After reading this thread, I’ve done a lot more BIN with best offer and had success. Like OP I had a bunch of nonpayers and people who would win auctions and ask to cancel days later.
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I dont do too much selling on ebay but the only time I ever seem to get issues is with auctions where you can guarantee things wont get paid for.
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Thought I’d wade in on this as a curious case for anyone who may potentially have the same issues.
I sent something from the UK to US 10th Dec - signed and tracked for with FedEx - fully insured for £1,120.
Buyer claimed a on 16th of Dec not arrived (he contacted me) and I showed the tracking as delivered on 14th. He immediately opened a case and ceased all dialogue with me. eBay closed the case in my favour as I had confirmed delivery - good as gold, nothing to worry about.
21st December buyer files an appeal and wins - eBay debit my account without any question or communication - now the fun begins. I obviously call eBay to find out what’s going on and am told that the buyer’s appeal was granted on the basis that there was no signature on the parcel - even though it’s been delivered - as this is a requirement for any parcel over £750 in value.
Fine, I thought, I know I booked a signature service, so I went ahead and contacted eBay and FedEx and was told by FedEx no signature was required as they have removed all signatures from services - this is stated clearly on their website and when I asked if they could send me this in writing they refused and told eBay (who had previously requested proof of this) to simply go online.
24th December - I thankfully get through to a very helpful lady in Ireland, rather than one of the Pilipino operators who fail to help and keep asking for a signature & reading off a script. We go through the case in detail, I explain everything clearly and point her to the website where she can see for herself that signatures are suspended - she contacts her manager who has to sign off any appeal (due to the fact it’s a high value item) and good as gold, told I am correct and my appeal will be successful.
Come early January, eBay reach out again to inform me at this stage that the back office team have rejected the appeal as there is no signature proof & I’d have to provide evidence that I purchased a signature service. I’m getting pretty irritated by this point as I thought I’d crossed the necessary hurdles to get here. I reach out to FedEx to open an investigation and am told I cannot as the item has been delivered, thus their is no way to claim insurance on the package - so the FedEx route is off the cards. However, I screenshot my communication with the courier which explicitly states that in normal circumstances I would have had a signature, but due to Covid, FedEx have suspended this and this is why I didn’t have a signature.
I take this back to eBay and iron clad proof that 1. Yes I should have had a signature. 2. I paid for a signature. 3. FedEx are confirming it’s delivery - Note (eBay have stressed that they believe the item was delivered - but they can’t prove it).
eBay contact me today to inform me my appeal has been rejected as there isn’t any signature proof (sigh) - even though they asked me to provide all this evidence and proof (remember, I cannot help it didn’t get a signature that’s fully out of my control) - I will take this further with FedEx, but I have also contacted American Express who will refund me I’m sure as I have so much evidence, but I shouldn’t have to go this route.
I called eBay after this appeal failure and asked what evidence the buyer produced to show he didn’t get it - the simple answer is he didn’t - he just said he hadn’t signed for it and as there was no signature he won. So please be careful as eBay have set a very worrying precedent that Buyers>couriers. You’d think the worlds biggest courier telling them an item was delivered would be sufficient but on this occasion they have gone the other way.
I did everything I could as a seller and for eBay, but the buyer power is immense. I’m not saying I do/don’t believe the buyer got the item, but he refused to communicate with me at all after opening the case - as this probably could have been better resolved with communication, or maybe he knew without a signature he would win regardless.
So, long story short - I hate eBay & be careful when selling (especially over £750/$1,000 as couriers may not get a signature and then your sh*t out of luck!
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Sorry to hear that.
Have you tried talking to the high value department? Check out this post.
www.elitefourum.com/t/luigipokemon-fraudulent-claims/31147/19
I am 100% with you on the Facebook selling complaints. Selling on eBay has its issues (exorbitant fees, minimal seller protection), but Facebook groups are absolute hell. Whenever I try to sell stuff on Facebook these days, I put the prices I’m looking for and a bunch of non-negotiable qualifiers in the OP: prices are firm, U.S. shipping only, do not message me “hey are you there?” if I don’t respond for 20 minutes, etc.
It’s insane to me that so many people list stuff in Virbank “looking for offers.” I can’t imagine anything more annoying… I get enough spam haggling as-is when I put “PRICES ARE FIRM” in the OP!
Also, @bobbkos, I’m so sorry that happened to you. eBay is pro-buyer and anti-seller to an infuriating degree. IME they will always ultimately rule in favor of the buyer unless you have a video of you walking up to the buyer’s front door and handing them the fucking package in person.
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Working on rebuilding my collection and tried Virbank and Facebook, holy moly is it a headache it is absolutely wild! There are definitely some good deals, items, sellers, and buyers but the average user can be a real headache like you said.
Hearing stories like what happened to bobbkos makes me really appreciate services like PWCC…
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Very demoralising story, I have small beans when it comes to inventory that I would sell that pales in comparison to that sale and even then I get really nervous about eBay selling. Is that the end of the road then? I’d certainly have a few more goes with eBay - persistence, Good luck either way.
I’ve had a terrible time selling on ebay lately as well, all of the same stuff.
- buyers not paying for auctions they win (even at the last minute) and then not responding to messages
- buyers who buy something and then beg for a reduced price
- buyers who get the card and claim they never bought it (paypal sided with me here)
and lastly, my favorite and somewhat controversial - buyers who buy a card, say “there’s no way this is a PSA 9” and force my hand to return it, claiming it was unethical of me to sell a card that was clearly misgraded.
