Auction Hall of DISASTER/Need Help

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

Ok....sometimes, occasionally, I get the feeling that I'm a tad too....anal....regarding grading. Then I get books like this one in the mail:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 2226414554


#127 is the book in question, looks pretty innocent, right?

Ok...so the book arrived this week...and standard comics from 1953-ish to the present have 16 leaves, 32 pages total, front and back, with four 'covers'. This book is missing....get this....

FOURTEEN (14) PAGES.

Yes, 7 of the original 16 leaves, an entire story plus ALL the ad pages....are MISSING. Gone. Kaput. Never to be heard from again.

And not a single mention of this in the description, AND, in fact, the seller goes out of his way to state that it's 'all intact', TWICE!

#156, by the way, is a solid VG- to VG, and #171 is a Fair, at best.

And it's when I get these that I say....hey...it's NOT just me, these people are NUTS and everyone sits around wondering why (A) CGC books are selling for ridiculous prices, and (B) why THEIR books don't come back 2 grades higher like they thought they would.

Sometimes...you just gotta sit back and LAUGH at it all.

What I ALSO don't understand is the literally hundreds and hundreds of positive feedbacks these sellers get. Is it just this ONE TIME that they grossly overgraded? Do people just not CARE? When they get a book descibed as 'NM/M' and they PAY the going eBay rate for 'NM/M', and the book they get is a nice, solid Fine+....do they just really not care? I'm wondering if that's not the case. You would not BELIEVE the amount of sellers who get defensive and hostile when they're informed that the book they sent as 'NM/M' has a coupon cut out of the back cover, and say 'well, no one ELSE had a problem, what's yours???' Is it really JUST me?

So...I'm looking to establish a website dedicated to some of the more....spectacular...frauds committed on eBay, and I don't quite know how to do it. I'd like to dedicate a scan or three to each infraction, along with some space to describe the book, AND copy the eBay page as it exists (because they disappear after 3-4 months) so that everyone can refer to them forever.

Do I paginate an existing homepage (AOL) ? If so, how? Do I set up a new website and pay hosting fees? Is it something I can just refer to my webspace on?

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated! I will need to, of course, make it something totally seperate from eBay, or they'll whine and *SQUEE* about it, then shut it down. [/url]

[comicguy]

Zephyr you are correct. There a good many people selling comics on ebay that overgrade/ overstate condition. I have received "NM" books that were at best F. and it p..... me off to know end, especially when I plunk down decent amount of coin for the book

[dave]

i agree with you whole-heartedly, however in this guys defense. i think that it is possible that he didn't know how much was missing from the book. although it seems to me that you (one) would notice something like that. i wouldn't know how many pages were in there. on the other hand, he did say it was complete, so although i do think that it's possible he's legit-he probably hoped you the buyer would not know.

when i sell stuff, i never even mention condition. it's amamzing. i can't believe people bid on my auctions. ii've sold 3 valiants in the past month or so for $30 a piece, and i NEVER even mentioned the condition. i think that it's pretty foolish to not even ask the seller before you bid an auction up that high....btw, the books were not in horrible condition, probably NM, but i don't grade books!!! really.

[Peter Parker]

Well, the FACT of this matter is...MOST collectors cannot GRADE! Many of these sellers on Ebay RELY on that FACT, knowing that if they sell 10 books advertised in NM grade, that are actually VF grade, 7 of those books will still sell without a complaint.

Grading IS and always WILL be, subjective at best. Todays standards are FAR more stringent than years past, sometimes to a fault and that leads to another defense many sellers can use when you personally don't feel their standard is not up to yours.

The answer...CGC graded books folks, there IS no substitute...everything else, is like driving a car off a cliff and hoping the airbags will save you

Sir B

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

The answer...CGC graded books folks, there IS no substitute...everything else, is like driving a car off a cliff and hoping the airbags will save you

Sir B

Well...aside from CGC being the ONLY way (it is, for now, but hopefully won't always be)....I actually agree with ol' Petey on everything else. He's right, 7 times out of 10, there will be no complaint...

So...any computer gee....er, wizards out there have any ideas for me?

[wrunow]

PP is right about CGC, especially when buying silver or golden age books, although I have found sellers on ebay and a couple of other auction sites that are reputable and have bought from again and again. Personally, I have complained several times about books I have bought over the years, usually with no response. I chalk it up to being dumb and bidding on something I shouldn'd have in the first place. If a seller doesnt' give you feedback as soon as you pay and then you leave him bad feedback he can reciprocate and ruin your good feedback even though you've done nothing wrong.

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

<smirk>..someone voted Too Picky to be contrary.

[dave]

you shoulda given more options....i was looking for "boy he's picky-but he's right!

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

Well...to be fair, I DID only give the one example...so far...and I don't think it's fair to say, in that example, that I was being too picky...I mean, after all, 14 pages are missing. That's a tad more than, say, a disagreement about the length of a spine stress mark....

Which I *have* done, by the way.

[dave]

you call THAT 3 mm??? that is CLEARLY a 4 mm crease!
you cad!

[ckb]

Zeph,

My first question about this would be did the seller make it right? He should pay shipping both ways on the lot - you should be out nothing.

