The whole thing is very misleading. I saw the quote sexobon had pointed out and it was clear to me that the seller had copied and pasted the entire description from elsewhere. There are several other other sellers doing the same thing. I saw the NOT in the title, but assumed that was some indication that the poles were not included.

The item was drop shipped to me. It came directly from Amazon. If you go to Amazon and look up this tent, the whole tent is $100, the inner tent only is $40, and the rain fly only is $70. So this guy made $10 by drop shipping the tent to me for $50. And if I want to make this a whole tent, I can get the fly only from Amazon and thus wind up paying $120 for a $100 tent.

It's not so much the money that bugs me. I think this seller was extremely deceptive. You shouldn't have to read a listing like you a making a deal with Satan, looking for how he is screwing you. I think he deserves my negative feedback for that alone.

On the plus side of all this, I get to try out the tent in my living room now and see if it will work for me, and it only weighs a pound, so return shipping won't be that bad if I decide to let bygones be bygones and pay to ship it back for a refund.

Meanwhile, the seller hasn't responded to me in about 18 hours.

I appreciate everyone's input. I want to be reasonable in my response to this.

I've determined for myself that if a seller's rating is below 99.8%, that's precisely what I have to do. Additionally, I:

Determine the seller location versus the item location.

Compare the number of sales to the number of feedbacks.*

Look for feedback on recent purchases of the item I'm interested in.

Read the past 12 months of neutral and negative feedback looking in particular for cases in which buyers had to go to eBay for resolution.

EBay wants you to give the seller several business days to respond.

Keep in mind that once the seller cancels a transaction, gives a refund; or, eBay has arbitrated a case, the case is closed and you can no longer leave feedback. *That can skew the seller rating in the seller's favor.

TIP: Since sellers are allowed to change their item descriptions during the course of a listing, it behooves one to take a screenshot of the listing just before making a purchase. It serves as both a memory aid and evidence if a transaction is brought to eBay for arbitration.

FYI: When I find something of interest, that's in new condition, on eBay, I routinely look for it on Amazon and then do a general internet search to see if a listing pops up on the first results page at somewhere like wallmart.com. It's easy to get lulled into the idea that eBay will have the best deal. I've found that to be true only half the time.

If this was the whole tent as advertised, then it would have been the best deal.

Your figures say it would've been half of what others are selling it for and you know that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

They're out there waiting for you, thousands of them.

Yeah. Can't argue with you there. But sellers like that, if it was intentional or just ignorance of what he's selling, should be held accountable for their actions.

They can be held accountable; but, you need a strong case to do it. EBay makes their money off sellers, not buyers; so, its definitely caveat emptor. If you have a strong case, eBay will act; though, mostly to protect its own image.

If you leave negative feedback, the seller will be able to leave a response to it. You have to be prepared to be called a dunce for not reading the fine print; or worse, a shyster for trying to get something for nothing (e.g. rain fly with tent that others aren't selling together anywhere near that price point) and trying to take advantage of some poor foreigner just trying to eke out a meager living by providing a shopping convenience to rich Americans.

If you in any way, shape or form can be perceived as having contributed to a misunderstanding (e.g. assumptions on your part - you know what to assume means), leaving neutral feedback and chalking it up to experience may be a better option. The seller can petition eBay to have egregious feedback removed. It's less likely eBay will do that with neutral feedback.

A related situation exists with sellers listing items as NEW in the title; but, USED in the description. They do it as an attention grabber to get people to look at their listing. EBay turns a blind eye to it. There's no quick way to report that kind of abuse (like one would report a post in the Cellar). A prospective buyer has to jump through hoops to report that even though it's a common ploy. In an eBay survey for which I was to rate their overall service on a scale of 1-10, I gave eBay a 5 and commented that it would be the best they'd get until they implemented a one click option to report that seller behavior.

Ebay is like shopping in a second world bazaar. If you haven't done that, you're at a disadvantage.

I am pretty sure I want to return this thing after all. Hopefully it works out.

I set it up in my living room using spring clamps to stretch the floor out and clamp against furniture and stuff.


I knew it was small. That's the whole point. Small and lightweight. But it's probably too small for my 6' 2" height.

If I lie on my stomach, my feet stretch out and my toes tuck down into the corner by the floor.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...0648f5a5dc.jpg

But if I lie on my back, they push against the screen. In a sleeping bag, they would take up even more space.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...d438eee887.jpg

And on my back, my face is jammed into the screening.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...9c6b40faab.jpg

I can live with this, except if I ever do get a rain fly, the gap between the fly and tent will probably be small enough that I would be pressing against the fly too, and then condensation would get all over my face and feet.

