I must agree with the previous poster – this article is complete nonsense. Let’s just take one example:
"We cannot [sic] be held responsible for orders lost in the mail."
Oh yes you can! As the seller, you promise to ship an item to the buyer. If it gets lost in the mail, then the buyer has fulfilled her part of the bargain, and you have not.
Firstly, what’s with the “[sic]”? “Cannot” is a perfectly correct word in the English language – the expression does NOT have to be separated into “can not”. In fact, my spell checker wants to correct “can not” into “cannot”.
More importantly though, yes, the writer is correct in saying that the seller promises to ship the article, but NOT that the seller promises to deliver it. The seller has indeed fulfilled his/her part of the contract by shipping the article in an appropriate manner. The rest is up to the delivery agent (post office or courier) who enters into a separate contract to deliver the goods for which the company was paid to do so.
eBay (and apparently now Auctiva) seem to make sellers responsible for everything, and buyers responsible for nothing. These days,
* even if a buyer can’t read the simplest of descriptions, it becomes the seller’s fault (we sold a small 1/87 scale model of a shipping container, in an appropriate scale model railway category, stating both scale anf gauge several times, even explaining the size by using an example, showing pictures of it, listing its exact dimensions in cm, and got negative feedback because the buyer expected to receive the real thing - an actual 6m long shipping container for a total price, including shipping, of less than $20).
* If the seller does everything right but the shipping company fails to deliver, it is the seller’s fault (even if the seller has absolutely no control over the delivery process).
* When things get delayed because some country's Customs Department wants to make a random inspection and takes its time about it, it becomes the seller's fault (we were given negative feedback by a Canadian buyer because the customs department randomly checked the article, thus delaying delivery; online tracking showed that we had shipped the article within an hour of receiving payment, that the article arrived in Canada in less than 3 days, and that it was currently being held by Customs for inspection, yet the buyer claimed that we had failed to ship the article in a safe manner; according to eBay, we now must state explicitly that "we cannot be held responsible for the actions of any government agency", as if that weren't patently obvious to begin with).
* Even if the shipping company also does everything right but returns the article because the buyer was never at home for delivery and failed to make alternative arrangements (or pick up the package), it becomes the seller’s fault (with the buyer demanding that the seller pay for a second international shipping of the same article).
This nonsense really has to stop if eBay wants to survive. You can pander to buyers only so much – in the end, if eBay scares away the sellers, there won’t be any buyers left either.