ebay can REALLY get on your nerves in some situations

[humanshield]

So, I had a buyer contact me about an item I had for sale.  The price was fair and I wasn't making much.  Plus I had to warranty it for a year...so I need to make a little in case there's a warranty claim.  (eating return shipping costs etc)

Anyway the first contact with the nut he writes me and asks me if I'll take $5 less.   I'm thinking to myself..., "I'm not gonna make much of anything but ok...to be nice.....so I write him back and say ok.   Then he writes back and says he's having hard times but REALLY wants my item and the shipping is gonna "kill him" (I charged the actual shipping charges)....and asks for ANOTHER $5.00 to help with the shipping.  I was in good spirits and have no idea why...but like an idiot I agreed.    I wasn't desperate to sell the item.....just feeling generous I think.

Anywayyyyyyyyy....

Then he writes back after that and says he'll take it if I eat the shipping costs.   WTF?!?   Seriously?
Ok, I can't knock a person for trying....but I can see a problem developing here.....
At that point I was like....enough.    This fruitcake is a moron so I declined and then blocked him from buying my items.

A month later he contacts me again asking why I blocked him.   (he obviously tried to buy it)... I explained (politely) that my item was not high profit and to provide a one year full warranty, I had to make a little on the item.....and that there were other vendors that had similar items and to please check with them....thanked him and moved on.   He was still blocked.

Over the next few weeks the guy writes me several times asking why I blocked him.   I called ebay and explained the situation and asked if there was a way to stop him from contacting me.   I'm starting to think...what if this guy is setting me up for some kind of lawsuit or something??
After about 45 minutes of holding, transfers, questions and back and forth, ebay said to just ignore his messages.
(I thought to myself, if I blocked him and have never sold or bought anything from him, why do I have to keep getting his messages?)  Anyway...I ignored them.

A month later he buys the item using a different account but shipping to the same address.   So I knew it was him.

I called ebay and explained what happened.  In all, I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with ebay between all the prompts, holds and transfers.  The end result was that they would "take some type of action since he did in fact violate ebay policy" but ebay will not disclose to me what that action is....ok...I understand that.   So I ask them if they will take care of everything from that point since he violated the policies?......."no".   I had to now go and do a refund myself.  (more time)

Also I ask ebay if they will block him from leaving negative feedback since they were able to prove he violated their policies?.......nope.    He can leave negative feedback.   Nothing ebay can do.  But they say to "call back again" (oh God, please no) and I can "try" to have it removed.   I work hard to take care of reasonable customers and sometimes took a bath to please customers and had a 100% positive feedback rating.

Anyway....for the refund, the process involved me "asking" the buyer to accept my "request" for a cancellation of the sale.
Fortunately, it appears ebay did cancel the order on the back end.

However, sure enough the buyer then left me my first ever negative feedback out of nearly 1000 transactions.   Great!
He violates ebay policy, treats me like an idiot, harasses me after I politely asked him not too and then leaves me my first negative feedback.  Lovely.

So now I have to call ebay yet again....and spend another 45 minutes to an hour (or more) "trying", pleading, begging to have the negative feedback removed.    Sheesh!

in a lot of ways ebay is great.   bought and sold a TON of stuff there.   But my oh my...when it rains on the ebay parade....it POURS.

If you are an ebay seller you can relate  : - )

Hope you enjoyed my little ebay story.   Maybe it's cold or nasty out where you are tonight and this gave you a few minutes of entertainment. 

[tvnacman]

I no longer sell on ebay. Here is how my story goes, I sold a cdi a CD cdi. The buyer sends me a message through ebay asking to return because its defective. So I ask some tech questions, turns out he has an ac ignition system. I told him what he ordered was incorrect and he needed an ac unit and it burns out as soon as power gets applied. He was insistent that it was too short of to burn out. So I told him to ship it back at his expense and I would retest it if it was good I would refund him less out going shipping and a 30% restocking fee. He agreed!

