Another Case Why Ebay Needs To Bring Back Negative Feedback For Buyers...

I read through your terms, John77, and I agree with the other comments that most are completely unenforceable on ebay.

I'm pretty sure most people don't read all of that anyway. I don't because I know what my options are on ebay and I know to be careful. I have a few suggestions:

Require immediate payment for BIN listings. As mentioned, buyers can add items to the cart and checkout/pay for any number of listings all at once.
Offer returns. I generally don't buy (especially coins) if returns are not offered. At least 14 days; 30 would be better and help your seller status. No returns for collectable coins makes it seem like you're hiding something.
If you expect a moderate possibility for returns, charge a Restocking fee. This is a legitimate ebay option. Remember, this is only for straight returns and not for "Item Not As Described" situations. For amiable returns (no case opened), the buyer pays return shipping and original shipping is not refunded (unless you just want to). Only the item purchase price is refunded.
Remove the "late fee", "lost item" and "legal action" clauses. ebay automatically opens an unpaid item case after four days. Send payment reminders.
As a collector, don't estimate grade in your title/description. Even with clarifying that it is your opinion, that may give someone ground to stand on if they decide to open a case against you.

I think you are probably hurting your sales with a lot of that and maybe those suggestions will help.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, spruett001.

I would offer the immediate payment option on BIN listings, but a lot of my buyers make best offers to me, and we go back and forth on the prices until we agree on a figure. On my listings, I do offer combined discounts if they pay full price, so that's another reason why I don't use the immediate payment option as I do quite often have to send invoices with the promised discounts.

As for the returns policy, my sales have actually gone up since I instituted it. After the one really bad experience, I knew I had to change something. I talked to a few of my friends in the legal profession - also, one of my cousins is a lawyer. I honestly care a lot more about my reputation than my sales. If I lose a few sales because a buyer is "scared off" by my terms and conditions, then great! That's what it is there for. I'd rather not deal with that kind of buyer in the first place. My terms and conditions are there to make sure people who try to abuse the system won't be tempted to. The late fees and legal action clauses give me some protection against these kinds of buyers.

As for grading coins, I've been doing it for over 40 years. While grading is always somewhat subjective, they see the coin and either they agree or disagree with the grade, just like you or I do when we go to the LCS or Coin Show... and decide whether or not to purchase. In all of my time on ebay, I've had exactly two buyers dispute a grade in 800 or so transactions. In the one case, it was the lying buyer mentioned in my response to basebal21's comment above. It was a roll of 1971 Jefferson nickels. He called the coins "culls" when they all graded VG-AU as the description and pictures indicated. None of the coins had any problems. In the other case, it was a toned coin - the only instance I've sold a toned coin on ebay. I don't think I'll be selling another toned coin on there, because, quite honestly, they are not my field of expertise. Fortunately, he only dinged me with a neutral. If you check my feedback, you'll see that everyone else that has bought from me has been very happy with my coins and fast shipping.

Also, I've got a good little group of about ten people who buy from me almost every month - a good little clientele base. I'm enjoying it, and it works for me. It isn't broke, so I'm not going to "fix" it.

Good advice. My only experience with ebay is with BIN. I have used the "Add to cart" button instead of "Buy It Now" to buy multiple items from one seller.

Well, going back to negative feedback, ebay rating system is totally useless without it for both sellers and buyers.

It's the big corporate's scheme to give buyers false sense of security to generate more sales.

Totally agree. I honestly don't care about my feedback score as long as there are no negative comments left for me.

I've had just the opposite experience with their operators. Most of them just read off a script as do their "supervisors" in the Philippines. The only times I've had any successful interactions is when I've reached reps in their US centers. 98% of the time, you get routed to the Philippines.

Sellers aren't stupid. We check buyer feedback, even if it is classed as positive with green pixels, and if it says non-payer or slow payer or makes a lot of returns, we can cancel the sale and block him. Just leave positive feedback and say what you need to say in the comments. They won't be able to do anything about it and everyone will know what happened.

BTW, my terms are 14 day and virtually no one returns anything except under conditions where a no return policy wouldn't have helped me anyway. I remember when ebay forced Top Sellers to go to 30 day return and everyone was saying they would take coins to coin shows and try to sell them and return the rest. It never happened and nobody talks about it anymore.