I've heard so many horror stories over the years so I've done my best to avoid eBay as a seller. Unfortunately, I have some high value non pony items (special edition books) that aren't selling on FB and I really need the money for baby stuff before my daughter is born.
Is it safe to use eBay or is the possibility for scams/forced returns/etc just too high? Some of these books are $100-300+ a piece and I'm terrified of a scam or a forced return that has the book coming back in bad condition. Even unintentionally, its so easy for books to get damaged in the mail.
i sold on ebay last year and it was mostly fine. what i don't like is that the process is a lot more automated. there is less opportunity to resolve issues with the customers. i would recommend sticking to domestic shipping. the international shipping is hard to keep track of. i didn't have anyone scam me though. sold about 100 items i think. some of them were high dollar nirvanas.
I only do international shipping in very rare circumstances and not at all right now with the lingering issues to the supply chains. Its just not worth the stress.
I found that as long as I sold ponies it was fine, but when I started selling off second hand designer clothes that I'd collected over the years, I quickly met with false negatives and stress, I think it was other sellers competing with me. So then I got some negs that I worried might affect my other sales, so I stopped selling for the past three years. So maybe it depends on the sector. I would have to read into the exact rules at the present time because they change all the time. You can get through to a person on Ebay but you have to use the chat in my experience. I've had good luck with it but as I say i don't have recent experience as a seller.
Oh yeah, I could definitely see competition getting ridiculous like that. The market for these types of books is generally pretty chill so I'm not too worried about competition/retaliation, at least not for the editions I have. But its definitely possible. Last I heard eBay didn't care at all about their sellers or this kind of behavior.