BUS 250 Poo on Ebay

So you all know that I purchased a Blackberry Storm not too long ago. You should know, I posted an entire blog about it! Anyway, upon buying my Blackberry I soon decided that it was pointless to continue to have my iPod touch as it would only be collecting dust. So, I decided to sell it on Ebay..regardless of every voice inside me(yes there are many) screaming not to..I did. I posted my iPod on Ebay at a starting price of $199.99. Which I thought was a decent price since I was selling a lot of accessories with it. About 5 hours before the end of the bidding (the item was listed for 5 days), someone had bid $450 on my auction. MOST people would be like "woohoo look at all my money!" but not me, I'm not that trusting. I did some research and found out that this bidder had been called out multiple times for scamming people..and on top of it all, they were from the UK which I WAS NOT shipping to. So I cancelled the bid and the item ended up not selling. Great..5 days wasted and not a damn thing sold. I WAS just going to sell it to someone I knew since I was aggravated at this point but Ebay sent me an email stating that they would let me relist my item at NO CHARGE. I figured..well..might as well, it's free. So this time I list it for 3 days with a starting bid of $174.99. The auction sold and it was to a person in America who had no negative feedback..nothing about scams anyway. Hurray! Then I get an email from this person telling me that in order for me to get my money, I have to ship the item first. Now...I know some people are gullible...but how many are THAT gullible? I told the person that nothing was being shipped until my money had cleared through Paypal. Since the buyer paid by "eCheck" it took 6 days for the money to clear. That brings us up to (5+3+6=) 11 days since my original posting of my iPod. By now the money has cleared through Paypal. I go into Paypal to see about transferring it to my checking account. Wait...what do I see here? I see my money's status as being "On Hold". What the hell does THAT mean? I read the details and apparently Paypal likes to hold the money of "risky" sellers until the item has been verified delivered or positive feedback is left on Ebay. So..that would bring me to 32 days...just to get my money out of my iPod and that is ONLY if everything goes smoothly. They gave some BS about releasing the funds earlier if the tracking number is put into their system, but from all the comments I read from other users, that rarely happened. By this point I was fed up and I refunded the customer's money and apologized for the inconvenience. I told them if they wanted to give me negative feedback that I didn't care, because I was probably never going to use the service again. On top of all of that garbage, I got an email today from Ebay that politely let me know that I owe them 10 dollars for listing fees on my sold item. I was furious. Paypal is a subsidiary of Ebay, did no one from Paypal alert Ebay that I refunded the buyer's money? No, you know what..forget that, YOU TOLD ME THE LISTING WOULD BE FREE YOU JERKOFFS!!@ I sent them a nice little message letting them know that I was very disappointed with them. Sure, Ebay is great when you are looking to buy something...there is plenty of buying protection in place. When it comes to being a seller though, those protections make it unbearable. I read a comment about one poor fellow who sold something quite large and had to pay out around $300 in shipping. After he shipped the item, Paypal STILL held onto his money and he was out that $300 dollars in the meantime. Even more unfortunate for him, he was hit by a hurricane and had no money to prepare with. Way to go Ebay. Buy and sell on Amazon..it's quicker..there are fewer hoops to jump through..and people seem to be more trustworthy.

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