eBay sellers I hate!

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dsigma6 · #1 Post by **dsigma6** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:26 pm

I'm sure most of you have encountered the auction items labeled "Super fast ultra slim WIFI thinkpad!!" listings on eBay. They really bother me. For instance...this one bugs the hell out of me.

The things I really hate!-

Model is unclear to the untrained eye, unless you notice subtle hints.

The bombardment of WiFi logos, and other animated GIFs.

Using the P4 logo and poorly editing the '4' out of it.

The "HUGE COLOR LCD (better even than plasma technology)" statement.

This one has the nerve to write "quick specs for those who care," followed by:

HDD: 2.1G, Mem: 112MB, 266mHz,
13.3", DVD/CDRW, Flop, USB, WiFi

Wait a sec...Did you just completely exaggerate every single word in this auction? Ahh it makes me crazy!

Good luck burning the content of your 2.16GB HD, with 1.2GB available!

pianowizard · #2 Post by **pianowizard** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:39 pm

I noticed this obnoxious seller too! But apparently these ads are very effective because his TP600's usually sell for well over $200!

dsigma6 · #3 Post by **dsigma6** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 2:52 pm

People see wifi and a cd burner and they get excited. I used a little bit of downtime at work effeciently...to look through pages of their feedback. Despicable!

One of their 266mhz, 2.1gb, 112mb 600's just went for $270 shipped. What a bargain!!

#4 Post by **K. Eng** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 6:34 pm

The only thing you can really do is never to buy from these people, and advise everyone you know to avoid them as well!

mfratt · #5 Post by **mfratt** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 7:30 pm

As far as im concerned, good for him. The most he does is use some exxagerative adjectives, but he really doesnt misrepresent the item. If he can hype it up and get twice what its worth, then thats smart on his part. I would never buy from someone with such an annoying ad, but apparently some people will.

Clearly hes going after the less technical crowd. Such as using modifies Pentium 4 and Windows XP logos, which people will recognize and think the system is newer. And terms like "poweful" and "lots" are relative. He could argue that "266MHz is powerful to me."

If anything its funny
Powerful = 266MHz
"Gigabytes" = 2.1GB
lots of ram = 112MB
very light = 5lb (is a 600E really only 5lb?)
huge lcd = 13"

Hah.

Thinkpaddict · #6 Post by **Thinkpaddict** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:34 pm

This is a clear example of behavior that, while legal, is highly questionable on moral grounds. The target audience of that auction (and those likely to bid for the item) as already mentioned is people with low technical knowledge, and it is obvious that they are paying much more than the reasonable price of the computer.

What I found incredible is the statement: "Quick specs for those that care." For those that care? WTF?

#7 Post by **rkawakami** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:53 pm

dsigma6 wrote:I used a little bit of downtime at work effeciently...to look through pages of their feedback. Despicable!

If you manually loaded 200 entries at a time and then paged back in time, there's an easier way. Ken Stuart posted this info about a month ago in the T2x/T3x forum:

kstuart wrote:A very helpful tool for ebay is the easy site:

http://www.toolhaus.org

You type in the ebay userid and it lists all the negative and neutral feedback comments - with the positive ones removed, so you don't have to page through pages of people who happened to not have a problem to see what is reported by the ones who did have a problem with the guy.

pianowizard · #8 Post by **pianowizard** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:11 pm

I am looking at the seller gobengeo's feedback. How come most of the item numbers are "private"?

#9 Post by **rkawakami** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:14 pm

Here's my "pet peeve pusher" on eBay:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZit_equ ... essQQhtZ-1

He seems to have about a dozen prices he uses on all of his inventory. $74.95 is only one of his "particularly popular prices". Ahh, after scanning some pages, here's a good example:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0019745183

What's that part? IBM FRU 05K5995, aka the plastic hard drive cover (door) for a 600E. What's his price? $75.95. Oh, that DOESN'T include the $15.00 shipping charge! That he has over 1800 positive feedbacks and less than 30 negatives really surprises me, but I guess it only proves the adage attributed to P.T. Barnum (but discounted by some experts).

#10 Post by **rkawakami** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:19 pm

pianowizard wrote:I am looking at the seller gobengeo's feedback. How come most of the item numbers are "private"?

Probably doesn't want potential buyers avoid whatever he's selling. Can be used at the seller's discretion to keep buyer's history from showing that the buyer bought "adult" products, for example.

(edit: Although if you search using "Search: Items by Seller" you can find out what they were).

dsigma6 · #11 Post by **dsigma6** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:13 pm

Nice tip Ray, for sorting pos/neg feedback- thanks for passing that along.

I've noticed that seller too, but never looked at all of their items. I don't like when the picture for an item is like the one they use..

truthiness · #12 Post by **truthiness** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:29 am

just report those auctions as fraudulent and ebay usually sends them a warning and often times pulls them.

Website · #13 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 10:33 am

u2wedge wrote:just report those auctions as fraudulent and ebay usually sends them a warning and often times pulls them.

The problem is that they aren't fraudulant.

For the record, last year I was selling 600Es (PII 400MHz, 40GB, 288MB, CDRW/DVD) for about $400. These guys are most likely still selling at that price and haven't had a loss in sales. I can't really blame them...especially given the fact that despite the sales, they don't have a landslide of negative feedback. If the buyer is happy, then what is the problem?

pianowizard · #14 Post by **pianowizard** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:39 pm

Wow, this one was sold for $307.50 shipped just a minute ago:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Slick-Slender-IBM-T ... dZViewItem

pianowizard · #15 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:23 pm

This guy is still selling his fanTAStic 266MHz TP600 with a Buy-It-Now price of over $300 plus $40 shipping:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Slick-Slender-IBM-T ... dZViewItem

And his powerful 650MHz/128MB Dell laptop was sold recently for $505 shipped:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0048391931

dsigma6 · #16 Post by **dsigma6** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:58 pm

I loathe him!!

