le i.

I give ebay a 4 stars because I am primarily a buyer and about 95% of my purchases turned out to be suitable. IF they are not, I can usually work it out with the seller without filing a complaint. There was only one abusive seller who wrote abusive emails.
As a seller, ebay only gets two stars. I have very limited experience selling on line but my experience selling on ebay is only 50% good. And most of what I sell on ebay are itms I purchased on ebay.
The first time, ebay removed a product from the listing after only one bid and the product reappeared one hour before bidding was over. Customer service could not find the listing and said that I must have removed it myself. Thankfully, the buyer understood.
A second time, ebay restricted my account so I could not access my account at all. When I reached customer service (2 days), I was told that there was no reason for it so they re-instituted it.
A third time, ebay removed one listing saying I violated MC999 policy after there were already bids on the item. However, I did not violate the policy. I was told that I would be provided information on how to provide proof by a lady named Gel but never got the info. I called 4 days later and finally received the info. It is terrible that a specialist can act first without giving the seller a chance to show that their suspicion was incorrect. What was worse was that there were at least 30 other similar items being sold on ebay and some of them were counterfeit.
Fourthly, if you are not a top rated seller, your listing appears at the very bottom of a long list. Sometimes, you cannot even find your listing at all. I have searched my listing using the lowest or highest price function. In both searches, my item appeared at the bottom of the list even though it was not the highest or the lowest priced. For some of what I offer, my items never appear on any searches. Therefore, I think ebay searches are somehow set up to favor their Top rate plus sellers, the ones who garner ebay the most money.
Lastly, a buyer filed a not as described complaint. I wss willing to give a full refund AFTER the buyer returned the product. Ebay provided a continue button for me to proceed with my response stating that the continue button signifies that I was willing to give a refund. However, ebay did not indicate that clicking the button meant instantaneous refund. So now I am out the money and restitution is dependent on the honesty of the buyer.
All of the above happened in my 4 month experience as a seller, I wrote the CEO, John Donahoe, who never responded. I guess the buck does not stop with ebay's CEO.
When I had problems with several online purchases at Home Depot and wrote the CEO, I got an email back within 12 hours. A specialist was assigned to help me and all my issues were resolved in one week. Home Depot's CEO does take full responsibility for that reason Home Depot will always get my business first as long as the value us there.

I have shopped on this site for over a year. In 2013, you could email customer service and get a fair resolution. Not the practice has changed. There is no email service. If the seller is fraudulent, you can only get your money back if the seller is willing. Most sellers are pretty reasonable. However, beware of products touting SOuth Seas pearls. I purchased a pair of earrings touted as such. They were fake. Ali Express wanted proof which was hard to provide because the proof is based on the gritty feel when the pearl is rubbed against another pearl or your teeth. Getting an expert to write a letter would have cost more than the item. I offered to mail back the item (at my own cost) to get a refund just so the seller could not get away with false advertisement. The seller refused (despite the ad of returns accepted) and ALiExpress sided with the seller. It seems that the current practice is to always side with the seller. The only time AliExpress will side with you is if you have not received the product.
Most sellers are pretty reasonable though. And I have gotten pretty good prices although Ali Epxress prices have increased substantially this year and you can now sometimes get better prices on ebay if you are willing to spend the time bidding and searching for good prices.
SO now, I tend to just buy from AliExpress suppliers who have a good track record with me. IF I have to try out a new merchant, I usually just make a minimum purchase and find out how things work out. I ahem not had much luck with clotting from Ali Express because of the sizes tend to be smaller than expected. I had good luck with hats and costume jewelry.

My rating for Amazon is actually 4.5 stars only because you are fined the shipping cost if Amazon cannot replace the item and you have to return it. Otherwise, Amazon has great service. WHen something did not work, I got a replacement within one week.
Recently, Amazon's prices have changed very fast. In two cases, the prices went up as I was still shopping so that my 15% savings for Subscribe and Save still ended up being a 5% savings despite the fact that I did subscribe 5 items. So be careful about the subscribe and save aspect because it felt a little it like bait and switch to me. For convenience however, it was still worth buying.

I love doing business with Home Depot because the buck does stop with the CEO as he proclaimed. I have been a customer at Home Depot for close to 20 years but only a fairly recent on line shopper. I had several problems with my online purchases in late 2012. I emailed the CEO, got a response within 12 hours, a phone call within 24 hours from an online sales manager, and all my issues were resolved in about a week. That is what I call customer service. I have never found customer service as good as this in any other on line shopping business. The very close seconds were Amazon and Walmart.
When I first started shopping at Home Depot, I was overwhelmed by the size. Over the years, their customer service improved and they carry a wider variety of products than could be stocked by the local hardware Stebbins ANdersen, which was known for their service. When STebbins-Andersen told me to of to Home Depot for something I could not find and assured me that Home Depot had customer service, I switched to Home Depot and found that for the most part, the customer service was indeed very good.

Excellent service. Very fast response. I bought a very competitively priced safe which stopped working in two days. Walmart got someone to pick up the item in less than a day before I even had a chance to package it. The delivery service came back the next day and I got my replacement within a 10 day period. And the replacement works.
If you research the item you want to buy and you can find it on Walmart, Walmart is the most competitive price wise, especially for heavy items. Price-wise, Amazon is second but Amazon offers the widest array of choices, Ebay is not at all competitive for large heavy weight items.