eBay does it again

General
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0 feedback eBay buyer opens a fraudulent NAD case against me, makes up a shipping damage story that is nearly impossible due to my packaging. He tries to stall the return process to get a default ruling. I am basically forced to accept the return, so I pay for return shipping. Then 3 days later eBay sends me a “suspicious buyer” email and tells me not to complete the transaction if I have not already, and the buyer’s account is closed. They won’t share why exactly he was banned, but confirm he was banned due to “issues” eBay had with him. Buyer then literally ships me garbage in the return package I paid for. eBay, after having my funds on hold for weeks finally rules in my favor and releases my funds back to me.

Buyer then files another claim against me through his financial institution, and eBay puts my funds on hold again. I contact eBay for the 4th time, explain everything, submit my dispute info, and eBay tells me not to worry, it will end in my favor. Today eBay emails me and says dispute is closed in the BUYER’S favor. I’m now out $300 for the item plus return shipping plus another $20 for eBay since I lost the dispute. Are you kidding me.

I just pulled all my listings. I have now filed a final appeal through the Managed Payments Dept. If in 3-5 days this decision is not reversed, eBay will have lost another frequent buyer and seller of items who has been with eBay for as long as the Pokémon TCG has been in existence. I started a new eBay account years ago to reset my PayPal since they migrated me to a business account, so it’s been 20 years with thousands of transactions with 100% feedback. Unbelievable.

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Sorry to hear this, seems like more and more people are moving away from eBay due to stories like this one. Is there a way for you to not sell to someone with zero feedback? I know I wouldn’t personally if it was an option.

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Thanks for that. Yes, there is–you refund them, block them, and re-list the item. I don’t like to do this, and ebay sure doesn’t want me to do this since they want new buyers and everyone has to start somewhere. Plus I have to essentially lie and say the item isn’t available anymore since you have to select a drop down option, and then when I re-list it, it’s pretty obvious the item still is available. In this case I did what I always do–emailed the buyer and asked them to verify their shipping info, and if they don’t reply I refund them and re-list. In this case the guy emailed me back with his info that was also reflected on ebay so I went ahead and proceeded with it.

There are a few issues with Managed Payments I have so far–one is that when PayPal was taking payments, I had the ability to call PayPal and do some inquiring about the payment method, address info, and if there were any red flags. eBay doesn’t allow me to “see” anything at all about the buyer or how they paid–at least as far as I can tell. And even in this case they would not even share with me why exactly the buyer was banned. But then when someone files with their financial institution, eBay wants to step back and say, “hey, it’s not us, it’s between you and the buyer and their financial institution.” However, they would not provide me the information I needed to contact the financial institution directly or find out WHO the buyer is. Their account doesn’t exist anymore, so I have no idea who I’m even contesting with for sure. I suspect eBay is either overrun with these type of disputes, or they just default to the buyer instead of actually looking at everything and making a case to the institution on my behalf. I have a big problem with this since eBay should be either “in” or “out,” and if they aren’t going to “really” be involved, they need to provide me with basic information so I can do my own follow up.

I think eBay is in reality probably trying to work out the kinks of what their process actually is since Managed Payments began. With more new ebay users and volume, which strains their resources and ability to do thorough work, as well as probably trying to avoid any confidentiality disclosure issues, they need to maintain their iron clad grip of their legal ability to freeze your funds and forcibly withdraw funds from you. I would love to know at what rate their claims have increased, since once the word is out, the fraudsters show up in droves. And in this case, after all, who is it easier to get money from–me with an active account and my bank info and their strong arm agreements (if you don’t like it, don’t sell on our platform essentially), or a buyer they have banned who is engaging in fraud and has who knows what type of sketchy payment stuff going on? I believe they probably just default to the buyer as they did here, with little real research. And if only 50% of the people fight them on it, they are money ahead by not instead trying to prove fraud and get their money back from a user that has been banned and THEIR financial institution. This way they get their money from the surest source, which is me. All I can do is try and get them to do the right thing and if they won’t, stop cutting them in on my sales and stop buying off ebay.

People have gotten screwed MUCH worse for a lot more money than $300+, but it is pretty disheartening how easy it is to have someone with ZERO credibility win a case over someone who has a flawless track record over 20 years. Pretty pathetic.

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I have had issues with a return one time and issues with feedback one time. For the return, a very similar thing happened with me as it did to you: eBay initially sided with me, and I remember being on the phone with a guy who told me not to worry about it. But then I got another message days later saying that eBay then sided with the buyer. I had to call them again to sort it out and then they sided with me. With the feedback issue, I sent an e-mail to eBay to get a feedback removed in totally clear-cut case and yet they initially sided with the other person. It was only after I called them did they switch their decision in my favor and remove the feedback.

Given that, I think the strategy with eBay is simple: if you are indeed in the right, keep bothering them until they side with you. The squeaky wheel gets oiled. Stay persistent, my friend.