So hopefully I can return it. If not, I am out $50. *shrug*

If not, Glattboy just inherited it!

He can save it for when he's in his 80s and has shrunk a little bit.

Get another tent for people and put beer gear under this one

It won't fly.

That's normally a great idea. My parents have an old backpacking tent with a broken zipper and the last time I went car camping with them we brought it along with us for gear. Perfect location to stash your folding chairs etc for the night so they don't get covered with dew.

Update:

The seller got back to me over the weekend. We exchanged a few communications, and he requested photos of the item that arrived. I sent them. He agreed to refund my money and sent me a prepaid label to return the item (to Amazon.)

He promises to refund me in full once it arrives. He cautioned that it may take 7 days and to please contact him first before leaving negative feedback.

I dropped the box off in my company's mail room this morning for UPS to pick up later today.
:fingerx:

He's taking advantage of Amazon's liberal return policy to chuck and jive.


I receive two books I didn't order from Amazon. I thought it was a screwup but an outside chance they were a gift. Contacted Amazon, but with no packing slip couldn't find out why I got them. No, don't return them, "consider it a gesture of good will from Amazon". I'm sure restocking would cost more than the books.

:fingerx: :fingerx: :fingerx:

I just got a full refund! The money in in my PayPal account.

I was still able to leave feedback, and based on the great communication with him and his willingness to resolve the issue, I gave him positive feedback.

So how is this worth his while to drop ship from Amazon?

I paid $49.78 to this seller.
Ebay takes 10%, I believe. So $4.98.
The seller is down to $44.80
Paypal takes 2.9% plus 30 cents for the transaction ($1.74)
The seller is down to $43.06
He bought from Amazon for $39.90.
Free shipping if he had PRIME.

He clears $3.16 on the transaction.

$3.16 to post the item and then go to Amazon and enter my information to have it sent to me. He's currently got something like 50,000 items for sale. Are they computer generated? Did he write a script? Does he do anything other than deal with issues like mine?

If he just wrote a program that does all the work, then I can see it being worthwhile to deal with a handful of issues each day and just collect micropayments all day long on sales that the computer generates for him.

Last time I tried to use EBay, they were charging little nickel and dime charges for all sorts of crap to set up each listing. I don't know if they're still doing that, or if the stuff they charged for was actually useful.

There's a 0.30 "insertion listing fee" when you've listened over 50 items, which is retracted if the item sells. This prevents people from just wildly listing every goddamn thing in the universe.

There are programs for eBayer types that do that.

I want to know if I am missing out on an easy get rich with minimal effort scheme.

He spent maybe 10 minutes dealing with me, and if he has,let's say, 5 transactions a day go sour, that's still less than an hour a day that he's working. If the rest of it is computer generated then that's easy street for him.

UT's 30 cents a listing comment means that he's going to have to identify items that he expects to sell. I bit on this tent because his listing was deceptive. I knew the correct pricing, but maybe a lot of people out there don't know the correct pricing?

Maybe the better way to get rich is to drop ship from China through AliExpress. and Epacket delivery. Their low prices give a greater profit margin, but the delivery time is much slower.

It's been years since I've eBayed. Sounds like they've settled down. When I tried, there was a whole menu of fees. I don't remember what they were, but some of them seemed like pretty essential items for a listing, like pictures. I eventually gave up, and sold what I was selling on Amazon, where you could input the ISBN or UPC and get a lovely listing page automatically generated if it was something they sold already.

Anybody had luck taking pictures of stuff and posting on FB Marketplace?

I've got space to store a bunch of stuff.
No listings, no bureaucratic hassle, just show up and bring the cash.

Not aware of FB marketplace. Is it public or just friends? Local ones at that.

You know that money grubbing attitude got you in this mess in the first place.:p:

There are a lot of people who will take a chance on an item coming from Amazon rather than from an individual they don't know, located someplace but they're not sure where, stemming from the feeling Amazon will somehow intercede if things go south.

That's good if the item is sold and shipped by Amazon; or, at least shipped by Amazon. Otherwise, you can have the same situation with items sold and shipped by some individual via Amazon.