While the latter is slightly controversial, I’m in the line of thinking that PSA 9 means PSA 9. I understand there are people who think some cards are graded too low and others graded too high. but we are not in the business of subjectivity after asking PSA to be objective about our cards (IMHO). PSA has a guarantee for this reason. ebay sided with the buyer in this case and said “I didn’t describe the item correctly” - guess I need to start describing every minute detail of my psa 6s and 7s 
but to OP yes, I’ve noticed it, specifically in pokemon.
I’ve also had a friend who took a return from someone and got an empty box. Ebay told him to open a police report as they couldn’t do anything. Sigh.
ebay is pretty terrible for anything other than being a massive awareness funnel for driving traffic to what you want to sell. One day it will change… just may be years or decades away…
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Sorry if this seems incredibly obvious, are you selling PSA 9 slabs or 9s by your interpretation? i.e. people are arguing with the quality of the PSAs grade - I can get my head around ebay siding with a buyer when its officially graded.
Sounds like all you sellers are having issues but I won an auction as a buyer and the seller cancelled my order because it didn’t sell as high as he wanted it to sell. 
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PSA 9 slabs 
I would never list something as my interpretation of the grade for a raw card. I also can’t understand it either but apparently according to another post here, they’ve recently changed this.
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yep an unfortunate circumstance too - easy to cancel as the seller.
it’s worse on yahoo auctions jp fwiw… shill bidding galore. and sometimes I’ll win things that I got out bid on … cause the seller canceled the highest bid
Thought I’d add another eBay horror on here.
Sold like 100 items over the last 2 months and have a lot of outstanding feedback. So fired over a generic ‘hey thanks for the purchase’ kind of message to my buyers just asking for positive feedback… queue Karen:
Me:
Hi - Thanks so much for your purchase from me.
If you would please leave me positive feedback - it makes a massive difference to my selling profile & would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance!
Karen:
I will if you leave me positive feedback first. Thank you in advance
Me:
When you’ve left me positive I’ll be happy to leave for you. Thanks
Karen:
Well i don’t like the way your dealing with me as a customer & the customer is always right so please could you leave me positive feedback first? Thanks in advance.
Me:
No problem - I think I’ll leave it, thank you.
Karen:
So you make a request. I counter your request. You then refuse my request & claim the situation has been odd. When the customer is always right. Poor customer service from you this shall be reflected in your feedback.
Me:
Think about what your saying. All I asked was for you to politely leave feedback - I sent that same message to around 100 other buyers and many were happy to leave the feedback - which I then reciprocated. I’m not sure why you’ve taken it upon yourself to demand I leave it for you first - it is odd and you are the first and only person I’ve ever encountered being so unwilling. I really hope you do not choose to leave reflective feedback as I think that would be a poor error of judgement in a situation where I simply asked for feedback on the item you purchased. When this was done - you could have just asked me to also leave feedback like all other buyers and I’d have done this immediately! Sorry that you feel as though you’ve received poor service here but I honestly don’t know why you’ve become offended by a simple request.
Karen:
I made the same simple request you did & you’ve taken it upon yourself to make me out to be the one with the problem. All customers are different, so because everyone else fell into line with your request i must have a problem if i don’t do the same.
Most sellers i buy from leave me positive feedback first before i do. Yet your one of the first that hasn’t & won’t for me. Yet i’m the one with the problem according to you. You can only leave me positive feedback anyway so what’s the harm in doing as i request? Yes, you may be used to getting your own way but in this instance you aren’t.
Poor customer service by you as the customer is always right. Also you rudeness towards someone who’s purchased from you is not appreciated!
Enjoy your feedback!
I think I could have handled it better for sure - but I don’t want to be strong armed by anybody - all I wanted was some feedback. Anyway, she left me negative feedback and after eBay initially refusing to remove, they have now agreed to remove as it is grossly unfair. Absolutely I could have just left her feedback etc - but don’t lose sight of the point of the post.
TLDR: Karen.
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Not saying Karen is right but why aren’t leaving feedback for the buyer before all of this? Buyer feedback is basically if they’ve done their part and paid which they did. I always leave feedback for the buyer before i ever get any feedback in return.
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@bobbkos, I don’t see the issue with just following her initial request. If I were in your shoes, I would’ve followed her request and been done with it.
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While @bobbkos should have just left feedback and let it go, it’s really weird of the buyer to just bring up the whole “the customer is always right” thing (which is a BS phrase that shouldn’t even exist, by the way) out of the blue. That is a pretty significant red flag to me.
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No I do agree - and understand if I’d just left feedback when she’s paid I wouldn’t have had the issue.
But it doesn’t change the fact that her course of action was unreasonable.
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Don’t disagree - I should have been more on top of leaving buyer feedback, but it doesn’t change her response being proportionately unreasonable IMO
Interesting to see so many people agreeing on naturally giving the buyer feedback first. Both as seller and as buyer I personally always assumed it more logical to give the seller feedback first before the buyer can expect their feedback.
After all, the deal is only really completed once the buyer is accepting what I sent them without opening a case or trying a scam. I thought as a seller if I give positive feedback beforehand I’d be in a weaker position in case of a scam.
But if it’s the usual norm for selllers to give feedback first, maybe that’s the reason I get feedback from buyers so rarely.
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Someone sending me a specific message asking me to leave feedback for them just makes me leave feedback slower.
Don’t rush me lol