Some good deals as a Buyer but not for Sellers anymore
I’m one of their regular sellers and I had good experiences with their marketing, effort to advertise and price quoted were reasonable for the past years. Only recently, they offer 2 different pricing tiers on their website for buyers, of which they can have extra savings if opt to pay by Paynow, a direct interbank transfer without incurring other charges. Good for buyers who want additional discounts in a way but not for sellers. The agreed selling prices are listed as the Paynow price, and the prices are further jacked up for buyers who wants to pay through other payment methods apart from Paynow. Regardless it’s due to defraying away from the additional costs, such pricing scheme should be clearly stated upfront and made known that the prices are going to be jacked up to offer such pricing scheme to buyers. Not when I gave the approval and found out the hike in pricing when items r listed online which were not even quoted to me in the first place. I took back one of my items due to this and also realised the pricing they quoted me for a recent new item is quite low. I could have sold better elsewhere. Eventually, I was asked to pay them back the commission they will likely earn for retrieving the item before the consignment period and was told of a different cost - based on the jacked-up pricing they listed online which is not the agreed quoted commission given to them. I had to question further and showed them what’s the initial quote they gave me then they rectified it accordingly. It’s still very unpleasant even though they said it’s due to a glitch and need to get their engineers to check on the backend. I seriously don’t think this is makes much sense, as all quotes and approvals are sent through email communications with actual people communicating with me. As a reselling platform, they should have proper records on hand. It puzzled me further when such glitches of records required engineers to intervene to resolve the mistake they made in terms of the commission payback, which further made me wonder further about the level of transparency they have towards their sellers. Though I do wish they could just waive that amount and return the item back as I do feel cheated somehow, I still honour the consignment contract that I've gotten into and decided to just pay it and get it done with them for good. Apart from the above, the response time is also getting longer than usual compared to my past experiences with them as a buyer and seller. The standard of services has dropped by a lot. Given that they ran a Boxing Day promotion, it's within a reasonable expectation that there'll likely be a surge in orders, and it seems to me they're struggling to cope and likely not equipped with adequate manpower to manage the many customers' orders and other demands. Change of management? Or change of work ethics? Whatever it is, there's a significant mismatch of expectations as a customer towards them as a whole.