Ebay sided with a Seller, Twice!!

General
1

Long story short, saw www.ebay.com/itm/252451013237 pop up a few weeks ago. Now this was around 10pm or so my time and was listed at $38. I put in an offer for $30 and went to sleep, because why not. Wake up and see the listing was changed to $125, assuming they realized the card was more valuable. Well overnight they counter-offered with $35, so when I arrived at work I accepted and paid. (high five, got a decent condition no damage!) Few days later I get the card and its a regular, LP unlimited Ninetales. No big deal, message the seller.

Seller responds with “the first listing they would not take off because someone offered a price. The relist was because I have two. One is different than the other. The description says what it is and ebay will see that. You can call them, you made the mistake though. Sorry”
Listing was never relisted, the counter-offer stood overnight so they couldn’t with the offer being removed I guess(no experience in changing listings or cancelling). Again, no big deal. I will just take a picture and show them the difference, after all, you can return anything from what i’ve been told. Not to mention the card was listed as MINT and was LP at best, my ground should easily be covered. Few days later case is closed in favor of the seller.

Shocked, I call to appeal. Ask them to actually look at the pictures, its a subtle difference they might not understand etc etc, explained the overnight offer and listing change, doubt she took it all down. Informs me they will take a look and will investigate deeper and give me an answer within 24-48 hours. Appeal was closed less than an hour later. Best part? Can’t leave negative feedback, because of seller protection its instantly removed.

Attempting to go through paypal now as eBay has given me no options. I have returned maybe 4 items in my entire ebay career and never had an issue buying/selling (100% feedback, never left anything besides positive myself).

And before anyone says anything, I know I should’ve checked the other images and I swear that night I saw ALL 4 images of it, with a closeup of the scratching on the bottom of the card, but the revision only lists BIN price. In the morning I saw the offer on my phone, pulled it up and saw the image (not a big buyer by any means so I knew exactly which card it was) and hit accept, I take some of the blame for sure.

Thats all, unpopular and popular opinions welcome, just needed to vent on being burned $36.

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2

If you’re able to open a dispute through PayPal (maybe you can’t because you already tried through eBay), just say the seller sent a card that had damage that wasn’t shown or mentioned in the listing. That should be enough for PayPal to side in your favor.

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That sucks, hopefully you can get something done.

4

Might be a few reasons for this, eBay usually doesn’t decide a case this quickly:

  1. Did you claim it as item not received? If you did and there was tracking that stated delivered, then there’s your case.

  2. Did you miss a deadline to provide information? If you did the case is automatically decided in the seller’s favor.

5

Believe me, I was as surprised as you, especially on the appeal.

Card was bought and paid for 7:25am July 6th.

Claim was put in on the 9th, a few minutes after getting the card. Claimed as not as described.

Seller somehow managed to ask them to step in on the 13th at 12:13 PM. Do they have some precedent? I am sure it was the 15th for me.

Case was resolved at 12:27pm on the 13th in the sellers Favor.

Called and appealed right after I got that email, was at lunch at work so 12:45ish pm.

Appeal was denied sometime between when I got off the phone and 2pm when I checked the case status. What is even funnier is after the fact I receive an email from ebay at 7:27 PM that says, “I contacted them about a closed case and they will get back to me soon”. All times are based upon emails, but never heard/seen something like this before.

6

Give them another call and explain your situation. Talking with a real human should help, if anything to explain why the case was closed so quickly.

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Especially being such a cheap item, in my past experiences where I felt wronged (as seller or buyer) they just decided to give me a refund that I assume came out of their pocket at least a time or two. They must have a certain budget for this. As fourthstar said, get a human on the phone, stay calm and level headed and hopefully they will understand and fix the situation. Especially if you have decent buyer standing otherwise and a decent buyer history, they will want you to leave satisfied with them.

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Not a huge seller/buyer by any means, but a lowly top rated/power seller with 100% feedback. I do everything I can to accommodate as a seller myself and list items in the condition they actually are in if I were buying them(for example, not NM unless I would consider it NM, not based upon those horrible scales of allowing some scratches and whitening). Figured eBay would be cool about this, called them yesterday and the person I spoke to pretty much told me they couldn’t talk about the case anymore after the appeal. Asked them why it might have been closed so quickly and she told me she didn’t have that info. Asked to escalate the call, spoke with another rep who basically told me if its closed that quickly, eBay was sure of the decision and the appeal didn’t change that (well obviously). He told me he was just being honest, but couldn’t discuss further.

Already put in a claim with Paypal & called them to explain as well, hopefully gets fixed through them. Since its such a low amount, not going to spend hours on the phone talking to different reps. I just found the whole situation odd, like if I saw this post I would think I was lying/leaving out info because it sounds ridiculous.

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it does sound ridiculous, you deserve to win this one and will be extremely disappointed with ebay/paypal if you dont

10

I’ve had an experience as a seller when I was selling Shadowless Pikachu cards and listed them as such. I had a buyer who bought all of them just going by the picture. The cards arrived to him but he wasn’t satisfied as he said one “didn’t have red cheeks” (At this point I had no idea the Red Cheek Pikachu variant actually was a thing). I listed them all as just Shadowless, but the seller kept on making a fuss about it. So in order to just have this not escalate, I just refunded him everything. Because of me not knowing this and just listing them as a plain Shadowless, as stated on the print, the seller wanted them all to be Red Cheeks.

But anyway, moving on to your case, it is kind of sad the seller KNOWINGLY sold you the regular shadowed print and kept the money. I don’t think eBay goes too deep in cases like this as well, they still get their cut AND they don’t know much about variants as collectors do.

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Quick update. Paypal sided with myself (didn’t look like she responded at all) Hopefully should see a refund in a few days after the package is returned. Long way to go for a whole $30 bucks, but the principle of the matter took over.

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