Problem with a buyer on EBAY

The Dude With Herpes

Ok, so there's this girl I've liked for.....wait..no.

So, just a summary of the story so far.

Last week I finally got around to putting a box full of stuff I had sitting around on Ebay. I keep my belongings in good condition, and for electronics and the like I test everything as working before I sell it so that there aren't any duds.

I'm not a store or anything, I just sell the crap that's been sitting in my closet for awhile and I don't use anymore.

Well, the item in question happened to be a cell phone that I used when I was on Verizon Wireless up until last summer. It's a VX9800 (LG the V as it was called in advertisements) and it worked great. I kept great care of it, it was in great condition aside from very minor unpreventable wear on the outer case. Just general nicks and wear on the paint on the plastic from a year of use. The inside screen and keyboard were pristine. Not a scratch on the LCD and not the slightest bit of wear on the keys. As far as calling goes, it always worked well. I never had any dropped calls from my side and I always had a good enough connection to not only use the phone but to use the internet when needed.

Anyway, after I canceled Verizon and went with AT&T (a decision I'm somewhat regretting...though that's another discussion entirely) I just turned the phone off, put it back in the plastic bag and back in its original box and put it in the closet.

So when I put it up on auction this past week I turned it back on to clear out the memory and make sure nothing of mine remained, made sure everything still worked fine, full bars, connection to the internet (with no result, mind you, I'm not a customer, but it connected), low battery but no biggy, it just needed a charge. Take some pictures with it on, throw it up on auction and wait.

Next day I get a message from a buyer asking if it has a clear ESN; I say yes, I was the only owner of it, but I was on campus so I didn't have access to the phone and that I would message them back that evening with the ESN so they could call Verizon to verify for themselves it was clean. There used to be a website you could check it but they're shut down right now due to a conflict with Verizon.

A few hours later I check my mail and that same person had bought the phone; this is prior to me sending them the ESN. I found it a little odd that they would be concerned about it and then just buy out the auction without waiting a couple hours. But whatever.

I packaged it up the next morning and shipped it off.

For reference the dates so far are:
Auction Created: 19Jan
Auction Bought Out: 20Jan
Item Shipped: 21Jan
Item Received: 23Jan

They left me a positive feedback that same day saying the phone was as described and great.

I didn't think anything of it.

Flash forward to tonight; I'm in class taking notes and I get an e-mail message via Ebay from this person stating:

The LG9800 phone we purchased from you has a bad antanae and and will not connect to verizon. Verizon ran a test and that is their finding. We would like to send it back to you and get a refund.
Please respond back. Thanks.

Erm, what? Besides the fact that I know for a fact this was not the case, shouldn't this have been tested prior to leaving me feedback?

Regardless, it is clear on my auctions that I will not give refunds and unless they purchase insurance I'm not responsible for damage via shipping; and even if they do purchase insurance the problem is the post offices. At the same time though, I'm not a dick (usually >.>), if something is legitimately my fault or I made a mistake in the auction I will refund the person. I'm just not a rental store and I'm not going to let people just buy something from me, decide they don't want it and ask for a refund.

So, I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do. I've thought of a few options but they all have pros and cons.

1) I stick to my guns and say sorry, no soup for you.
*It is clear in my auction that I don't accept refunds
*I know the item was fully functional when I shipped it out
*They've had it nearly a week and I have no way of knowing if there actually is damage, if it was done by them, intentionally or not.
*I have no way of knowing the truthfulness of the statement that Verizon checked it (they would have had to just take it to a store and I'm fairly sure they don't have the know how at a rinky-dink store to test this; even if they did they're going to be inclined to say it's borked to make a sale), and even if it is broken, back to the third point, I have no way of knowing if they broke it.

Pros - I protect myself. Aside from being a general cynic I have no reason to believe they're trying to screw me; but I have been screwed through e-bay before; and I'd prefer to avoid it happening again. I don't want to be out the money and a phone.
Cons - I come across as a dick. I potentially have to deal with a buyer protection claim, though I'm fairly sure I'm free and clear here. Potential negative feedback(? can they retract a positive and change it to negative?)