I also want to take this opportunity to point out that ebay sucks (have I ever said that before?), and add the following as a reason why:

Feedback has become more and more useless. There's a really important piece missing - how many times has this seller sold an item, and the buyer did not bother to leave feedback? Think about that for a bit, and you'll see how important it is. Consider ebay's 30 day auction memory as you contemplate.

I like the website idea. It could be expanded into a "get the real scoop on this seller" type of deal. A BBB for ebay.

I really like the "bomb in the seller's car" idea. I hope someone in Arizona screws me so I can hire knight to take care of it for me.

[x-omatic]

Zeph,
Consider ebay's 30 day auction memory as you contemplate.

Just FYI. If you click on the feedback link you can see any auction that you have not yet left feedback for a period of 90 days.

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

eBay DOES suck. They have insulated themselves from everyone, pleading 'WE'RE JUST A VENUE!!!!' for YEARS, and they don't play by the same rules they expect everyone else to play by. If you have any problem at all, forget it. eBay will do next to nothing to help you.

In 5.5 years on eBay, full time, I've amassed a file of eBay nonsense 2 inches thick...from persistent 'canned' responses, to making a buyer/seller work to fix a problem someone ELSE caused, to their utterly absurd feedback policies.

Just the other day, I got a NPB warning on my buying account, after having paid for the item on Feb 3. Feb 21 rolls around, still no comics, so I write the seller. Seller is a juvenile putz who says 'you didn't give me all the information to ship by filling out the checkout system'..even though I'd paid through Paypal, which automatically GIVES you the info. Ok, so my fault, but by this time the seller knows EXACTLY who I am, my address, when I paid, HOW I paid, etc. Seller refuses to ship. I filed a buyer complaint, the seller refunded my money...then files a NPB alert. I IMMEDIATELY (which is, of course, a total waste of my time) contact eBay through their webform stating this was a false NPB, the seller was filing it to harass me...and eBay, naturally, sends a canned 'response' stating I'm responsible for paying for the auctions I win.

10 days pass....I got the NPB warning on my account yesterday morning..and had to waste MORE time trying to convince eBay to actually READ their e-mails...and did anything happen to the seller?

Nope.

I've got dozens of stories like this. I came onto eBay in full faith, inetnt on playing by their rules....but THEY don't even play by their rules.

Another example. My first WEEK on eBay, and I bid on some killer golden age stuff...this is back in November of 1998...I'd sold a dead NM copy (kick myself to this DAY) for $15 when it Guided at THAT time for $60..and yes, it would have gotten a 9.2 at the minimum. Anyhoo, not the story...so I was bidding on these cool golden age books...but they had a reserve. No biggie, right? So the seller SPAMS everyone who's bid on his items with this nonsense about how (and this is Pre-CGC, remember) his books should sell for 2X to 10X GUIDE for LOW GRADE 'common' golden age....pre-CGC, mind....and that we were basically all cheap *SQUEE* for having the nerve to bid on his books and NOT pay his crazy prices.

I kid you not, this guy spammed EVERYONE with this entire e-mail, several paragraphs long, about why we were all fools to pass on his books. So...you know, me being not shy about sharing my opinions, I told the guy to cut it out and that his books were worth what the market would bear, nothing more, nothing less.

So...within a week of me joining eBay, this guy gave me a neg...this being long before feedback was transaction only related. Just gave me a neg, just for telling him to stop the spam e-mails telling us how stupid we all were for not paying his crazy prices for his books.

And....silly fool that I am, I didn't retaliate, because I actually BELIEVED eBay would do something about this injustice, and that I shouldn't stoop to his level.

I have dozens of these stories.

~ ahem ~

/rant

So, seriously, how do I set up a website like this best? Any suggestions?

And really...sorry about the rant, but dealing with eBay can sometimes leave the strongest man screaming with tears of frustration. I don't understand why (A) they've gotten so huge with such a flawed business model, and (B) why there has been NO serious competition to eBay.

[n6]

I dunno, Zeph, maybe ebay's just not for you. It's been good to me, but I'd split if I were upset as you. Just split.

[ZephyrWasHOT!!]

I told you, it's the only venue of its kind of any worth. There's nowhere to split TO. It's like doing business in the old Soviet Union: you only had ONE choice, and if you didn't like it....you starve to death.

I'm one of those crazy idealists that believes that if enough people have enough bad experiences or hear of enough bad experiences they will, by sheer force of numbers, force the evil corporation to change its wicked ways.

Hey...it happened with Paypal, and a federal judge got involved...those are the boys you don't mess with.

Please don't misunderstand, 99.99% of the time with my BUYERS it's been fantastic. Not a single negative for bad customer service/overgrading/dissatisfaction, repeat customers...it's been great. The only negatives were from people who simply never paid (again, an EBAY issue!) And even on the buying end, there ARE some really nice deals to be had.

No, MOST of the problem is people who overestimate what they have, whether on purpose or through ignorance, and the rest of the problem is eBay itself. I'm not going to leave behind the cheapest source in the world for back issue books just because the place to meet is run by thugs and boneheads. It's not the dealers who are honest who are the problem.

Ya know?