Why I’m not eBay active

My friend asked me why I’m not selling on eBay –

Well, there’s the sad thing.
I have over 350 positive eBay ratings, and one negative – a very long time ago. It doesn’t show up these days.
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The one negative was from a man in Torquay called Simon Burch. He sold me a “vinyl” deck with pieces missing, which was damaged in the post because it was badly packed. There were bedbugs walking around in the shredded paper he used to badly pack the deck. I took photos and burned that paper. It didn’t protect in the right places, anyway. The cover cracked in the package, the arm fell on the deck and the stylus died.

When I complained he did nothing but badmouth me.

Because the sale was for £5, and the complaint bottom limit was £15, eBay was not helpful at all.
I was riled – I looked at his listings and I could see schill bids. When I showed them examples of how Simon Burch was schill bidding in cahoots with his sister in law, and his wife, and using other accounts to make schill bids, they said the evidence was too late – 32 day evidence when they stopped asking after 30 days.
I was providing real evidence, names and addresses, eBay ignored it.

Later, eBay made all the bidding information closed, so you can’t spot schill bidding happening in the way you could then.

But the hassle today is that you need 10 positive feed back results in a 3 month period to get detailed feedback ratings. There’s so much indoctrination of buyers on eBay that very few people will buy unless you have all your detailed ratings current and five star.

So, until you have those detailed feedback ratings complete, everything you sell is likely to be a bargain for the buyer and a loss leader for you. To get those ratings filled in, you need to have something cheap that will sell continuously, at least three per week, and keep selling those things even when you have nothing else to sell. Inactivity for a month means you have to start over again.

The key to success on eBay is to keep selling. You need to be prepared before you start, or every time you want to sell, you have to start over with those detailed feedback ratings.