfeited by him and refunded to me.



Read more, and be warned:

 

[Robert Barker]

Sounds exactly like what he is doing! Using one persons cash to pay for another this works until he runs out of customers (makes enough mad) then his cash flow and business are gone.

 

[Robert Barker]

 

[Heather Kudela]

I feel your pain...I ordered my tonneau cover from them back in April it took a little over a month to get it...I would advise anyone who is thinking about buying from exotic truck atuo to NOT DO IT, they're terrible with communication as well...I called, sent e-mails, the works they never returned any.....:angry:

 

[EddieS'04]

TJR... I ordered the rear window shade yesterday from JC Whitney for $42.95,from my july catolog. I dont know about shipping, it was included in some other things.

The Internet price was $49.95, odd.

Anyway they told me it was on factory backorder till 8/28. It was also auto vent shade.

Sounds as if most distributers are out of stock.

 

[Tom Schindler]

At about 4000 auctions a month, he has his hands full.



I am sure it is a mistake. He would have to be at a PC 25 hours a day to keep up with the emial he recievs on a daily basis.





Tom

 

[Gerald Pierce]

I am paying a little more attention to what I order off of Ebay... I have had the last three items I have purchased take an inordinate amount of time to arrive, and then the folks give you bad feedback if you leave them bad--rather childish.



I bought a copy of some software on 13 Jul, ebay ad said 5 days to arrive. On the 23rd, I email back "whats the status" and get the response "your credit card was declined" when I had payed by debit from my checking account with paypal. I send a copy of the reciept--they claim it was shipped 13 Jul..... tell me to wait 3 days and then they will send another. 3 days--email them, they agree to send another. I recieve 2 on 28 Jul one postmarked the 23rd, one the 26th. They had never mailed the first copy.



I bought a piece for my mustang--17 days and no communication at all from the guy, other than to acknowledge my payment within 10 minutes of auction end--saying he would ship on Friday (this was like tues). Then he has the nerve to give me grief on feedback because I said 3 weeks when it was really only 19 days!!



What seems to be a good deal sometimes is not what it should be. Other than the convenience, ebay is turning into a rip off. Buyer beware.....

 

[Dan Otto]

Power seller living off of volume. He'll get his. :angry: the crash has started for them. Tough for you though. Stinko city!!

 

[Herb Doctors]

Also becareful, lately there are fraud sellers out there. They use other people's pictures and descriptions to sell an item with a too good to be true buy it now price. You buy it and they run away with the money for an item that didn't exist. I came close to buying a Jetski on there, but hesitated, then Ebay emailed me because they suspected this person of fraud and say i emailed them. Other than that I have had pretty good experiences using Ebay, knock on wood.

 

[Mark Grumpy]

TJR,

you don't have auto parts stores around your neighborhood? Most of them here stock the ventvisors. If my memory is correct, I paid 35 bucks, no shipping as I got them off the shelf and no waiting. And I believe I paid 32 for the back window. I typically use Advance Auto as they are a smidge cheaper than Autozone and NAPA. Don't know what parts stores you have in PA, but Advance has a one day turnaround on orders before 6 P.M - pick up next day.



grump

 

[Robert Barker]

Yeah overall my Ebay experiences have been great but with any transaction such as Ebay there will be bad apples.



Trac N Tennessee

 

[Michelle Widell]

He may be doing drop shipment sales - where he sells the item online, and once he has a confirmed sale, he calls the distributor and has the item shipped directly to the purchaser.



I have a friend who owns a hi-performance auto parts store, and he sells on ebay. He does very well on ebay, and has plans to close his store and do strictly ebay - and mostly drop shipments, which he does alot of now.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Fast Eddie, it was the 4 side windows, not the rear that I ordered. I ordered the rear from Rusty and it arrived like 3 days later.



Grumpy, I do have auto stores around me, and they carry AVS, but have never found the ST versions. I suspect there isn't much call for them...I don't see THAT many STs around here. Sure, I guess they might order, but then they charge shipping, and I pay 6% for taxes, etc. This would have been a good deal off eBay IF I could had gotten it.



TJR

 

[Tom Schindler]

They are the same ones for the previous version Explorer. They are not Trac specific.





Tom

 

[Cory Richards]

That's exotictruck-auto! Remember my angry post about how long it took to get my K&N intake...got it from them.

 

[Ron Tobias]

Tried to buy from eBay once, never got the item, cancelled the order, haven't been back to the site since!

 

[Thomas Rogers]

I have bought dozens and dozens of items, sold a 1/2 dozen or so all on eBay over the span of 7 or more years. Never had a bad experience until now.



Don't just LOOK at the feedback rating #, also look at the feedback. The negatives tell a story in many cases.



TJR

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Just to conclude the story:



After about 5 unanswered inquiry emails and no seller communication of any kind, I received email from the seller 3 weeks and 1 day after paying with paypal. The email said that my visors were damaged during shipping and being resent back to the manufacturer and a new set was on its way. Okay...that sounded like a line, but sure enough, they showed up two days later.



I SO wanted to give the guy negative feedback, because it seemed like a line of crap he was feeding me, but just about everyone who neg'ed him he neg'ed back, so I simply gave him a positive (since I did get the merch and it was okay), but did describe the poor shipping and lack of communication.



Seems the seller is trying to blame his recent slide on the fact that he went on vacation for the first two weeks of July, and when he came back he saw that email and phones were not being answered by his employees.



I think that's crap too. He could have NOT had auctions end during his planned vacation; he could have trained/instructed his employees better; I see a ton of auctions during that time that did end and ship relatively quickly. It seems that there were a ton of parts that didn't go out, and most fit in the under $100 price range. Maybe the guy was swamped, maybe he did have a broken part sitting on a shelf...all of these are not my problem, and I expect better than 3 1/2 week tunaround on parts I order.



TJR