2) I try to settle the problem "diplomatically". There's only one way I've thought of to do this and that's to have them send me back the phone, I take it to Verizon and have em check it out; if it's broke I refund them, if it's not I mail it back as cheap as possible and say sorry.

Pros - I appear conciliatory. Hm....yeah.
Cons - I get screwed because even if I get the phone, and it checks out as damaged, I again have no way of knowing if it was damaged due to shipping or by the buyer or already damaged without me knowing.

3) I just have them ship it back and refund it.

Pros - I get it over with and can move on. Clean cut. Avoid any drawn out dispute etc.
Cons - I'm out $80 and a phone. That's a pretty big con to me.

So what do you all think? Any suggestions, better ideas? My time frame is relatively short; I should reply to them tomorrow (Friday) if possible.

Zodiak

The Dude With Herpes wrote: »

*It is clear in my auction that I don't accept refunds

Simply remind him that you don't give refunds. Then, ignore any further emails from him.

Seriously, you've done everything right. The only reason I would consider refunding in this case is to avoid negative feedback rating, but he can't do that since he already left feedback.

Move on.

evilmrhenry

There isn't any way to retract positive feedback.

eternalbl

Was it paid with paypal though? That could turn ugly.

The Dude With Herpes

Yes, it was paid through paypal.

Buttcleft

Inform them, politely, that it was working when shipped, they opted not to get insurance and you stated clearly that you do not do refunds that things are sold as is.

Then, if you used paypal, remove your banking/credit card information from them post haste. Because they like to be total dicks with their access and usually favor the scammer as opposed to the scammee

Belruel

oh yes, get your shit off of paypal, they are really bad about messing with your account at the slightest mention of anything. makes it really difficult to be a fair vendor online, any dickhole customer can cry foul and ruin your finances

The Dude With Herpes

Well the problem is that I have about $500 sitting in my paypal account because I just sold a bunch of crap. So I can't just remove all my junk.

RNEMESiS42

I transfer that money to my bank account as soon as it's in my paypal account whenever I sell things.

Szechuanosaurus

I'm not sure you can legally refuse to give refunds unless it's certain items, such as perishables. That's typically against consumer rights laws, especially where mail-order is concerned where the buyer can't inspect the goods prior to purchase. Really, you should be buying shipping insurance for expensive items regardless of what the buyer wants because until it's in their hands, it's still your responsibility to ensure it reaches them in the condition it was sent out in.

wasted pixels

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this, but I think you should accept the return of the phone. It doesn't sound like the buyer is doing anything wrong here; from their perspective, they bought a phone from you which was described as working perfectly, and evidently it isn't working well for them at all.

You could argue that it was a mistake for them to opt out of shipping, but it was a mistake for you to not require shipping on an "working but as-is" item.

If you get the item back and it's working, you can either send it back (along with pictures or a video clip showing that you have full bars, taken along with a recent national newspaper -- I'm serious, take a picture of it on top of the latest New York Times), or you can always just relist it.

If you get the item back and it isn't working, well... you can still sell it for parts. Besides, you'll only be out a phone you weren't using anyway.

Szechuanosaurus

wasted pixels wrote: »

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this

I'll be your friend.

Improvolone

It's a bit of a dick move to refuse a refund. Is there a way to contact Verison about this phone to verify they've said that?

The Dude With Herpes

wasted pixels wrote: »

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this, but I think you should accept the return of the phone. It doesn't sound like the buyer is doing anything wrong here; from their perspective, they bought a phone from you which was described as working perfectly, and evidently it isn't working well for them at all.

You could argue that it was a mistake for them to opt out of shipping, but it was a mistake for you to not require shipping on an "working but as-is" item.

If you get the item back and it's working, you can either send it back (along with pictures or a video clip showing that you have full bars, taken along with a recent national newspaper -- I'm serious, take a picture of it on top of the latest New York Times), or you can always just relist it.

If you get the item back and it isn't working, well... you can still sell it for parts. Besides, you'll only be out a phone you weren't using anyway.

The thing is they did get insurance. They didn't indicate at all there was any damage to the item during shipping, and honestly I packed it so well someone would have had to have jumped on it for there to have been any damage during this time.