Well ebay decided that I took a return so he was entitled to a full refund and the cost of return shipping. I told them to look at the messages that went back and forth. There answer was ebay policy take the return the buyer gets it all back. I took down all my listings. A sale somehow got through I canceled it.

What gets me is the guy never hinted about the correct item to replace the wrong one. I buy items because I want them. People have you ship stuff with intention to screw you.

John

[dan50]

Electronic items should be sold "no warranty", "no returns". When you buy an electrical item at an auto-parts store, they won't refund or exchange the item.

[humanshield]

Jan 7, 2017 8:04:02 GMT -5 tvnacman said:

I no longer sell on ebay. Here is how my story goes, I sold a cdi a CD cdi. The buyer sends me a message through ebay asking to return because its defective. So I ask some tech questions, turns out he has an ac ignition system. I told him what he ordered was incorrect and he needed an ac unit and it burns out as soon as power gets applied. He was insistent that it was too short of to burn out. So I told him to ship it back at his expense and I would retest it if it was good I would refund him less out going shipping and a 30% restocking fee. He agreed!

Well ebay decided that I took a return so he was entitled to a full refund and the cost of return shipping. I told them to look at the messages that went back and forth. There answer was ebay policy take the return the buyer gets it all back. I took down all my listings. A sale somehow got through I canceled it.

What gets me is the guy never hinted about the correct item to replace the wrong one. I buy items because I want them. People have you ship stuff with intention to screw you.

John

Years ago ebay decided to change away from the model that made it famous.   Now, sellers can no longer leave meaningful feedback for bad buyers.   In other words, the buyer is all ebay cares about even though the seller is where it gets it's money.
But it's the fault of sellers to a large extent.   MANY alternative to ebay great sites have been created like atomicmall, bluejay etc....but sellers refuse to use them.

[humanshield]

Jan 7, 2017 8:46:04 GMT -5 dan50 said:

Electronic items should be sold "no warranty", "no returns". When you buy an electrical item at an auto-parts store, they won't refund or exchange the item.

But all the buyer has to do is claim it was defective or "not as described" and ebay will gladly force you to take it back and pay the return shipping anyway.  If you refuse, they'll just take it out of your credit card on file.

[tvnacman]

Jan 7, 2017 9:16:45 GMT -5 humanshield said:

Jan 7, 2017 8:46:04 GMT -5 dan50 said:

Electronic items should be sold "no warranty", "no returns". When you buy an electrical item at an auto-parts store, they won't refund or exchange the item.

But all the buyer has to do is claim it was defective or "not as described" and ebay will gladly force you to take it back and pay the return shipping anyway.  If you refuse, they'll just take it out of your credit card on file.

and that is what happened.

[90GTVert]

I typed a long reply, but decided to delete it. This will get my feelings across better than the whole story :

I have been taken advantage of by buyers that I feel were using the system because eBay is buyer-biased these days. It can be incredibly frustrating, and a big part of me wishes I could go door to door like this... (Explicit language)



It may be eBay's policies that ultimately do us in, but reasonable and honest buyers wouldn't cause so many problems.

[pinkscoot]

I have been saying that it's nice that we have civility in our society but the problem is that we no longer fear bodily harm when we do something that pisses people off. I'm just saying that if schools still had corporal punishment kids would be much better behaved. I had a 7th grade math teacher that was 5'11" and she grew up in the coal mining area of Pennsylvania, you did not mess with her. I think civility is wonderful but with the anonymity of the internet sometimes we wish we could just kick some ass.

[humanshield]

Well, ebay's final determination is that the negative feedback will stay on my account.

Even though the buyer clearly circumvented ebay's policies and used the wifes account to buy the item and even though they acknowledge that I had blocked the husband's account before the purchase using the wife's account and even though ebay acknowledged they had the same address and even though ebay acknowledged they would take "some" kind of action against the buyer for breaking ebay's policies.......

Still, they will allow me to have my FIRST ever negative feedback to my account from this criminal rule breaker.

