posted on September 9, 2000 01:31:11 PM new
I do will not cower to ebay. Not after the stupidity and gross overcharging of my account, not delivering a service which never comes, not keeping promises and then breaking them. I pay alot money to put my product there and if and when they finally do shut down, (imminent, I believe)I for one will laugh and roll in the floor because someone or something has finally said ENOUGH. They believe they are GOD and indeed they are NOT.
And whether or not they give out a bogus or otherwise phone, address, etc etc etc is up to them and then the courts because I am NOT a business with a storefront with business hours, they can NOT do this.
That is my statement. No one else comes into it, I accuse no one, I intend on doing what is best for me. Not some dim-wit in California who thinks at the moment they have that much power. WRONG! Dead WRONG!
posted on September 9, 2000 03:25:17 PM new
LOL!
Your idea is laughable, Pear-o, and it's been tried. IF you are a member in ebay suppose you get the ball rolling with the first chargeback. You know, like put up or shut up?
They'll bounce you out on your ear, and what a heroic "I was NARU'd unjustly" thread you can start after that, eh?
Public relations? Don't split my sides laughing! each ridiculous idea that you spout makes it worse to the point that I wonder if this isn't just another new form of revenge by you. Sure, ebay will get bad PR for giving the bum's rush to people who don't pay for their meal. Ha! I'd love to read about it in the national media when you make the expose' of the littany of wrongs done you by ebay because you refused to pay your bill as you had previously agreed to do.
The wires will pick it up for certain. Around the world people will cluck over the treatment done to a deadbeat.
Right.
You don't like it,...leave. That's your choice. There is no paltry manipulation that will work favors much less miracles for you.
posted on September 9, 2000 04:38:14 PM new
krs, I don't know why this is pushing your boutonniere so, but if you're tickled, well heck, so am I. Listen, why don't we meet in the middle: I won't suggest to you that you stop overpaying eBay, and you stop suggesting to the rest of the eBay community that they should keep forking out bucks for something they're not getting. I think that's fair...
Re your future presence in this thread, here's some of your own advice:
You don't like it,...leave. That's your choice. There is no paltry manipulation that will work favors much less miracles for you. You said it, bro'.
posted on September 9, 2000 04:42:22 PM new
Oh, you could pray, or simply make all of your auctions ten days long. They have to keep them going that long and you'll always get your seven days worth.
So sorry, pear-o, but you don't own this thread, it's now the possession of the people posting to it.
posted on September 9, 2000 04:49:51 PM new
krs is cute, folks, but his points don't have much to 'em, not that you can't see that yourselves. Track the downtime!
But it does sounds like somebody needs some compression. Here you go!
{{{{{krs}}}}}}
(And believe me, it feels worse for moi than it does for vous. You're working your way up to licks, just to give you fair warning.)
posted on September 9, 2000 05:03:26 PM new
Once more, pear-o, show them the way. Be the first (though you would not be the first) to charge back for time you think that you shouldn't pay for, and demonstrate the success you achieve. Be a leader, not an instigator.
I can handle hugs, even licks, but I'm sure glad I haven't posted a personal image here in quite some time. The thought of your private latherings somehow just doesn't appeal.
posted on September 9, 2000 05:03:42 PM new
I think you will find to that on yahoo when it is turely haveing problems and is down at a unscheduled time that the auction count down is stopped too when they were updateing there sight and down off an on a few weeks ago I had auction at 6 hours left for nearly a week
they are free and they are fair.
WWW.dman-n-company.com
posted on September 9, 2000 05:11:46 PM new
Ummm Pareau - welcome to Million Auction March.... Want ebaY to fix what's broke? Help us provide them some viable competition. When ebaY has to COMPETE for our business I bet they will address site stability. Until then they can do as they will and YOU help support them in their actions. KRS's has listed auctions elsewhere,he is DOING something about ebaY, not just complaining. You are welcome to join the one action in the OAI that will provide alternatives for us ALL. -Rosalinda
PS - those ebaY phone numbers can be found at www.auctionguild.com - click on the ebaY contact info from left hand toolbar
edited to change a t to an s
TAGnotes - daily email synopsis about the Online Auction Industry
http://www.egroups.com/group/TheAuctionGuildnotes
[ edited by rnrgroup on Sep 9, 2000 05:15 PM ]
posted on September 9, 2000 05:12:55 PM new
Yep. That's true, dman, in my book they are a far superior site. I sell there with excellent result with some items, and the immediate notifications, the overall speed, and the layout of the place is very well thought out.