Besides, the buyer paying for insurance doesn't require me to do anything other than add it when I ship. If it's damaged they're the ones who need to make the claim through the postal service.

What's fishy here is that I'm to believe they waited a week to even test it, after leaving me positive feedback saying it was great? It takes a 10 minute call to activate a phone; if there were a problem it would have shown up a long time ago.

Regardless, the only requirement by law, at least in Utah for returns is within a 3 day window of the purchase; after that it goes to the stores (of which I'm not anyway, so whether this applies is questionable) return policy.

If they had contacted me immediately after they got it and had a problem I would have just done the return and been done with it. But they waited a long time; and I've known enough people who use retail stores as their own personal rental services and testbeds, abusing return policies, that this puts me on the defensive because I know for a fact, again, that the phone was in good working order and undamaged when I sent it to them.

The Dude With Herpes

I think I'm just going to go with number two on my list.

For me to do #1 I'm relying on them being false and dropping it when I say no. If they pursue the claim because either they feel innocent or (as has happened to me in the past) they're vindictive enough to stick with their bullshit story; either way I get screwed.

And as someone said above, at that point, at worst I'm where I started...with a possibly broken phone.

I'll just ask them to send it back; I'll have it tested on my own, and go from there.

EDIT: So, when I issue the refund, am I supposed to refund the cost of the item, or the cost of the item and the shipping they paid? Is the shipping (which wasn't cheap) just a sunk cost here?

bowen

Don't refund it.

Edit:

You're not a retailer, they're not entitled to a refund from what constitutes a mix of "yard sale" and "auction house". There was nothing wrong with the item, you followed procedures, you are not responsible nor are they entitled to a refund. They even left a positive rating. This smells fishy. But if the item was damage they should be seeking restitution from the insurance, not you.

Szechuanosaurus

The Dude With Herpes wrote: »

Regardless, the only requirement by law, at least in Utah for returns is within a 3 day window of the purchase; after that it goes to the stores (of which I'm not anyway, so whether this applies is questionable) return policy.

Does this include online orders? Usually there is a longer cooling-off period for online and mail-order purchases.

Crashtard

I'm going to echo bowen here and say do not refund it. It's clearly stated in your auction that you do not give refunds, and you know it worked when you sent it out. If it was working fine till the day you stopped using it then it's working fine now unless it was damaged in shipping. If that's the case they can sort it out with the post office.
One thing you might want to do with your auctions is state that your items are in AS-IS condition. I do that with everything now, and make most people get insurance on anything pricey in case something happens in shipping.

bowen

Note: Please inform paypal that you may be getting scammed by a buyer right the fuck now.

UncleSporky

bowen wrote: »

Don't refund it.

Edit:

You're not a retailer, they're not entitled to a refund from what constitutes a mix of "yard sale" and "auction house". There was nothing wrong with the item, you followed procedures, you are not responsible nor are they entitled to a refund. They even left a positive rating. This smells fishy. But if the item was damage they should be seeking restitution from the insurance, not you.

Right, it's a yard sale item. It sucks for them but you have no responsibility to refund it. Be apologetic but there is no reason to "be nice" in this case.

bowen

The absolutely great thing is that insurance was purchased. Now the item can be covered in full, and no one is getting fucked in the ass because of it.

Improvolone

Insurance was purchased? Tell the buyer to deal with it then. Your hands are clean in my book.

illig

1st of all transfer all your money out of Paypal. Paypal will side with the buyer, and will freeze your cash the moment they file a chargeback (and will likely end up giving them the money in the end)

now, as far as the deal, i'd say "sorry, AS IS, no refunds". I clearly state in all my auctions that the item appears to be in great condition, however I can not be responsible for it being 100% functional (especially with an item such as a cell phone that requires a plan to test).

if you want to be nice, offer that they ship the phone back to you (insured, at their cost only), and you'll test it with Verizon. Once tested, if it works, you ship it back. If it doesn't work, you refund them their original purchase price MINUS SHIPPING.

bowen

Improvolone wrote: »

Insurance was purchased? Tell the buyer to deal with it then. Your hands are clean in my book.

They sure did, it was in his third post, first line.