I have been an ebay member since 1999 and have honesty done probably $50,000 in transactions on ebay.
And this is how they do you.

I would say I'm cancelling ALL my ebay accounts but I'm not sure I can. I would like to after this. Looking to see if there's life after ebay haha (Im actually furious with ebay over this injustice)

[jaga4life]

Yep. For a while ebay has been going down the toilet. One thing i cannot stand is everytime i have to call them. Im always talking to someone who i cannot understand. I recently had a problem with a buyer bidding on a phone that sold for over 300 bucks. Normal 7 day auction. After the bidder won. I waited 2 days for a payment. Never got one so i messaged them. They straight up said. Im not paying for it, i dont want it. I really didnt want to deal with them so i just canceled it. But he would not accept the cancel return. Now i owe ebay over 40 bucks for selling it and they wont cancel it. They opened a case and said they couldn't do anything for a few days. It has been over 3 weeks and i cannot get them to take it off my ebay. I still have an awaiting payment notification. It is really a pain. People have no respect for anything anymore.

[Cincikid]

When I decided to sell the occasional item on eBay, I did a little research and seen a lot of articles on how buyers can easily take advantage of sellers and how eBay policies are unfair to the seller.

As a buyer, I allow for BS neg feedback. I think most do.

[humanshield]

Jan 7, 2017 14:32:26 GMT -5 jaga4life said:

Yep. For a while ebay has been going down the toilet. One thing i cannot stand is everytime i have to call them. Im always talking to someone who i cannot understand. I recently had a problem with a buyer bidding on a phone that sold for over 300 bucks. Normal 7 day auction. After the bidder won. I waited 2 days for a payment. Never got one so i messaged them. They straight up said. Im not paying for it, i dont want it. I really didnt want to deal with them so i just canceled it. But he would not accept the cancel return. Now i owe ebay over 40 bucks for selling it and they wont cancel it. They opened a case and said they couldn't do anything for a few days. It has been over 3 weeks and i cannot get them to take it off my ebay. I still have an awaiting payment notification. It is really a pain. People have no respect for anything anymore.

Man that's bad business.   ebay does seem to be getting worse overall in terms of integrity.
When you can get Chinese sites like AliExpress or Alibaba to treat you better than an American company you've dealt with for decades, you KNOW it's going down the toilet.

[humanshield]

I'm done with ebay. Somehow I have to find a way to do what I need and get what I need without ebay.  Matter of principle now.

They apparently protect criminal buyers and make their sellers carry the load.

The new CEO is apparently a real jewel.

[aeroxbud]

I know a lot of friends now won't sell stuff on eBay. The way the system works is so biased its not even funny.
One of my mates sold some twin titanium exhausts for an R1, and lost out hundreds of pounds. The buyer told eBay he had not received the pipes. He had received a box of cheese instead! My mate had to refund him the money, and has never sold on eBay since.
Needless to say much fun was made of this once my mate had calmed down. I still think he should of got eBay to get his box of cheese back. Might of been a nice mature cheddar.

[humanshield]

Jan 7, 2017 16:19:29 GMT -5 aeroxbud said:

I know a lot of friends now won't sell stuff on eBay. The way the system works is so biased its not even funny.
One of my mates sold some twin titanium exhausts for an R1, and lost out hundreds of pounds. The buyer told eBay he had not received the pipes. He had received a box of cheese instead! My mate had to refund him the money, and has never sold on eBay since.
Needless to say much fun was made of this once my mate had calmed down. I still think he should of got eBay to get his box of cheese back. Might of been a nice mature cheddar.

Wow.   That's really insane.   At least I didn't lose any money but I hear horror stories.   Truth be told, ebay has always been pretty good and fair with me so I hav a feeling the new CEO is the problem.

They say the troops follow the lead of the commander so I can only imagine the way he talks about ebay sellers behind closed doors.

I ended all my listings.  Gonna really try hard to do business elsewhere.   ebay has a huge foothold on the market although Amazon and alibaba and aliexpress are chipping away.