Another thief market with a global presence. Review on Ebay

I have been using ebay for quite some years. The main reason behind it is to procure rare or not so easily available products that are not available in india. Sometimes you get striking deals through their facility called Global Easy Buy.

The process looks straightforward and fair at first sight. You select an item by "merely" looking at the pics and description on ebay site and(of course believing it) you make the payment praying that the seller is a honest guy (being anonymous Indian sellers almost always take advantage of this to sell garbage/used products so beware).

Now once you make the payment, the money goes to ebay's escrow account where ebay acts as a mediator and releases the payment once you confirm receipt of the item. Once the seller ships the product he enters the AWB courier details and he will normally have a time period of say 1 week after which the money we gave will automatically go to the seller unless we raise a dispute with ebay for some issue with the sale. You also have an option to release the payment earlier by confirming receipt if you want to. The process is the same for ebay Global Easy buy which is the facility to buy items from US.

A courier company called iccworld gets the product for you from US sellers, clears the customs and other formalities and drops it to your doorstep without you going to US or suffering all the formalities required. The website is very fast and search is good.

Now this might give you the impression that nothing can go wrong. But the catch is ebay is not all honest towards the buyer. The problem starts when you buy the product and something is wrong with it. I have seen from my personal experience many times that ebay always blindly favors the seller even if you have a fair reason irrespective of the value of the product you paid for. I had an instance once where the product NEVER reached me through Global Easy buy (it was more than 2 months). Ebay kept on postponing the refund even after the cutoff dates were over. The reason I was given was that they were discussing with the buyer (for months??) and finally after I shouted and adamantly stayed on their helpline for hours & I was given a refund a next day?? I found this very manipulative.(Cry baby gets the milk???)

I also had a couple of instances where Indian sellers sold me old/seemingly used products but since the value was very small I did not waste my time spending hours on their horrible customer care. And not to mention the manipulative gimmicks used by some sellers where the price of the item looks cheap but the shipping cost will be exponential so essentially you will end up paying more than the local value of the product(ebay says they keep a check on this but you will find such listings even now).

An example of a case is where the item value was around Rs.200 and shipping was around hundred and the format of its display does not highlight it until you check out. It was a simple cable and the couriers they use was professional or dtdc which would not cost so much for such a small package. So beware of these type of tricks. In some cases in the listing it shows free shipping but when you click the item it shows a shipping cost..Some bug in ebay system or is it some form of cheating to get attention for the product (since the issue is  there for so long)???

I have personally found very few buyers who would happily cancel/return an order even if its their fault and ebay will drag matters forever that you will finally give up.

Global Easy buy is absolutely cheating in a sense because you pay double the actual cost of the item and the guarantee says you are not happy with the product you can get a refund or return provided you intimate them in 3 days after you receive it. See the statement below that I copied from https://pages.ebay.in/aboutebay/eBay_Guarantee.html

Our commitment:

If not satisfied with your purchase on eBay, we will replace or refund your entire amount (including shipping) within 20 days' I bought a driving goggles believing it and after using it I found it has a critical safety issue wherein it was not fit for driving in any condition. I spend hours on the phone and I was rudely denied support and the case was closed giving the reason that guarantee has no value and its the customer's responsibility in carefully choosing between the fake and genuine products they have(In actual my money was stolen by ebay ).I was insulted by some crook with rude language and denying me any help as a buyer. I spoke to nearly 3 people in ebay and all they were concerned was to save the sale not even concerned of selling such dangerous products in their website. All they wanted was to retain the looted sale .

This terrible response from the cheaters in ebay has made me drop buying anything for GEB and I warn everyone because if something goes wrong ebay will not help you. My suggestion is to try buying with aramex.com wherein they will ship you the product at much lesser cost and besides you can buy from both UK & US unlike GEB where you can buy only from US at their extortion rates and will not have any guarantee for the product even though they claim to have it openly cheating people in their website. And one more thing is that iccworld who operates GEB for ebay never responds to any inquiries except asking you to give them 5 stars in survey. So beware of these global crooks if you don't want to be cheated. You can buy from a local smuggler than have these people cheat you, at least you know you are taking the risk !

Also be careful of the pricing. The pricing is too high and since the sellers are almost anonymous and immune to your response since they are located far away the after sales experience in case there is a problem is totally pathetic.My recommendation is to use ebay as the last resort when losing that item is that critical and to NEVER use ebay for high value items because the sellers are always protected and buyers are definitely cheated on ebay and that too with the consent and knowledge of ebay executives in plain daylight.