Had he not gotten insurance, it still technically isn't his fault as the item was sold As-is and without a refund. Like pretty much every single auction or yard sale I've ever seen or been to. The only thing that matters now is if pay pal decides to be a jerk. Which they will. Tell them first.

"Hey I sent this item out as-is, insured it, let them know there was no refunds, and they left positive rating. They're telling me now that it's got a broken antennae. I think I'm getting scammed and would like to resolve this as it's an insurance matter and not a buyer-seller one at this point."

Chances are pay pal is going to fuck you right in the ass. With a 20 foot dildo. Made of razor-wire.

Crashtard

bowen wrote: »

The only thing that matters now is if pay pal decides to be a jerk. Which they will. Tell them first.

"Hey I sent this item out as-is, insured it, let them know there was no refunds, and they left positive rating. They're telling me now that it's got a broken antennae. I think I'm getting scammed and would like to resolve this as it's an insurance matter and not a buyer-seller one at this point."

Chances are pay pal is going to fuck you right in the ass. With a 20 foot dildo. Made of razor-wire.

All of this. Paypal is insanely biased towards buyers. It's great if you're buying, not so great if you're selling. One thing I did is get the paypal debit card once I was able. It's nice to be able to go to the atm and withdraw the money from my account as soon as it's there.

Buttcleft

I don't use paypal anymore because of how scamhappy it was.

But if you do, I'd reccomend opening an additional account at your bank, like an extra checking or something, and tie that to your paypal account.

So that as soon as you get money in your paypal, you transfer it to your checking then into one of your other accounts so paypal can't touch any of your money.

because there are cases where they've taken money out of peoples bank accounts and debit/credit cards and shit.

bowen

Make sure to clear it with your bank that it will be, sometimes, empty. Some like to charge for that.

The Dude With Herpes

Thanks everyone for the advice so far.

I removed all my accounts except the one in process of transferring TO, from paypal.

So, for future reference; what do you all use, assuming you even bother with ebay, to accept payments, if not paypal?

Belruel

most people still want to use paypal, but tie it to your credit card (you can do this, right?), not your bank account, and don't leave money sitting there. if someone tries to mess with your credit card, your company will almost always do everything they can to help you with it.

The Dude With Herpes

I like the idea a previous poster said about getting the paypal debit card.

I could just withdraw cash immediately; it's not tied to my bank account and it's not a credit card.

I don't need a credit card, a credit card is exactly why i need the money from selling this stuff right now. :P

Buttcleft

Belruel wrote: »

most people still want to use paypal, but tie it to your credit card (you can do this, right?), not your bank account, and don't leave money sitting there. if someone tries to mess with your credit card, your company will almost always do everything they can to help you with it.

Yeah but if you do chargebacks on paypal, They will freeze your account and send you to collections. I've never had it happen to me, but I've seen several articles on reputable sites about people who ended up getting collections agencies on their asses and blemishes on their credit history due to it.

Belruel

yeah, paypal is kind of sucky overall, but is there a better way to handle ebay sells? i haven't heard of any that make the buyer still feel safe

Buttcleft

Belruel wrote: »

yeah, paypal is kind of sucky overall, but is there a better way to handle ebay sells? i haven't heard of any that make the buyer still feel safe

I say avoid ebay all together and buy and sell locally with classifieds or craigslist or whatever.

FyreWulff

Wait, how the hell can Verizon figure out it has a bad antennae? See as how most cell phone ones are integrated right into the body. They probably just live in an area with bad coverage and didn't know it.

But if they want to believe that, they got insurance so they can take it up that way.

The Dude With Herpes

FyreWulff wrote: »

Wait, how the hell can Verizon figure out it has a bad antennae? See as how most cell phone ones are integrated right into the body. They probably just live in an area with bad coverage and didn't know it.

But if they want to believe that, they got insurance so they can take it up that way.

They can't. They'd have to have a tech on site to open the phone up and know enough about the specific phone to determine if the antenna is broke.

This is pretty much my thought exactly. They're having problems activating the phone and the idiot CS person just decided the easiest thing to blame was the phone.

