Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohank
They say in their ad to look at their ratings. However, only about 5% are for repairs. The rest are for selling stuff like batteries or car parts.
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This reminds me of shops that existed around the lake in the 80s. "VHS rental, tanning salon, and bait & tackle" or "locksmith, haircuts, and bait & tackle". The scariest one was "BBQ, fresh produce, and bait & tackle". We never bought anything other than bait at those places, as the proprietors looks like hillbillies, complete with barefeet kids running around. About as sanitary as a litter box.
What you're seeing is the eBay storefront of a pawn shop (or similar). They sell random crap, in random conditions, and know nothing about any of it.
Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dpalomaki
As I understand it ebay has procedures that allow sellers to dispute negative feedback.
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Correct, and in fact it's being gamed now. I've left negative feedback for things, and then it disappears. Valid complaints, like "new" items that are opened and smell like an ash tray.
They allow sellers to remove feedback if they've sold lots of stuff within a period of time. So if a bad company gets 50,000 feedback for selling dollar widgets, and then gets bad feedback for sell 50 expensive lemons, the 50 feedback can disappear.
There are also blogs on how to game feedback, how to exploit the system. For example, irate buyers are likely to write things like "WTF?" Well, eBay has a "no abbreviations" language rule, so they'll often remove feedback that breaks those obscure rules. They're supposed to edit/scrub the feedback, but the CS are frequently lazy, and it's easier to delete those comments.
Another potential is when the feedback is item-based comments ("item was dirty"), but the item was refunded. eBay considers that comment voided, and may remove it (even if their policy states otherwise, and yet CS can override it). Had it been more about the seller ("seller lied about condition"), it'd have a better chance to stay.
This is how the Houston VCR scammer is able to still operate. He sells lots of misc items, exploits loopholes, in addition to having multiple usernames. When an account gets "blown" (too many bad feedback, yet not suspended), he shifts it to cheap trinkets, and gets enough clout to earn removals. In addition to exploiting rules, getting feedback removed on technicality.
Also remember that feedback doesn't count after 1 year. So (in theory only) you could have daily negative feedback for cameras/VCRs/TBCs/etc, stop, then sell $1 Mardi Gras beads for the next 366 days, and it'd look like you have a 100% positive feedback account with thousands of "good seller" comments.
There's also a common tactic used by Chinese scammers. They'll run up an account to have lots of positive feedback (sometimes 500+ comments), by selling junk trinkets, mostly not even outside China (ie, all Chinese buyers). Then they'll sell the account on an underground site. The new owner will have an aged positive account, then list 10's of thousands of dollars in high-priced items (SSDs, Transformers Masterpiece figures, etc). They'll get caught long before everything listed sells, but it'll be long enough to get at least $5k or more. Chinese scammers accounts are rarely "hacked", that's mostly the Russians that hack accounts. I've written about this in depth before at TFW2005, as it's a huge problem for Transformers collectors. There are some tell-tales, such as those sellers usually using port cities in CA/NY/GA as the location, or generic "USA, USA" locations.
Lots of shady SOBs out there on eBay.
Amazon has similar issues. For example, that new "ruby sliders" commercial has likely-fake feedback on the
Amazon page, cheaply made "reviews" (paid Fivrr shills) on Youtube and blogs. Aside from that, the internet has no idea what a "ruby slider" is. FYI, it's just a standard felt furniture slider dyed red, drop-shipped crap from China.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobustReviews
Looking in our waste log we recycled 90 camcorders during 2020! They generally have switch-mode supplies so just supply your own 'figure of 8' plug.
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If you ever get a PAL DV camera in decent shape, I'd appreciate one,