I have been with ebay for 11 years and have 230 sales with 100% positive feedback.
I sold some street fighter figures and specifically said i do no ship out of the US. Both in the body of the description and in the selection ebay lets you choose. A guy bids on the figure and wins. He's in Mexico.
I decide to be nice and send it to him. I also sent out 21 other figures all within the US.
Those 21 all got there safe and sound. All gave me positive feedback.
The guy in mexico says his was damaged and it's MY fault. I tell him i would like to see pictures of the damage. He refuses. We go back and forth and i remain polite. He agrees to a partial refund and i refund him part of his money. He then escalates the case with a message that says "fuck your mother" after taking my money.
This guy has been a member for less than 2 months and has 6 negative transactions.
Ebay sided with HIM. They are saying i have to refund the full amount. So this guy get the partial refund PLUS a full refund. So he MAKES money and i have to PAY to get a BROKEN product back.
I called the resolution center and spoke to Joel S employee number 6.3.657 and he said there's nothing ebay will do. That i have to pay. I told him i already gave him a partial refund, and the guy says i STILL have to refund the whole amount back...NOT just the balance after that partial refund. I ask for his full name...he won't give it. I ask to speak to a supervisor he says no. we go back and forth. I never swore. He then said "screw you im ending this call" and hung up.
WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO NOW??!?
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It is sad to say that trying to be a nice person and decent human being was a mistake, but here it was.
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If you have your PayPal account tied to any bank account, remove it now.
Feel free to dispute and you may win, but unfortunately the ebay coin came up tails for you this time.
You may want to look into suing paypal with small claims court.
Losing your account is far better than losing your money. Even if you only lost $30? Fuck that noise, sue them for $30.
Or you can walk away and consider it a lesson learned and do what I've outlined for the future. And then never ship outside of the US again (because you can sue people in the US for doing what this guy did too, on top of suing paypal).
ebay doesn't give a fuck about you, and they never will unless you're doing six figures a year through their system. You can either chalk this up as a cost of doing business and lesson in why you had that No International Shipping policy, or close up shop and empty your linked bank account (and get ready for them to ding that account into the negative because fuck you, that's why is basically their mission statement).
I mean, you can try appealing to a new CS rep but be prepared for it go nowhere.
So, if you've no money in paypal and refuse to give a refund, what is ebay going to do? I mean, other than suspend your account. If telling ebay to fuck off is an actual possibility, then you need to assess the value of doing business on ebay vs the value of this transaction plus the fact that they treat you like shit.
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Anyway...to the OP: what you can do now is:
A) live with it and continue with what I assume has been, outside of this incident, an enjoyable and profitable eBay side business/hobby.
allow this incident to ruin that for you and quit eBay forever in a huff/on principle.
could you maybe try not to phrase the option b) as if it's some unreasonable reaction to be incredibly pissed off about this happening?
Regardless, what I am trying to make the OP see is that there is really no way to get a resolution to this particular incident that is going to make him happy, so what he needs to do is decide what he thinks is the best way to respond to it going forward. Obviously I have my opinion but the point is that he needs to get past being angry about being screwed here, because he can't un-screw himself. Instead he needs to focus on the more productive considerations of: how much does getting screwed here really matter in the big picture, and in view of that what can he do to stop himself from getting screwed again? Like, as others have mentioned, never ever making an exception to his own 'no international shipping' policy again.
Being screwed by Ebay siding with terrible buyers is now one of the costs of business of dealing with them. Just have to consider if the benefits outweigh the costs.
whoa, before you (or anyone) does this, I wanna point out that deleting a linked account, linking a new account, and immediately trying to withdraw funds is likely to trip paypal's fraud system, which is an express ticket to a locked account and never seeing that money again.
Thanks so much for the feedback. I have been informed that if i don't pay, then it will be sent to collections. They said it will ding my credit, if i don't pay them, but i don't know if thats true because i believe you need a social security number for that. (I work at a gym and people think if they don't pay their past dues that somehow it will show up on their credit report...nope...it's written off. Because we don't take people's SSN.
And i don't mean to sound all old man...but i do think i have a right to be offended. Not just in their horrible policy and how it's even more insulting to those with such a long flawless history, but how they literally DO NOT EVEN TO PRETEND to give a single fuck about you and your business. Not ONCE did i even get a "we're sorry" or a "we hate to hear something like this" is was just FUCK YOU. Well it was a screw you, and a hang up. I mean seriously?!? To not even pretend to care?
I had a shitty experience at a starbucks. I called the 800 number for 1 reasons.
1) thats what it's there for you.
2) as a manager, I would want to know if a member of MY staff was acting like a dick.
