The Corner Penthouse

This is another in a series of articles about eBay, who covers up the deceitful business practices of its sellers, while turning its feedback system into an utter joke. I will do my best to inform the public about eBay's scummy practices and the bad sellers that operate on the platform, so other buyers can avoid them. This article will inform the public about eBay giving sellers the ability to disable messaging so that buyers can't contact them, using eBay seller pop.market as the example.

eBay seller Pop Market (ID "pop.market") is a seller that I have purchased from before, even back when the business was known as "BlowItOutaHere". I never really had any problems with this business, so on January 16th I placed an order for five brand new Blu-ray movies totaling $87.98. Due to a promotion that took $20.25 off the total, it was cheaper than buying the same items from Walmart's site, where it would have cost me over $100. Having had successful dealings with this seller under both of its names, I had no reason to check the seller feedback or have any doubt that there would be any problem.

The next day, I received the usual shipping confirmation e-mail with a USPS tracking number. That was January 17th, and after a few days, the USPS tracking system still showed the status as "Pre-Shipment", which would seemingly indicate that the package was not given to USPS. Wanted to find out what was going on, I tried to send Pop Market a message through the eBay messaging system. For the first time in the 20+ years that I have buying on eBay, it was shown the message, "We're sorry, but this seller has chosen not to receive messages."


Why is this something that eBay allows sellers to do? Why does eBay not want buyers to be able to contact the sellers that they bought items from? There is no justifiable reason for eBay to offer sellers the option to disable messaging. This makes eBay look sketchy as hell, not that my series of articles exposing eBay's scummy practices hasn't done that already :-)

Thankfully, it's not hard to figure out that Pop Market also operates a storefront at PopMarket.com, so on January 22nd, I used the Contact Form there to send my message about the status of my package. I received a reply from customerservice@popmarket.com on January 24th: "We apologize for the delay of your package. The USPS facility in Louisville, KY has informed us of substantial delays in processing caused by the holidays and adverse weather conditions. Multiple facilities are currently overwhelmed with packages, leading to a backlog. They have assured us that they are working diligently to process the pending shipments."

Now, this is when I noticed several negative feedback texts on Pop Market's eBay feedback page that referenced the fact that Pop Market disabled messaging, and that packages - going back to orders placed in December! - don't seem to have actually been shipped. These are not dated, other than a generic and useless "past month", because eBay makes it difficult to properly evaluate feedback on the site. You'll notice that feedback on the site is listed, by default, as "most relevant" (it never is relevant) instead of the previous "most recent". As I previously wrote, eBay has purposely turned the feedback system into a joke.


Anyway, I want to believe Pop Market's customer service rep that the fault lies with a USPS facility in Louisville, Kentucky, but if this issue has been going on since December 30th (probably earlier), then Pop Market was well aware of it when I placed my order on January 16th. So, why was the Pop Market staff still sending out packages via USPS, adding more to the supposed backlog, knowing that it would piss off their customers? They could have used UPS or FedEx. Also, I'm pretty sure that other companies I get packages from used this same USPS facility in Louisville, Kentucky, and their packages arrived quickly with tracking every step of the way.

On January 24th, with no indication that the package was actually shipped, I filed eBay Item Not Received reports for each of the five items. That gives Pop Market one additional week to get the package to me before eBay can step in (to give a refund) on January 30th. Of course, I want the items, not a refund. So, I hope it doesn't come to that.

I am happy to report that as I write this article in the evening of January 26th, the package finally showed up in the USPS system. The latest status update is from January 26th at 12:44pm: "Arrived at USPS Regional Facility - Indianapolis, IN Distribution Center". This is a great sign, and means that I will, likely, not have to get eBay involved. Reading Pop Market's more recent negative feedback tonight, I see several that indicate that Pop Market has been "drop shipping" items from Amazon and/or sending the wrong items to people. Hopefully, I won't have any of those issues and will get the package before the end of the week.

This still doesn't change the fact that eBay should NEVER give sellers the ability to disable messaging so that buyers can't contact them. All this does is protect the unscrupulous sellers that make money for eBay.

[UPDATE - 1/29/2025]
The package was finally delivered on January 29th; a week later than it should have. It came from BlowItOutaHere/eBay at 300 Omicron Court in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. This is the Alliance Entertainment warehouse that some of the other companies I deal with use. Anyway, I am happy to report that all five Blu-rays that I ordered were inside, all in great shape, none drop-shipped from Amazon or elsewhere.


While I am happy with the end result, and had no problem waiting a week to get my items, it should have gone out sooner. Maybe it wouldn't have left such a bad taste in my mouth if eBay didn't let Pop Market disable messaging so that I could have contacted them through the same marketplace that I bought the items from.