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I have earned probably ten thousand dollars over the years selling items on eBay. It was much better back in the old days, of course, before you-know-who ruined the economy and Greenspan ruined the interest rates, taking away the disposable income of seniors, who are most of my customers. But I recently picked up about $300 selling items just in July.
I would not quit eBay over an $8 item. You need to report the seller to eBay for not sending you the item or a place to send payment for the item. Then cross that seller off your list, and don't do business with them again.
When buying, I follow these rules:
I would not buy electronics or jewelry on eBay because of the high number of fraudulent sellers. But every sale in those categories is not fraud; I myself have sold items in those categories, although not often because it is hard to get a fair price when you are competing with creeps in the Ukraine who don't plan to actually ship the goods they are advertising.
I also tend to avoid "power sellers" because they are not subject to the same rules as ordinary sellers. If I as an ordinary seller received 3 complaints, I would be off the site, but you can look at some power sellers and they can have 100s of complaints! The "big boys" don't have to play by the same rules. Sigh. It was ever thus.
And I apologize to the honest power sellers out there but at this point it is too difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys frankly. If a power seller has a perfect or near-perfect feedback record, then it's OK, and I would probably bid, although I might still give preference to another non-power seller if she had the item at the same or only slightly higher price. But it is not enough for a power seller to have 7,000 feedback...click on that sucker, and you may learn that they have 8,500 positives and 1,500 negatives, and you are just playing the odds when you bid on their auctions.
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