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I sell on Amazon, I literally have (S/N Recorded) at the end of my store name because of scammers. It’s cut down on the scamming and I pursue every fraud case over a certain dollar amount. Maybe change your store name to www.fbi.gov or www.mailfraudtaskforce.com that would surely cause the scammers to pass over your listing. Pokemonking has also said he takes a picture of every package he sends out, which is a good practice to have. You’d have the scammers name/address then.

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I have the name and address for the mailing but not the name on the account that was used to make the purchase or what financial institution is involved. I have a picture of the package I sent but that doesn’t mean anything, unfortunately, in a NAD dispute.

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If you dodge Ebay since Random fake Guy wins vs Seller with a ton of reputation, where do you sell in the Future?
How many cases you had like that over the Years? I mean after 20 Years it cant be this 1 Time event, right?
How much % of all your Sold Listings were shady/a problem/ to much of a time waste?

Sad to see what happens when a sluggish Company is too big to fail and loose Momentum

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This has happened to me before to where an ebay rep had “guaranteed” I would win the case then I get an email saying the case was favoured for the buyer lol. They make it clear they record every conversation so I called again and told them to listen to the previous phone recordings where they guaranteed I would not lose the case and not to worry and they did reverse the case for me. Every time you talk to a rep make them say word for word “you are guaranteed 100% not to lose this case” or something along those lines. There’s no reason why YOU should be out money in this case especially since EBAY had investigated and claimed this was a fraudulent buyer from their end that they obviously caught too late. This is their problem, and they should have caught on to the buyer sooner to avoid this issue. Keep calling until you get your money back. If they disagree with you, hang up and call back and get a different rep. I’ve had to go through a few different reps at times to get them to agree with me. It is time consuming, but honestly it’s worth it.

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Phone eBay.

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As others have touched on, it is brutal at the time of dealing with it and your thoughts will go wild. It is complete BS and Ive seen red multiple times beating my head against the ebay brick wall of automated responses. Give yourself a few days and evaluate the pros you get from being able to sell online, how many transactions have you had successfully to off put this one bad one. For me its about 500 to 1.

Without the internet or ebay, the possibilities of buying the things you have bought or sold would be likely non existent.

Every time I get a situation like yours, I go through this thought path and it helps me. Trust me nearly everyone here gets it, more often than most think.

I also go through the ebay system with the expectation of not winning, This in turn tends to make me respond to their auto bot copy paste employees in a more calm manner. Dont give up but this will help you.

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Agreed. Being forced to be party to an inefficient, time consuming process in order to get satisfaction is a tough pill for me to swallow at this point in my life. In my case if eBay sides with the scammer, they don’t lose money. If they side with me, they may not be able to recoup the funds and have to eat the loss. They did not “prepare a case” as their dispute process with the financial institution indicates, they simply defaulted to what gets them paid. I think it’s actually their process to expect phone calls to reverse claims before they concede losing money to fraud. Financial fraud has got to be rampant on eBay right now, and I’m pretty sure their threshold for actively pursuing fraud cases is a lot higher than $300. It’s more than ironic that on the same day they also emailed me a PowerSeller certificate since they are retiring that program, thanking me for being a Top Rated Seller :face_with_spiral_eyes: Weeks from now when I finally get satisfaction on this thing, I think I’ll mail them a little “You’re #1 eBay!” one finger salute certificate of my own.

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Great advice. And since I am absolutely the type that will cut off my own nose to spite my face, chanting mantras and deep breathing has become part of my existence. Despite this, my personal growth in this respect has been…nominal. It is so much less healthy, but impulsively satisfying to follow Conan’s advice on what is best in life: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.” I so badly want to drive to N Texas and Conan this dude.

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Just wanted to update that after about a month and 10 lengthy phone calls, eBay finally refunded me the cost of the item and the $20 dispute loss fee. Ebay has a long way to go in streamlining their process and getting in front of these fraud cases they clearly cannot keep pace with. It’s also discouraging that they force you to commit hours of your time to persist and wait before eventually getting satisfaction through the super secret second level back office authorization team, but at least they reimbursed me eventually and the customer service was better than it has been in recent years. The advice to patiently persist and not give up was good advice. I will say they gave me several opportunities to quit, and the only way they paid me back even after the scammer won his chargeback was because I kept them on the hook throughout.

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Sadly, the longer and harder they make the process, the less people that go through with it and the less they have to pay out. That’s just my 2cents being in ecommerce. I only chase after a certain dollar amount fraud cases, because below that threshold it’s just not worth it going through the arduous process. $300 I would have chased after though, congrats on the good outcome.

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I posted about a similar experience a few months ago. As long as you have a tracking number and confirmation of delivery, the financial institution will rule in your favor as will eBay.

It is annoying, and as annoying and outrageous it is, vast majority of 0 feedback buyers are honest and pay up without any drama.

Do let us know the name of this clown so we can block him/her now and the community will benefit.

Hope it all works out for you soon.

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I would highly recommend filing with ic3.gov . It’s the internet cases division of the FBI that looks into fraud cases involving online transactions.