This, is Useful Components. I am an electronics engineer who likes to locate difficult to find parts for your weird electronics project or repair job. I also like accurate item descriptions, good photographs, and on-time dispatch. I believe that this is reflected in my feedback ratings.
Useful Components Main Contents PageUseful Components "The Trouble
With (i)bay" Page
Updated 12 Decemeber 2019 - Please scroll down for the
latest ebay Fun:)
GeneralEbay News
Multi-Buy Offers
I am currently trying out the much-vaunted ebay system of
offering some discounts on multiple purchases, which has been
implementedrecentlyon
the UK site despite being available elsewhere for years.
This system has now been extended by the ebay programming
monkeys(*1) to work on variation listings as well. Well
done Monkeys! Unfortunately youmustuse
shopping cart to get the discount advertised on the
listing. Entering the desired quantity of items and
using the 'Buy it now' will not attract the advertised
discount. I imagine that this is a general problem and
I'll be checking this out to make sure. This makes me
and other sellers look like retail fraudsters, and sowhile
the recording cassette spools turn at my end(*2),the
phone line to ebay customer support will be burning red hot
tomorrow, to see what they have to say about it. The
same old toss of denial of problem and promising to go away
and look at it will be doled out. I will probably have
to deactivate those multi-buy discounts until someone in ebay
grows a brain cell, because it really is retail
misrepresentation of pricing, that being illegal. A
cynical person might think that this makes ebay more money in
the very short term at the medium and long term expense of
themselves, their sellers, and retail customers using the
service. Fancy! Is this an indication of the
beginning of the end?
Meanwhile, please use shopping cart if buying more than one of
the same thing.
International Postage Rates
Prior to a few months ago, using international postage rate
tables as a seller would result in misleading prices being
displayed in search results on overseas sites. I first
reported this as an ebay site problem about five years
ago. Yes, Really! After much telephoning over
months I was finally told it would take two years to
fix. It took five. The incompetence of ebay boggles the
mind. This was fixed recently however, and this finally
allows me to send packets to Italy and some other countries
with lossy postal services. If the economy international
post price comes up as £12.95 in the postage rates tab, you're
in a country with a lossy postal service and unfortunately,
it's the only option available. A tracked, signed, or
tracked and signed service will be used. It's expensive
for small single items, but don't forget it's a flat rate for
any quantity of anything from the shop provided that you pay
for everything together using shopping cart.
"Economy International Post," that being standard airmail via
DPD-LaPoste to most other EU countries, Australia, the USA,
New Zealand and many others remains the stated amount for any
amount of anything, and is about 98% reliable. You'll
always get a refund if it doesn't arrive in 31 days but it's
usually there within 14 working days.
Listing Title Auto-Translation
I've noticed recently that some 'people' in ebay upper and
middle management have, in their infinite wisdom, decided to
auto-translate most listing titles shown in search results on
various non-English speaking sites, certainly France and
Germany. I can only apologise and assure valued overseas
customers that responsible ebay sellers around the world are
complaining bitterly about this stupid and useless new
system. I know that I certainly am, and I've recorded
all the telephone calls for later publication. It works
particularly badly for many technical items and is likely to
be responsible for a 50% drop in my overseas sales. I
swear, that if you have more than two brain cells and work in
the ebay global management team, you'll shortly be sacked for
being over-qualified. Meanwhile, please click through
the badly mis-translated titles in the search results, where
you will probably find what you were actually looking for in
the first instance. Anyone can Google translate what you
find there, but doing it automatically for listing titles via
some translation company that you bought for a small fortune
is for the management idiots who made a big mistake and are
trying to cover it up.
As a last resort, you can always type ebay.co.uk into your
browser and see the search results listed properly.
After careful statistical analysis of two and a half years of
sales data across two ebay shops in my name, I'm fully aware
of the system that frequently hides or downgrades listings, or
causes unaccountable payment failures followed by a message to
the customer saying that, "This item is no longer available,"
despite my being fully VAT registered, having approached the
UK threshold some months ago. This is to protect ebay
from being held responsible for the unpaid VAT of unregistered
sellers trading above £85K per annum in the UK, which they are
according to UK law. The fact that this illegal cap
stays in place is no-doubt due to its clandestine nature, and
ebay incompetence in general. If you have tried to pay
for an item or suddenly can't find it any more, be assured
that it is still there and is available for sale. This
applies particularly to buyers from overseas who might find
that the item is available only if they type ebay.co.uk into
their browser.
The telephone battle on this and other issues will
continue. If you have a lot of time to waste and
want proof, you will have to follow a link to my secure
https website. It's worth it, though, because
many other ebay lies crop up in the meantime, and you get to
hear my actual telephone calls to ebay seller so-called
"support." Warning though: It's very
tedious! But occasionally amusing :)
Regular customers might be noticing that many of my most
popular listings are disappearing from time-to-time.
This has been implemented deliberately by myself, by setting
the amount available to zero on 330 out of 950 listings.
Sorry, the only way to get even more proof of the eBay
capping and limiting of my sales is to deliberately shut them
down myself and to see how the throttling algorithm system
reacts. What a sorry situation.
) 