posted on September 9, 2000 05:18:11 PM new
Yes, I like Yahoo a lot. I'm neither buying nor selling much at present, but when I return to doing so, I will use Yahoo for many items. There has to be a viable alternative for the future.
posted on September 9, 2000 05:25:46 PM new
I think the chargeback idea is a great one, but I believe the user agreement makes it unworkable. I don't want to be accused of lecturing, but it is very clear in the user agreement, which we all agree to when we register, that ebaY is covered in regards to outages. The only way any of us can get out of the user's agreement it to pretend (or admit) that we didn't read them or that we didn't know what we were agreeing to. Not that that would be an excuse that any judge or jury would be likely to buy...
posted on September 9, 2000 05:38:59 PM new
rnrgroup,
Welcome to the Charge!Back! thread! One answer among many, and directed to those who use eBay--still the majority of online sellers and likely to be for quite some time. Other initiatives are...other initiatives, and they have other threads. This isn't a MAM thread. If you'd like one, maybe now is the time to start another one. Go for it!
Auntiesissy, we did not agree to be ripped off, and I don't think "any judge or jury" would find eBay's behavior--refusal to extend auctions when warranted and when they did so in the past, refusal to give credits when clearly called for--are justified by their self-serving, nonnegotiable "user" agreement. As I said in another post, I do not believe that certain terms of the agreement are enforceable under US law, and I do believe we have remedies. Chargebacks are one of them. We didn't agree to be fleeced and pay for services we didn't receive, and the scope of eBay's "functionality" problems and their handling of the issue place the problem beyond the "reasonable" range. IMO, as always.
posted on September 9, 2000 05:48:46 PM new
krs, at this point you're trolling and derailing the thread, which is a shame. I won't bother to respond unless you say something thoughtful and worthwhile. I hope you understand. It's not personal.
posted on September 9, 2000 05:57:08 PM new
Sorry pear-o, someone else has used that weak little ploy in the past. My posts are on point whether you like them or not.
You say no judge or jury would find reasonableness in any case that ebay presents in defense against you, et al?
I say nonsense, Ebay can present in court if you can afford to get them there millions in documentable expenditures used with the sole
aim to insure a running sight as far as it foreseeably can be done.
Your shortsighted little wimper seems not to have considered the monumental and ever growing task it is to make the site available to what? now estimated 20 million users. To support in all intracacy the processing of what has just been recorded to be in excess of FIVE MILLION simulteneous auctions.
Maybe you should request a closure of the thread if you don't like having two teams playing with your ball.
posted on September 9, 2000 06:15:57 PM new
Pareau, I agree that ebaY should AT LEAST compensate as they have in past for site failure, and, as I said before, I think the chargeback idea is a good one. I would personally be concerned about the consequences of pursuing chargebacks because of the user agreement. However, to quote from the User Agreement itself (italics/emphasis mine):
"11.No Warranty.
WE AND OUR SUPPLIERS PROVIDE OUR WEB SITE AND SERVICES "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR
STATUTORY. WE AND OUR SUPPLIERS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. Some states do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, so the foregoing disclaimer may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific legal rights and you may also have other legal rights which vary from state to state.
12.Liability Limit.
IN NO EVENT SHALL WE OR OUR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR LOST PROFITS OR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH OUR SITE, OUR SERVICES OR THIS AGREEMENT (HOWEVER ARISING, INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE).
OUR LIABILITY, AND THE LIABILITY OF OUR SUPPLIERS, TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTIES IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF
(A) THE AMOUNT OF FEES YOU PAY TO US IN THE 12 MONTHS PRIOR TO THE ACTION GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY, AND (B) $100. Some states do not allow the limitation of liability, so the foregoing limitation may not apply to you."
People considering chargebacks should probably familirize themselves with the laws in their state as well as the Agreement with their credit card issuer. My concern is the potential liability that people would incur in attempting such a chargeback. For example, could that be construed by the credit card company as fraud? I am only urging caution.
You are perfectly correct in stating (sorry to paraphrase) that the Agreement may contain language which is not lawfully enforceable. Any time you buy a ticket for a theme park, for example, you will probably see legalese on the ticket stating that by buying the ticket, you agree not to hold the park responsible for loss or injury, even in the case of their negligence. This, of course, does not prevent you from suing (and probably winning) if the roller coaster car jumps the track and kills your Aunt Matilda.