Starbucks apologized, and offered me a $25 gift certificate. I told them it wasn't necessary, but she insisted i take it. I wasn't looking for some sort of payout, but of course i was happy they went above and beyond.
When my iphone busted they swapped it out for me at the MAC store no hassle at all! I was just out of warranty, and was expecting to have to pay for a fix. They had our info in the site with our purchase history, and they guy was like "it's all good you're close enough" when i told him i was out of the warranty date.
Another time, my macbook wasn't charging. I didn't know if it was the power brick/cable which is like $50 or the computer itself. Brought it in, the guy looked at it, tested it with a new cable, and it worked. He was like "yeah man, this old cable is shot. I'm gonna switch it for this one." And he just gave us the new cable which i was ready to purchase. (this was for a 5 year old computer....no way anything was under warranty) Im sure that's because in my purchase history they will find that my wife and i spend a lot of money with apple.
Starbucks and Mac both went out of their way to give me good service. Not because i was a being a dick, or crying fowl, but because they know i do business with them, and gestures like this ensure i go back to them.
If i went into A starbucks and said "Hey man, this isn't what i ordered" and the guy behind the counter said "Fuck You" i wouldn't hit them up anymore. I would go to Dutch Bros instead.
It just seems to speak volumes that in this day of social media, and available information, that companies would choose to have shitty service.
I probably wont sell through ebay anymore. I might still use them to purchase, but all the fees, and the headache, and the lack of shits given; i think i'll do the extra legwork and sell through forums, or other venues.
Yes, I should say you don't want to do that all within a day's time period.
The difference is that to Starbucks and Apple, you are a customer. For eBay, they really don't see you as one. They see buyers as the customers, and their policies are designed to keep buyers happy. There were so many stories about buyers getting ripped off on eBay in the early years that they've tilted their policies to be almost completely one-sided in favor of buyers now.
A huge fraction of eBay's revenue probably comes from a very small percentage of their seller base who operate as full-fledged businesses and do thousands of dollars in sales a year. If you're not one of that small group who do high-dollar business, eBay doesn't really care about you as a seller because they have made the calculation that it is not in their interest to keep you happy if it might mean making buyers unhappy.
While that's probably true, there's still zero excuse for a customer service rep to say, "Screw you," and hang up the phone. That's just absurd, and anything other than customer service. Even if the seller was being unreasonable, and absolutely 100% in the wrong, you just don't do that.
That's not old man or old fashioned at all, OP. Every business worth it's salt should and often does offer the same sort of experience you had at Starbucks and the Mac store.
eBay just doesn't value your business because they feel they're immune to customer dissatisfaction. In my opinion, this is going to bite them in the ass some day.
I'm not saying it's an excuse or that it's right or that the customer service rep was justified. I'm just explaining why things are the way they are.
Unfortunately, eBay made a business decision to almost always side on behalf of the buyer even in the most ridiculous of cases. It's somewhat understandable why they do it - there will always be sellers, but if the buyers go away their business model WILL fail. Still not defensible, and their customer service people are very jaded and their experiences dealing with scammers makes them automatically assume the worst.
As much as this sucks - and it really, really does fucking suck - my recommendation would be to eat the full refund, pay this guy, and get the issue closed out.
Then in the future stick to your 'absolutely no international sales in any circumstances' policy. Never offer a partial refund, and while Bowen's instructions were a bit extreme (although not bad advice), consider implementing some of these steps to isolate your PayPal Seller's account and earnings from your other banking. Also, require return of damaged items for evaluation prior to a refund as a matter of policy.
I CAN say that you aren't alone in the 'fuck eBay' attitude. We had quite a few of our end users who wanted nothing to do with eBay and their policies, and I can say I don't blame them.
It's ok to be mad, but if you can just accept this as a (bullshit) cost of doing business, rant a bit if this shit happens, and move on, you'll be better for it. Remember, you had 21 people who were absolutely happy with what you've sold them, and less than 1% of the people you've dealt with have given you this problem.
I work for a 3mil per year eBay business and hate them. The owner of the company hates them too, but they're a necessary evil. I would never list anything on there through my own personal account because of BS like this.
You will not get a product back either. I recently got scammed out of a 1 time use code, and now ebay is threatening my account because they cant extract the fees they refunded to the buyer. I am done with them.
FYI for the people saying take your paypal money and run. It doesnt work like that, they freeze the funds until the buyer says its ok. And ebay debits your account for the amount automatically when they say it isnt ok.
Small claims court'ing paypal sounds like a good idea to get legal fees debited to your account somehow, or it shut down and the money dissapeared and you sent to collections with something against you on your credit report. Paypal likes to reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally fuck people over when you try anything. If it was 30$, my suggestion is eat the loss and move on, I feel for you brother.