To me, the only significant changes are that they say they are getting slightly more involved when disputes arise and they may resolve some situations with their own money.  Here's part of what they say with my emphasis in bold.

As part of our partnership with sellers, eBay now has an entire team devoted to finding new ways to help improve your efficiency. Here are a few starters, with more to come!

   * eBay Resolutions. We are introducing a new, more efficient dispute resolution process for when buyers claim an item was not received or the item they received was different than described in the listing. The goals of the new process are to keep buyers on eBay by giving them a more familiar eCommerce resolution experience, and to reduce the time buyers and sellers spend resolving issues.

     Direct communication between buyers and sellers will continue to be strongly encouraged. With the new process, buyers and sellers will also have an option to call eBay. We'll be taking a more active role, and in certain cases when we determine the seller was not at fault we may refund the buyer at our own expense.

I highly doubt this is going to impact any of us ever.  The bottom line is that they just don't get it.  eBay was and should be primarily one big garage sale.  Caveat Emptor.  It is trying to make itself more like Amazon and that never was nor ever should be it's strength.  

Maybe eBay should have created a completely different web-site for professional, big-time, large volume sellers.  They thought they were doing that with Power Seller status and Power Seller discounts, but most people just look for stuff and buy whoever has that stuff, not fully understanding feedback scores, feedback percentages, or DSR's.

The other thing that just kills eBay are the Cougs.  The current system just doesn't punish them.  Something as simple as three negatives from three different buyers in a three month period results in a three month suspension.  The next offense is a six month suspension and doubles in length every time after that.  Yeah, you hit a few innocent people, but I'd love the damage it would do to all the people it would hit.

There's more I could add, but I'm curious what anyone else has to say.

From what I have seen eBay has a business model that is based on "X" amount of growth per year.
They have hit a ceiling on how big they can grow their site so now they are flailing about and making changes to show their investors that they are doing something.
Unfortunately they are missing the point that in order to create a sustainable business they have to keep the transactions safe for buyers and sellers and definitely not go out of their way to piss people off.

I would agree with Carl. I barely sell on ebay, but recently got my 1st neg feedback on an item sold for £1.99! I'd even under charged the tosser on P&P so I effectively made about 40p on the sale! I offered a refund but the little prick still posted neg, bad comments and sent me a shitty email..
I tried raising a dispute on it and ebay didnt want to know.
I'll just take a shit through the idiots letter box, next time I'm in his town...  

bclarkie wrote:
Setting a standard such as this would be extremely easily manipulated and make Ebay a graveyard in a very short time.  Until Ebay actually takes it's registration process and user database seriously, putting a system in like this would be disastrous.  It's still far to easy to create new IDs on Ebay and a person could easily have any sellers they wanted(and for whatever reasons) eliminated in less than a month's time.  

Make it a graveyard? It's becoming one now. I can't tell you the sheer numbers of guys (& girls) I know who've bailed over the past year or so.

Most of my friends sold non RPG related materials, 2 I know that did actually phased out and stopped carrying that kind of product altogether, because " Too many unreasonable never-happies".  

Good sellers who always did a solid by their buyers, and got in return; BS negs, my favorite being from non paying bidders, even though they get taken down. Or the re-negotiate the price after the fact on either the sale amount itself or shipping. Insert Pipswichs' name here.

Yes I followed that thread and thought you had the better of the exchange bclarkie, I block people like that out of hand and sure as hell wont buy from 'em!

Look at some of the FB out there; page after page of "no longer a registerd user". They didn't all leave because they were bad sellers,
most went to Amazon.

The tonnage of weasels on there staggers me, all hiding behind the anonymity of the internet...

For you guys in Canada, why not Abebook? $25.00 US gets you 500 listings. Set your price and forget about it, why take a chance on .99c auction being exactly that. Or Amazon for that matter, no listing fees', actually turns out to be about the same as eBays' fees' combined at closing. Sure you have to deal with potential A-Z claims & payouts twice a month, but that's really not much different than eBay and you get what you want in price points. It's all got inherent risk.

And with regard to the nonsense complaints & chargebacks, I was serious about the Postal Inspectors info from B3 thread. Why let Ebay or PayPal handle it? If your local PO is slow to handle it;

MAKE THEM DO THEIR JOB!

Just go up the foodchain, they're still good people that take their job serious over there. Claiming an item was not as described to swindle someone out of there money is Mail Fraud plain and simple. I'm hopeful that the UK and Canada have similar laws, but really don't know.

By the way ashmire13, want to block the guy who just negged you? Go to find a member, put in his email & if they've got multiple accounts linked to a common email you'll get them all, and can then block them as well.

Pyrex_Pickle_Blowfish wrote:Claiming an item was not as described to swindle someone out of there money is Mail Fraud plain and simple. I'm hopeful that the UK and Canada have similar laws, but really don't know.

Not in the UK.

Claiming 'not as described' is an automatic refund to the buyer through PayPal. On high value yels I take photographs of the item and the packing and packaging through all stages up to the point where it's labelled, tagged and addressed for posting. That way if need be I can provide documented proof of what was shipped to a customer and in what condition, how it was packed and how it was sent. I also refuse to sent without full insurance and recorded delivery. I haven't yet had anyone claim an item was not as described or damaged on delivery. I have had items go missing, but then that's what the insurance and recorded delivery are for.

Your only defence is the PayPal Seller Protection Policy. You get the opportunity to communicate and arbitrate through PayPal. PayPal also protect you against chargebacks. But the key is to use the system and obey it. That means posting within the deadlines, obeying the rules and providing proof of delivery. In such circumstances (certainly in the UK) PayPal will not provide any refund without requiring the buyer to return the goods to the seller, and if you have photographic proof of the condition in which they were sent, you then have a claim against the buyer that they damaged your goods before returning them to you, and PayPal will honour their protection policy and compensate you.

If however you miss a step or don't trust PayPal, or trust the buyer too much, you lose out and PayPal will drop the case and you get nothing. I have actually refunded a buyer in full rather than send the item, because I haven't been able to send within the alloted 72 hours and didn't want to lose my right to protection. PayPal is the seller's only defence, unless you go visit the guy with a baseball bat.

But then my experience and reference is only in reference to PayPal.co.uk and how they deal with domestic and international transactions. From the sounds of it the rules are different in other countries.

serleran wrote:I've used "not as described" to return something. Bought a supposed alpha print DMG and it ended up being, or what was sent to me, a 6th print which is obviously nowhere near as valuable. So, I filed a "not as described" and sent the damn book back. Did get my money, eventually.

I have never done so, but I would think that filing a "not as described" complaint would almost be mandatory that you send the product back to the seller via a trackable method to get a refund.   I know it's Ebay and all, but that to me seems like just flat out common sense.  

serleran wrote:You would think, but sometimes a seller doesn't want it back (don't really know why) and sometimes they offer to let you keep it for a partial refund. Me, I sent it back because I didn't want it, and yeah, always with delivery confirmation of some sort and the seller gets to refund that, too.

And the seller saying "just keep it" would make sense.  

But for Paypal to just give a full refund to the buyer without requiring a return and without the sellers consent, to me is beyond ridiculous.

bbarsh wrote:But paypals refund policy does not require the buyer to send the item back. You would think it would be common sense...yeah, right.

It does in th UK, as far as I am aware. I have had this discussion with them.