I’ve been actively buying and selling on ebay since the very, very beginning.

As a buyer, I hate to sound like an old man but honestly, you’ve no idea how good you have it now.

Ebay buyer protection is without a doubt the most trouble free and customer-centric protection available to customers on any platform that has ever existed.

As a seller, this can hurt me BADLY if a customer tells a lie or just gets unlucky with shipping but as a buyer you’ve literally got nothing to lose.

In the early days I was shipped fake items with almost zero recourse, had a multitude of things simply not show up and the journey to recover my funds was long, winding and often fruitless.

These days, it’s just insanely easy. Ebay will eat a loss just to make sure you have a good purchase experience, or at the very least don’t lose any money.

I ordered a 2nd hand phone last year that never arrived. It had been 3 months. Tracking went dead, item trail ended up in a country other than my own and the seller was dead silent.

I reported an issue with the purchase, sent the tracking logs to ebay and they looked at my attempts to contact the seller going unanswered. They refunded 100% of the purchase price including shipping immediately. A couple of months later, I’d since purchased the same phone from another seller and the original phone arrived in my mailbox!

I contacted ebay, they said oh well, hard luck on the seller - keep it. No questions, no quibbles. It was truly crazy to me, but they just didn’t care at that point.

Similarly I’ve had things just not show up, and been given the run-around by sellers. Again, buyer protection to the rescue. No questions asked, just a full refund.

I’m not sure if the fact that I have a 23 year old account with great ratings plays into my experience on the platform, but I haven’t had an unresolved issue on ebay in over 10 years.

As a seller, it stings sometimes when people make shit up and I end up losing out a bit, but even then I never lose the full profit - ebay eats the loss.

I’m the first to hate a big corpo, but I’ll be damned if I can find a genuine reason to hate ebay.

ebay has buyer protection

I’m so sick of the scammer buyers. Ebay won’t do anything about them. Always check Google maps for the address, multiple times the Google maps reviews have saved me from scammers.

I just bought a couple of high end watches (come check out the watches community!) From eBay. One of them MSRPs for $2570 USD. I made a bid in the last minute of the auction and got it for $1800 delivered. Seller claims to have worn it about 10 times, and based on the condition I believe him. Since that purchase I’ve seen “buy it now” and “make an offer” listings of the same watch that are above $3000 due to its rarity.

eBay also offers professional authenticity verification of such items for $80, which is pretty inconsequential if you’re in the market for a 4-5 figure watch.

Honestly, if you’re managing to get scammed on eBay, I’m curious what kind of listings You’re bidding on, and if you’re unable or unwilling to follow their avenues for buyer protection. I’ve never once had an issue.