EDIT: You know, if Verizon would stop being shit stupid and start using SIM cards like the rest of the world, this would have been as simple as plugging in the card, and good to go. I bet they just put in the wrong serial number or something, or the CS did, when trying to activate it.

eternalbl

The fact that this person asked if the ESN was clean seems suspicious too. If you end up letting them return it, do you have anything with the old phones info on it to check that they haven't messed with it?

JaysonFour

Don't give an inch. Your auction policy is "no refunds", not "no refunds but if you complain and threaten me I'll cave and get your money back to you".

Personally, it sounds like buyer's remorse or somebody didn't check to see if the phone would work in their area.

If you give an inch, this guy will take a mile. eBay's really gone downhill lately.

TexiKen

Don't give.

I've been selling a lot of stuff recently just to clear some clutter, and the people on eBay are getting dumber and dumber. You said no refunds, people (should) know that you have risks when buying from what is a glorified garage sale. It's insured, so if it was damaged as they say, they can go through that process.

If they try and fight you, you have their positive score already as well as your auction which states exactly what they are getting. eBay and even Paypal can't challenge you, especially because they foolishly gave you a good score then tried to get a refund.

eternalbl

The auction says they'll be getting a great condition and working cell phone. The phone they have doesn't work.

If you want ebay to turn to a foist broken goods free for all, go nuts. No refunds.

Thats not to say you aren't right to be a little wary. Ask them more about how and who determined it was faulty and if they got a repair estimate. Check verizon's coverage area to see if it has good coverage in the area the buyer is from. If you're going to say no refunds, at the least try to help the person as much as reasonable if not for their sake, then for the sake of keeping ebay a fairly good place to pick up deals and hock unused goods.

Improvolone

eternalbl wrote: »

The auction says they'll be getting a great condition and working cell phone. The phone they have doesn't work.

If you want ebay to turn to a foist broken goods free for all, go nuts. No refunds.

Thats not to say you aren't right to be a little wary. Ask them more about how and who determined it was faulty and if they got a repair estimate. Check verizon's coverage area to see if it has good coverage in the area the buyer is from. If you're going to say no refunds, at the least try to help the person as much as reasonable if not for their sake, then for the sake of keeping ebay a fairly good place to pick up deals and hock unused goods.

"No refunds" should not mean the buyer is on their own no matter what, the only thing it should do is protect the seller from the buyer saying "I don't like it anymore".

The Dude With Herpes

Ok, thanks everyone for great advice and opinions.

The situation is now resolved:

I contacted them yesterday and told them that while I don't normally issue refunds, and that I was 99.9% sure the phone was undamaged and working as of shipment, I would be willing to have them return it to me and I would find out on my own if it was damaged (I would take it to a Verizon store with my sister in law, who's a Verizon customer and have them activate it for her, test it and re-activate her old phone after testing; if it worked it was fine). If it was legitimately borked I would issue a refund if not I would send the phone back to them.

They replied saying that someone told them they should reflash the phones firmware to see if that made it able to connect to the network and they'd get back to me. Ignoring how reflashing the phone would do nothing if in fact the antenna was broken, I had nothing to lose by waiting. They e-mailed me this morning and said it worked and the phone is working fine, thanks.

So that's that. I'm guessing, as I said earlier, they were dealing with either an idiot CS agent trying to activate it or they were giving the wrong serial number when trying to get it activated. Either way, if this worked for them I don't care.

I'll consider this the end of it. If the try in the future to be like "oh, wait, no it doesn't work now", then I'll say: sorry, you're on your own now.

I think I made the right decision being diplomatic about it. As many people said, I would have been fully within my rights to say "No soup for you", but it worked out well, and balancing the two, the "worst case scenario" of being diplomatic was more pleasant than dealing with a customer complaint and chargeback, etc.

Last time I got screwed over by a buyer on ebay (half.com actually, same diff), I made the mistake of direct contact with the buyer through e-mail so ebay didn't have any record of them being complete fucksticks. This time I made sure to do all correspondence through the message system on ebay. So if they try to say later it's fucked, I can just show ebay the messages where they said it worked great (plus the positive feedback saying the same), so now my ass is more covered.

So alls well that ends well.

For sure I'll be reconsidering how I phrase my return policies, how I deal with paypal and ebay in the future as I still have a lot of crap to sell.

But thanks again everyone!