If you attempted to sell a house and had an estate agent working on a 10% commission fee, you wouldn't expect after 3 months of no-sale for the estate agent to attempt to charge you that 10% commission.

If they did charge it, you wouldn't be able to take your house to too many estate agents as it what you would make would be peanuts.

Well apparently thats exactly the same deal that EBAY offers it's users with its Reserve listing. Originally I was selling a couple of items which the price of which was unknown, so the Reserve was used to attempt to make sure they didn't sell for peanuts.

The way I thought the reserve would work was that IF the reserve was met, EBAY would charge for the Reserve fee if the item was sold. However the two items I was selling, one never made the reserve price and was sold for the highest bid and the other item never sold at all.

However EBAY sends me a bill for both items Reserve fee's. Now I'm not necessarily observant when it comes to the written word, but I'm sure there are people out there far more illiterate than I am. I'm also pretty positive that they would think the Reserve on an item at EBAY would work the way that I thought it did, which is why when EBAY replied to my query that the Reserve price has to be paid, I was livid.

I have sent an e-mail in response suggesting that I will not take this lying down. The problem is with Card details that can't be deleted, that they will try withdrawing money from an empty bank account, I have for warned them that any unauthorised overdraft created by their deception will incur legal fees.

I strongly suggest if anyone has stuff they want to sell, to boycott EBAY and look to things like the Free-Ads to sell, at least they only charge for your items listing and it's up to you to barter with who evers interested.

.....I have sent an e-mail in response suggesting that I will not take this lying down.....

LOL.

That'll show em.

Nothing quite like a posting to sciforums to scare eBay. :rolleyes:

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Well Sciforums isn't what I had intended for retalliation, it's just somewhere I thought people might like to find out about the true ebay before they attempt to sell anything and then find themselves with such a situation.

I believe it's a basic consumer right to not be cheated. If they attempt to use the clause of there EULA agreement, it was never printed on hardcopy or signed to with witnesses so you could suggest "It's not worth the paper it was written on".

Surely that's just the listing fee, which is based on the opening price of the item?

This is why many people start items off really cheap, and then use another account and indulge in 'shilling', and bid up the price. Not that I am advocating the latter, as I never buy items that have been shilled.

If they refunded the fee on a reserve that wasn't met, then we would have everyone overpricing an item with high reserves. This wouldn't make anyone money and nobody would be getting items at garage sale prices.

Ebay is a necessary evil in my opinion. The only reason I sell on there is the massive amount of buyers. No other site has this many buyers looking around. As far as the company, I think they are one of the most fraudulent and have the worst customer service of all companies. (This includes paypal in my rant.)

Ebay is not a real-estate agency; they are an auction house. It's standard procedure in the auction industry to charge a fee for items that are put up for auction, even if they don't sell. Ebay is following the normal rules of the auction industry.

I don't see why you think you would have the right to deny ebay their payment or threaten them with legal action for trying to collect the money that you own them. You apparenty simply assumed that you wouldn't have to pay if the item didn't sell without bothering to actually read the terms. Why shouldn't you have to pay them?

Nasor, you have to understand not everybody thinks like the auction industry, there presentation of such reserve fee's wasn't very clear.

Infact I returned to the ebay Fee's page (Http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html) just to see what I "Missed" and well it's understandible why I missed their whole section on Reserve fees.

Http://www.chatsoba.com/ebayfees.jpg

The image is a screenshot of the page, there are only two "reserve fee" entries, and it's clear that I missed the "SHOW" anchor on one of these entries. The reason I missed it is probably due to scrolling passed it, which I would suggest is easy to do when your only skimming through something for information.

It should really Identified more rather than hidden away behind a show/hide toggle. As for the actual information while making a item sale it appeared ambigious to me at the time, which is why I drew my conclusion from what I know, not from what they have written behind a Show/hide.

Infact I returned to the ebay Fee's page (Http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html) just to see what I "Missed" and well it's understandible why I missed their whole section on Reserve fees.

You seem to have also misssed this:

Copyright © 1995-2006 eBay Inc. All Rights Reserved.

They could do you now for the breach, reproducing their page here.

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Nasor, you have to understand not everybody thinks like the auction industry...
Fair enough, but if you're going to do business in the auction industry then it's a good idea to learn about it first.

The image is a screenshot of the page, there are only two "reserve fee" entries, and it's clear that I missed the "SHOW" anchor on one of these entries.

It clearly says that there is a reseve fee that's refunded if the item sells. You don't need to click on the "show" to see that.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but ebay's fee page does clearly explain the fee structure. You just didn't read it.

I don't understand why one would think ebay would allow you to post stuff for free. that makes no sense. like was said above, if it was free to list something with a reserve, then everything would have a reserve.

Use Craig's list before it gets overtaken by Ebay.

Use Craig's list before it gets overtaken by Ebay.
You appear to be several years late.

I was time travelling fool. hehe. Before they charge for you for their services.

I don't understand why one would think ebay would allow you to post stuff for free. that makes no sense. like was said above, if it was free to list something with a reserve, then everything would have a reserve.

Cato,
There is more than just one fee applied. Theres fees appied for listing it, fee's applied for photos, greater descriptions, bolding text and all the other trimmings. So it's not like I expected the listing for free, it's just the instance of the Reserve price information being missed.

Now I know it's all very well for your guys and girls to sit on your asses and identify that "You would of spotted it", but shit happens to the best and the worst of us (including yourselves on occasion).

Anyway I'm attempting to resolve it with Ebay, the real reason for the overall post was just an attempt to make sure people realise about the RESERVE fee rather than find themselves hit with a fee later on.

Well Sciforums isn't what I had intended for retalliation, it's just somewhere I thought people might like to find out about the true ebay before they attempt to sell anything and then find themselves with such a situation.

I believe it's a basic consumer right to not be cheated. If they attempt to use the clause of there EULA agreement, it was never printed on hardcopy or signed to with witnesses so you could suggest "It's not worth the paper it was written on".
Which corporations does not cheat on consumers? :eek:
Never found one... :rolleyes:

TruthSeeker: It is sad that you feel this way.Which corporations does not cheat on consumers?

Never found one... It has always been my experience that large corporations sold useful goods and services at prices I could afford. Most of my adult life I worked for large corpoaraitons and received good pay as well as benefits.

How would you expect to get cars,computers, TV's, appliances, et cetera if not from large corporations? Most people would not have the money to buy such items if they did not work for some company, often a large corporation.

How well do you think you would have been treated if the government ran everything?

A recent news item described the history of government attempts to do something about hurricane & flood damage in New Orleans. After a disater in 1965, they developed a plan to prevent future problems. the project was expected to take 13 years and cost 85 million. 40 years later, they had spent about 738 million and had not yet completed the work.

Government!?!? Worse!