I’ve been on ebay.in since bazee. I’ve been shopping regularly keeping a positive outlook even after being duped by a few sellers, but recently I’ve been duped even by the sellers who have delivered properly at one time or another.
The modus operandi is simple (in my case)...... I was looking for a compass. I checked ebay and liked what I saw. However I was suspicious of the photographs as I’d seen them on some foreign website and asked the seller who sheepishly agreed that they were not selling what was shown. However looking at some of the other photos I thought that was what they were offering (as it looked pretty cheap) and placed an order.... and promptly received a spinning disk in a plastic case which was nothing like the Cammenga replica shown in the product photographs.
In the second instance, I was looking for a skipping rope under excercise equipment. I liked the professional rope that I saw, and when I placed an order I got a childs toy which was nothing like what I had seen in the photograph. It even had a recorded voice playing something like jump 1, 2, 3. The rope itself was made of multicolor braided plastic that could never be straightened out properly and kept getting tangled with my feet when using it. How dare he list that under excercise equipment?
How do they get away with it? Firstly ebay.in doesnt give a damn about customers. They think that ebay.in will succeed like ebay.com even if they keep sitting on their butts doing nothing. Last time I sent feedback to them about the same item appearing 20 - 50 times in a row due to some cheap trick or ’’feature’’ of ebay that the sellers are using. Imagine on a dial up line you are searching for a torch and the same torch appears repeatedly with slight variations in name etc one after the other for the first 2 pages... how frustrating..... anyway they didnt even bother to reply, let alone do something about it.
Secondly the sellers are quite crooked. They just copy a picture of a similar but high quality item from another website (usually foreign) upload it to their ebay page and put down a disclaimer such as : due to continuous ’’improvement’’ the product look might change. So that they can mail you the duplicate item. Rarely will you even get a choice of colour, as if they own the right to sell to us whatever they wish.
Some of the sellers even threaten you : ’’A negative rating will be returned with a negative rating’’. ’’Don’t give us negative rating without contacting us first’’ etc etc.. Well you poor dodo’s, if you sell a good product at a competetive price and give good prompt service why on earth would anyone want to give you a negative rating??? The problem is they want to sell crap, receive excellent ratings and become super sellers, the customer be damned!
Ebay sucks at least for now. So be careful when you shop online... In India, specially in Delhi, you get cheated when you go to a shop to buy something... what makes you think that these jerks will have a change of heart when they sell online? It is easier for them to get away... just open another e-shop by a new name... ebay is happy as long as they are getting their percentage... well not anymore from sales of stuff to me.