Continue reading »]]> Recently I upgraded from the iPhone 3G to a nifty Android device (the Motorola Milestone XT720… which I’ll QQ about another time) and of course was left with an iPhone I could care less about. Though it was partially broken, because it developed a short in the silent switch, it actually went for a fair amount of money on everyone’s favorite auction site – eBay. I originally went to Gazelle.com with it but they weren’t offering a lot for an iPhone of such age in a “poor” condition ($28 I believe was the offer). After checking eBay for what a broken iPhone 3G was going for I realized there was money to be had, I assume people want them for parts, and my screen actually worked.

So here we are. Placed the phone up for auction for 24 hours with a $30 starting bid – and it went for about $140. Awesome, that’s money for nothing in my view. The phone gave me some great times and besides the fees I donated to AT&T I was happy with what it fetched. I really needed the money too, I was happy to ship it off and start spending with my PayPal Debit Card. Hell, I was looking forward to the post office trip, and no one looks forward to a trip to the post office.

Within an hour of the auction’s closing, when I was already counting my money (of course, that’s how I roll), the top bidder decided the phone was out of his budget. The nerve! I get it, we’ve all been there, but it was upsetting. My car needed the gas to survive a few more miles. Coffee doesn’t pay for itself either. Thankfully you can cancel the transaction and contact the next highest bidder in what they call the Second Chance offer. I’ve already had to use this once when someone just didn’t pay, no biggie I thought. I’ll just cancel the transaction and leave some nasty feedback for the poor guy.

So first, a word of warning. If you sell an item to the second chance buyer eBay thinks you’ve sold the item twice, and they charge for selling two items. This is a reason to QQ in itself. I listed one item, sold just one item and used PayPal to receive payment. Now eBay owns PayPal, they should see that you only got paid once and they shouldn’t charge you for two sales – ignoring that you used the Second Chance option, as that would be too obvious and their invoice system should be prepared to look for something like that. I suspect this is a designed error, most people probably don’t check their eBay invoice, they just pay the charge. Last month, when that happened, I looked.

Now fast-forward to the present, the iPhone auction. I get the money from the other buyer quickly and ship the item out using the handy dandy USPS Flat Rate Box option. Easy enough, and good thing, I already spent their money. Just an hour ago or so I get on eBay to leave the nasty feedback for the person who won the auction by explicitly outbidding everyone else. This is the beauty of eBay right? You can leave feedback, check feedback and get your caveat emptor bone tingling. Besides, you owe it to everyone else on eBay, amirite? They need to know who they are dealing with. Aha! But since I had to request to have the transaction canceled I can not leave feedback for the buyer. Caveat venditor!

I guess my QQ is about this messed up system that eBay is running. As a seller you can not let the bad transaction stand – you’ll literally pay for it. But if you cancel the transaction, that isn’t going to actually happen, so it’s ironic in a way, you can’t remind the community this person shouldn’t be dealt with. Of course, when you see the buyers feedback page it’s full of positive ratings about how A++++++ of a buyer they are. Well, yeah, of course it is.