Buying something that's sold and shipped by Amazon is like buying from an eBay seller with 99.8% or better positive feedback. Less than these for either one and it's key is to do in-depth research on the seller. That way it's a calculated risk and you don't have to depend on lucking out as glatt did this time (glad he did).

I've ordered items via eBay shipped from Canada, Australia, and India without incident; but, I did my homework.

Isn't FB Marketplace just Craigslist with a different audience? For what it's worth, I still sell stuff on Craigslist all the time--not always because it's too big to ship, often it's little things that I just don't want to bother shipping.

Does Craigslist work? Are there enough local interested in your stuff?

So far I think I've sold everything I ever tried to sell. Sometimes it took a couple weeks to get a bite, and sometimes I had to re-list it at a lower price than I initially was hoping for, but I'd say I have something actively listed maybe 30% of the time. It's not a place to build a thriving business or anything, but it's great for things that don't donate easily like clothes and toys do.

Just two days ago I sold a giant metal wall clock that was 2.5 feet in diameter. We bought it online and discovered only after hanging it how insanely loud the ticking was. The metal made it resonate. Anyway, I decided after a couple months that I just couldn't take it, but it wasn't worth the effort to repack it, and I think I was probably past any return window anyway. So I posted it on Craigslist for 75% what we paid for it, and 9 days later someone texted me with an offer for half. I said sure. Met him in the parking lot of a grocery store I had to go to that day anyway, and now the thing's out of my house and I took less of a financial hit than I would have by just giving it away.

Having pushed that off my plate, I've now posted my daughter's shoulder rest for her violin that she recently outgrew, with pictures swiped from the manufacturer's website. It's only listed at $15, and I'll probably end up taking $5-$10 for it in the end, but the thirty seconds it took to post it are worth it just to see it go to someone who can use it, instead of in the trash.


Edit to add: I've also found my last two duck egg suppliers through Craigslist.

Is craigslist free for sellers?

On an even more extremely-local level, I gave away our backyard trampoline on the neighborhood site nextdoor.com. I didn't want to disassemble it, so I was hoping to get someone who could literally walk it down the street to their own backyard, and I had easily half a dozen requests for it within a couple hours of posting. If it's cheap enough, people will take anything off your hands.

Free for everyone. No money involved on the website at all. You have to watch a little more closely for scams, but they're pretty obvious--"diamond rings" listed for $100, just show up in this alley at night with the cash, or "I want to buy your thing, but I have to write a check..." As long as you deal in cash and meet in public it's fine.

Oh yeah--I also found a guy to do some in-person research for me a few months back. Posted an ad offering $50 to any student with access to the library I wanted, and the kid was in touch within 3 hours. He had to trust me to Paypal it, of course, but we chatted on the phone for a few minutes to explain what I wanted, and it was obvious we were both normal, non-scammy folks. Craigslist is awesome.

I've only ever used Craigslist to buy things. Been burned a couple times. Not robbed, just over promised and underdelivered.

Worth noting, two other exceptions to the purchases only history. . . My last two jobs were found by me on Craigslist. Including the current gig.

Craigslist *is* awesome.

Public, and it also aggregates results from all buy/sell/trade FB boards you're already on. Yes, I'd use it for local, like come pick up and bring cash --a public "garage sale" where I simply warehouse the goods.

It's guess its like Craigslist, but its available as a tab on the application I'm already staring at all day.

How does this scammer make money?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Big-Agnes-Co...sAAOSwtptZ0xOE

Seller is selling a $400 brand new tent for a buy-it-now price of $20. Seller joined Ebay a week ago and has 0 feedback. Seller is in China and says estimated shipping will have the tent arriving in December. Clearly a scam.

Ebay has a money back guarantee. If a buyer were to buy this non-existent tent, the buyer has to jump through some hoops when it doesn't arrive, but should get their money back.

So does the seller just close their account, take the $20 payment, and run from Ebay? I guess what I'm asking is if Ebay is being scammed by the seller or is the buyer is being scammed by the seller? I've seen a bunch of these new Chinese accounts selling super cheap high end stuff and have zero feedback, so its common.

Maybe the item is stolen? Or rather, when they get an order for one, they go steal one?

Why don't you contact Big Agnes and ask them about it? You can say that you wanted to know if their warranty will cover the item sold by this seller to get the conversation going. You can even send them a link to the listing. You might learn something. They might learn something too.

https://support.bigagnes.com/hc/en-us

Craigslist is definitely underestimated by a lot of folks. Not everything is gold, but even on Amazon you can get scammed.

totally agree with you