Being currently embroiled in a lawsuit (not related to ebay), I have learned that the way things ought to be and the way they are are often very different, and "unfair" doesn't always translate to "illegal".
posted on September 9, 2000 07:13:16 PM new
Assuming that they can successfuly limit the liability to the amount of fees paid, umm.. that's all we're talking about, and really a portion of them at that. Nobody's filing a class action suit here, just talking about getting credits for outages. Once again, if you have a subscription to a newspaper, and they miss you, then they credit your account. What if they told you 'sorry, we don't give credits for missed papers'?
Challenging the validity of a charge on your credit card generates a chargeback notice to the company that generated the charge request. They have to respond to that chargeback notice in order to defend the charge as valid. At that point, the credit card company renders a judgement and either approves the charge, or issues a chargeback against the company's account. Nobody is talking about witholding payment for service. The idea Pareau has is ONLY to challenge the charges based on a percentage of downtime for which charges should not be issued in the first place.
This is not a legal challenge or a lawsuit. When someone makes an invalid charge against your credit card, it is your RIGHT to challenge it. They have a period to provide a response before any action is taken.
Pareau, thanks for your blessing on the spread of the idea. I really think you are on to something here.
posted on September 9, 2000 07:30:29 PM new
Toyranch,
Thank YOU for explaining it all so clearly. Wish I could do as well, and I really appreciate your clarifying things. I will dig up a couple of URLs for the FTC guidelines on the chargeback procedure (under the Fair Credit Billing Act), and post them here later or tomorrow.
posted on September 9, 2000 07:55:24 PM newis ONLY to challenge the charges based on a percentage of downtime for which charges should not be issued in the first place.
And just how would you suggest going about that? Ebay does not charge for time, it charges for listings. Would you say that in the case of a documentable downtime on the second of a three day listing, a 1/3 chargeback should be made? A 1/7th on a seven day listing? Would ebay be responsible in the case of a claim of downtime from members throughout the southwest when no other area of the country was affected?
No, of course not, since those would not be their errors,but a failure of the connection to them. How would it be determined? What of lesser blocks of time?
Ebay has defined ebay systemic hard outages and given recourse in the case of those when and if they effect the outcome of an auction.
The abberant reasoning presented here could very well lead to epidemics of claims by people whose own system, or their own lack of knowledge of their system is at fault.
In the meantime, there will be endless counselings there, as there are here, by ebay personnel (and here-AW people) to reboot, clear cache, and try again.
Back to the bottom line? Ebay will see a situation in which they are not being paid for the service they provide (remember, auction venue for your choice of avenue and not a rental agreement as you might expect in renting a car). They will excise the reason for their not getting paid.
The analogy of the newspaper is not pertinent. Unless ebay is down for the entirety of your auction, you got one.
posted on September 9, 2000 08:30:41 PM new
OK KRS, let's talk Cable TV then.
They charge for a month of service. If they have an outage, then you can get a pro-rated credit based on the duration of the outage.
ebaY has, in the past, issued credits based on outages. If your auction ends during an outage, you can get credit. If there are substantial outages during the course of your auction, you can get credit. If the search function is unavailable during parts of your auction, you can get credits. Some sellers got credits for their entire listing amount for the description search glitch.
BUT, ebaY has started routinely denying many of these credits, where they used to issue them... so the precedent was set by THEM, because it is a JUSTIFIABLE CREDIT. Now they have so many outages all the time that they are refusing credits, although you can sometimes get them by fighting tooth and nail with customer service, sending email with ATTN SUPERVISOR in the heading, or as a group of sellers did recently, flooding Meg's email addy with credit requests until they were granted the credits as a group, while others were denied for the same circumstances.
ebaY can't give credits to some users for a problem and then deny others! That's absurd! And the denial of those credits is likewise absurd!
Oh, and another thing, they have servers from SUN MICROSYSTEMS. This past May, ebaY's agreement with Sun was about to run out, and they started shopping around. They were close to a deal with Hewlett Packard, when SUN ran back in with a better offer.... FREE SERVERS and not only that, but also, they PAID EBAY $13 million or something for advertising.
See, when ebaY was talking about leaving Sun, their stock started falling, and they ran back in with this blockbuster offer to keep this high profile account.
SO rather than having to PAY a few million bucks for some DECENT equipment, ebaY took the offer for FREE STUFF and, well, you get what you pay for, eh???
I don't know if all this is the fault of SUN or the fault of ebaY, and frankly, I could care less. Bottom line, the site that was relatively stable for the past year or so (compared to the past) has fallen into much difficulty. CGI3 and CGI5 were out this morning for a while. Now it's split up so much that you may not know that it's down, because the part you're using may be working, but the part your bidder is trying to use may be broken.