Website · #17 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:29 pm

dsigma6 wrote:

I loathe him!!

Why? Caveat Emptor...Buyer Beware.

If this guy is lucky enough to find someone willing to spend that kind of money on something that old....too bad for the buyer for not researching. As P.T. Barnum has been often misquoted as saying..."there's a sucker born every minute"

Don't get me wrong....do I think that it is right to sell something like that, for that kind of money and not have a guilty conscious...NO.

bigtiger · #18 Post by **bigtiger** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 1:45 am

Geez.I dislike him.

dsigma6 · #19 Post by **dsigma6** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:04 am

The poor people who don't know what "buyer beware" means. Seriously, they must live in closets...or tents or something. To not see prices for new machines as a point of comparison, it's just insane.

And yes, the seller is ethically challenged.

Manarius · #20 Post by **Manarius** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 5:02 pm

I know Caveat Emptor very well, but normal sellers aren't allowed to advertise falsely - neither should those on ebay.

dsigma6 · #21 Post by **dsigma6** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 5:12 pm

Manarius wrote:I know Caveat Emptor very well, but normal sellers aren't allowed to advertise falsely - neither should those on ebay.

It's such a pile of BS. I wonder why it doesn't apply to scumbag used car salesmen either? I drove up to NYC to look at a Caddy that was described as mint, perfect, amazing, etc...It looked like someone played shuffleboard on the hood, the leather was messed up, door jambs didn't line up...n***a please.

*note* I do not believe all used car salesmen are scumbags.

edit: pianowizard...trim the links!!

skitty4gzus · #22 Post by **skitty4gzus** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 6:13 pm

i dont believe all are, but dont buy ANYTHING let alone a car from a seller on ebay called premierauto or anything like that from chicago. dude is a crook and a liar

rabbarba · #23 Post by **rabbarba** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:23 pm

Rofl that dell computer, he writes:
Lots of RAM

Pre-loaded with 128MB of RAM, upgradeable to 512!

ROFL Lots of ram? 128mb that cant almost run win ME smoothly.
And then we shouldn't talk about win XP!
And he types 10000megabytes just because it looks like its more than 10gb.
and for the screen: HUGE 14.1" COLOR LCD (better even than plasma technology)

I mean, better than plasma technology? And he writes COLOR in different colours.

He types like everything on his rotten old dell from year 2000 is modern, new, fast and extreme.
I really dislike him.

dsigma6 · #24 Post by **dsigma6** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:48 pm

The bumping of this thread had me looking at his feedback again. Anyone that buys from him really deserves what they get, because the feedback speaks for itself. Every page is littered with both positive, negative and neutral- all with negative comments.

I generally leave negative words with a positive feedback just so the person doesn't get overly upset.

I like his upgrade scheme at the bottom, with multipliers that turn a simple HD or memory upgrade into $100. The 20,000MB HD gets me too!

Nigellus · #25 Post by **Nigellus** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 1:22 pm

Thanks for that eBay sorting link, Ray (and kstuart). I always find that the kind of negative feedback people get on eBay is more informative than positive. Positive feedback is what you get when everyone is happy. Negative feedback shows how they react to problems that occur; and that is important (especially because I have had more than my share of run ins with Murphy's Law). So far, I have only had one negative eBay experience; and because they (finally) got me the most correct item I could have reasonably expected (4 weeks late), I did them a favor by not leaving any feedback. (It was an AC adapter for my Gateway M500B1 notebook, and what they gave me, while working, does not fit properly into the jack, so it's a pain to use.)

pianowizard · #26 Post by **pianowizard** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 1:30 pm

Nigellus wrote:So far, I have only had one negative eBay experience; and because they (finally) got me the most correct item I could have reasonably expected (4 weeks late), I did them a favor by not leaving any feedback.

I have purchased from eBay about 75 times and am going through the worst transaction ever. It's a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop whose specs differ significantly from the advertised specs. I emailed the seller many times asking for a partial refund but he never responded. I will wait for a few more days and complain to PayPal. Hopefully it will work. It worked once, for a very small ($3) purchase.

Nigellus · #27 Post by **Nigellus** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 2:00 pm

Manarius wrote:I know Caveat Emptor very well, but normal sellers aren't allowed to advertise falsely - neither should those on ebay.

Indeed. It is almost, but not quite, fraud in the inducement (bait and switch). It's one of those things where you look at it and know it's wrong, but can't quite decide the proper cause of action, or even if it can be categorized under the cause of action it is most like because it is just barely short of outright misrepresentation.

At the end of the day, this person is selling (for the most part) working computers that are posted with the relevant information as to their actual specs. That's why this person can engage in the kind of advertising practices I've seen described here. I looked at a few of the other (current) listings this eBayer has and a rationally self-interested shopper can make correct assessments based on the information provided.

The one referenced in this thread is unforgivable, though. I saw two different values listed for the amount of RAM. (actually, three if you count "lots of RAM" as a spec).

Nigellus · #28 Post by **Nigellus** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 3:05 pm

pianowizard, wow. That is a bad transaction.

pianowizard · #29 Post by **pianowizard** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:58 pm

I was browsing the Providence Craigslist (I live in Providence RI) and saw something that looked very familiar:

"POWERFUL Dell Laptop DVD±RW, WiFi - $409"

Indeed, it's the same obnoxious guy:

http://providence.craigslist.org/sys/241907753.html

Why can't he just GET LOST!

dsigma6 · #30 Post by **dsigma6** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:15 pm

pianowizard wrote:Why can't he just GET LOST!

No bids yet, I'm gonna snipe this one!!

eBay sellers I hate!

eBay sellers I hate!

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