eBay Community & Bullying; Dishonesty, Customer Service, Review

 

Updated 12/19/16

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UPDATE!!!
Sadly eBay is continuing to act dishonestly.
We are a large high volume seller and I have been a professional in the aquarium/pond maintenance business since 1978 (this includes expertise in filter design, fish disease treatment, chemistry, UV Sterilization, & more).

However eBay chose to usurp this expertise and make libelous statements that we are selling SeaChem Kanaplex and MetroPlex without prescriptions, when in fact these are legal fish medications and have been for decades.
As well in freezing our listing dishonesty, they also did not remove the many other sellers of these products.
If eBay wants to not allow legal products, they need to be consistent and remove all. Instead they chose to make libelous accusations. This is not the first time eBay acted this way, but at least they did not take such extreme actions.

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EBay used a to be a great place to buy and sell products, however as of late, both the buying and selling environment has become less safe and more caustic.
Poor customer service that now goes through India leads the way followed by a caustic eBay Community Forum, and some dishonest sellers/buyers. Every contact I make with eBay for my eBay store to handle and issue such as plagiarism of my water-marked/copyrighted pictures results in 45-60 minute circular conversations that go nowhere. Most often I get different statements, actions, advice for the same issue that are never followed through by eBay

Using the plagiarism issue as an example, we reported content in July of 2015 and it took into Sept. 2015 for our copyrighted content to removed from this sellers eBay page. Even then, this seller has simply moved on to user others content, which is clear based of clearly different styles of artwork for their listings.

We have had issues for which a buyer claimed shipping damage, but refused to provide required pictures for proof (required by USPS, UPS, & FedEx). EBay forced us to provide a shipping label back, a full refund, but we could not recover damages since we did not have the required pictures. More importantly we know why he did not provide these pictures is upon receipt of this product back and based on my 3 decades of use of this and similar products professionally, this buyer clearly abused and damaged the intake screen taking it off.



MORE SERIOUSLY YET:
For my daughter, she purchased a phone repair service on eBay for which the seller claims 100% satisfaction guaranteed, but the small print states not guaranteed since eBay does not guarantee services. I would challenge readers to find this small print disclaimer as I did my staff who could not without a little help from myself and control-f.
I know from long ago past experience where I too missed this small print and made a purchase of service via eBay and the download I purchased failed that I could not get a refund- lesson learned.
My daughter however felt frustrated and simply asked for the cost of a SIM card from Verizon which was removed by this eBay seller and they refused without first providing 5 star feedback, which is against eBay rules.
Verizon advised her both before and after that going to eBay was not a good idea for service such as phone repair.

As an interesting side note, after the "piling on" behavior by eBays forum, I asked my staff to see if they could find the small print stating that services such as what my daughter purchased are not covered by eBays money back guarantee. NOT ONE could find it until I helped them with "warmer" and "colder" tips as they scoured the page with their browser. They did have no problem finding the 100% Guarantee by the seller.
So much for the low feedback minions/trolls inhabiting this eBay forum who stated it was in plain sight!!

Out of frustration and likely for some sort of condolences she went to the community forum at eBay. There members were openly hostile and kept asking her why she did not remove the SIM Card. She replied that she did not even know how. These members also grilled her as to why she would file a claim for something not covered by the eBay money back guarantee. Simple answer is she simply did not know.
Persons in this forum made her feel very stupid and 2" tall, so being protective of my daughter I went into the forum in her defense. I will also note that she also happens to have Asperger's syndrome which makes her see what might be a mild attack or lack of empathy as a major personal attack on her soul.

There persons or better, forum minions, got even more attacking, inferring both she and I were lying, that I as a high feedback seller did not know the rules, which I clearly stated, and inferring I was a poor father for not better informing her. I shot back that I am not going to "father-hen" her, yet others persisted in their aggressive bullying behavior.
What is interesting is most of these persons lecturing her and me were very low feedback persons with very little experience in eBay, so one has to question why they were there in the first place?

Worse yet was the moderator **_karen that did a very poor and uneven job of moderation and then when my daughter asked for the entire thread to be removed, she both refused to do so and never replied back with any answers as to why not.
I will remind readers that legally a forum operator MUST remove a thread when requested by the OP (original poster), yet multiple long phone calls to eBay resulted in speaking with persons with no understanding of the question and frankly dishonest responses back. We have now filed legal paper work to get this thread removed.

What is even more sad is in a world where where everyone wants to blame guns for the killing in the town (Roseburg) just to the north of our hometown (Grants Pass OR), bullying is still alive and well in places such as eBay forums with nothing done.
I will remind readers that most persons struggling with mental health issues do not harm others (this is EXTREMELY RARE), but rather will harm themselves.
So why do we allow such forums to go on and not have better reporting agencies to deal with such disgusting places as eBay Community Forums?
Time for our politicians and news media to step up to the plate, especially when large companies such as eBay allegedly allow it. Do we have to wait for someone to leave a suicide note that they were emotionally hurt on a forum such as allegedly happens on eBay's community forum before action is taken?

By the time our legal paperwork reaches eBay's legal counsel and any action is completed, someone could have already harmed themselves and this in itself screams for a much better system and better legal recourse against persons such as this **_karen making her or others like legally liable to harm, even if self inflicted, due to aggressive poorly moderated forum posts. I know I will certainly hold this evil person legally liable.

Here is just one example, there are many unfortunately.



Here is what I actually said (in black type)

And just to show what is tolerated in the rather aggressive forum sponsored by eBay, I only stumbled upon this looking for the email address for eBay corporate and Google took me to this post as the top result where someone is asking for just this and gets a smart ass reply in the forum . So in other ways if you ask Google you are taken in a loop back to this rude forum--- great!!



What is also worthy of note is that I have gone in circles with eBays email: moderation@ebay.com where they have refused to answer questions or remove the thread as we legally entitled to request as the OP. I have had to re-state questions and multiple times as they play dumb in apparently not reading the emails I have sent.
The person or persons answering in questionable anonymity have shown no desire to address the facts, the law, or even display civil/moral behavior. I can state that all emails are are being saved should legal action arise in a class action lawsuit against eBay.

As a final comment, all I really want is to protect my daughter and for eBay to remove this thread in question for her sanity as she simply cannot deal with this well.
Sadly on eBay's Facebook Page they are constantly removing my inquiries and those of persons who back me up from this FB page.
So they refuse to follow the law and act morally by removing the thread started on eBay Community forums, but they can remove FB threads questioning this illegal practice of keeping up a thread after an OP asks it to be removed to stop the bullying?

WHY, what is eBay trying to hide here?
I certainly do not think eBay is half the company they used to be based on poor customer service, but this has only made me take much of my selling and buying elsewhere, but again, all I am asking is for eBay to act responsibly and remove this thread, I would have never made this blog post other than the tone of their aggressive community forum and frankly this blog post only exists & continues to exist to protect my daughter and warn others!

In the end, if I was a major investor in eBay stocks or a corporate head and I knew this were happening, I would be disgusted if just for monetary reasons.
What are decisions by obviously poorly trained forum personnel being allowed to dictate revenue for the company? Since just for me and my daughter, not to mention friends we have already told (including our Church), this is clearly going to result in a loss of revenue since eBay is loosing revenue from all our potential future purchases as well as from our removal of products from our "top seller" eBay store? All over something so easy to fix, REALLY eBay?

For those who have chosen to look the other way:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
And yes, the root cause of this was evil, regardless of intentions, the potential outcome could be the destruction of another human being.