Look at the email problems! EOA notices have been 4 to 5 days behind. OK, I don't use the dumb things anyway, but seller closed auction search history has been out off and on for weeks now. When that happens, you have NO WAY to view your closed auctions, and you have no EOA notices!
Outbid notices have been failing! Bidders who WOULD go bid again if they knew they were outbid don't get the outbid notices half the time and never bid again.
The description search glitch meant that any auction receiving a bid prior to description search indexing was never description search indexed. For some items, this is a HUGE PROBLEM! It went on for a couple of weeks at least and then took almost a week to get their attention to fix it!
Title Search Index has been almost a full day behind most of the time, meaning that a 7 day auction is actually a 6 day auction. I often get a bunch of bids in the first day if the search is indexed promptly, if it's not, they usually never come.
Mister lister is a tool many depend on, and it's been full of screwups for several days now...
These are but a scant FEW of the problems over the past month and a half or so... and they just keep going on and on and on!
Asking for credit of fees is NOTHING compared to the loss of revenue everyone has experienced due to the DIRECT INABILITY to conduct business on ebaY, and that doesn't even address the bidders who have left out of frustration. The fee credits are a TRIFLE compared to the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS lost in bids by users of the 'venue'. We're not even talking about asking for reimbursement of THAT as it is incalcuable. Just a portion of the fees. A piddling amout compared to our losses, and an amount that is being charged without validity or justification. It is an improper charge that should be automatically credited without even having to ASK!
posted on September 9, 2000 08:55:37 PM new
I really dont recommend charge backs on listing fees for there down time though.
The listing fee is to list your Item on there server your listing is on there server weather it is on the net or down off the net some of the time.
they dont garentee a sale or even veiws of any Item you or anyone lists in any way or form.
how ever if they were to charge FVF for item listed with no sale This is different or they charge you FVF for two or three times based on what your item sold for the charge back after writen notice and no satisfaction is the right way.
after all even if you had your own server your own T3 line you still would not be garenteed your server would be up 24/7 you would not be garenteed visits or sales
ebay has been around a while they are #1 right now but because I been here a long time too I know something new is on the way that is gonna take that #1 spot as a way for people to sell there goods better.
maybe or may not be a auction venue but something will come and I dont beleave ebay will be the new way I think they have lost there way and are chaseing there tails right now while they are playing these games there is a service of some type out there right now the size of a pea building that they are not even paying attention too.
posted on September 9, 2000 09:10:03 PM new
So sorry, Toyranch, I was listing a few things in Yahoo.
A month and a half is such a short time to be in such a flap. It speaks to the speed at which a person can become spoiled when a site works for, as you say, almost a year.
Aside that, you are speaking on terms of amounts which are not calculable. Again you go to time when what you pay for is auctions, not time. The credits being applied for are those incurred by users requesting fee returns for auctions they end out of temporary frustration, not for any substantiatable loss, only for fees a user always loses in closing an auction for any reason. Yes, they have refunded those fees on a case by case basis in the past, but it was never a policy to do so. They will still refund fees quite willingly in the case of an auction begun in error or one that entered more than once through som indefinable glitch in the listing process.
But now you branch off in your arguments into areas which have nothing to do with any original point you make. Mr. Lister, search, are separate problems and they have been treated as hard outages by ebay, as they are today.
To return to the choices a user has: why, they are stay, or leave. Aren't you the chief protagonist of the MAM effort anyway, Toyranch?
posted on September 9, 2000 10:24:08 PM new
Julesy,
I'll leave Toyranch to speak for his post, but I know that where I'm coming from has nothing to do with consequential damages or related issues. It rests on the primary transaction: Payment for space for a specified and limited period of time. On that, the facts are indisputable: When auctions are not available, eBay isn't delivering what we are paying for, and those of us using credit cards can reduce the amount we're paying them on a pro-rata basis. This is Consumerism 101, and it doesn't entail CA suits or civil actions. No lawyers, no BS, and 100% of the chargeback goes to the consumer. Sounds like justice to me. Why fight it?
- Pareau
posted on September 9, 2000 10:32:21 PM new
Oh, then pear-o, would you care to edit that portion of your initial post which states:
The mall closings disrupt business and result in losses for the shopkeepers, whose goods are being held hostage while the mall is closed. Mall management has made vague statements about the closings, which are frequent and sudden, but rarelyaffords the merchants an adequate offset to compensate them for the negative impact on their sales.
