I apologize if this is long, but my god... I never in a million years could've imagined an experience this awful. I'm here posting this now with the hopes that maybe someone may be able to give me some insight or just to open a space for people to commiserate and share similar experiences.
I recently sold a PS5 to a buyer in Israel. No, I'm not a scalper. I was fortunate enough to have locked down a second one for a friend during the initial preorders when we wasn't able to. Eventually he was able to get one during the second wave of preorders and a bunch of my other friends were able to as well so with their blessing, I decided to list it on eBay - for $500 initially (I paid $530 including taxes). It eventually got bidded up and without realizing it, I had International Shipping turned on. I eventually found out when the person who won it started contacting me with weird payment issues and his location came up. I still agreed to ship it with reservations because he started asking me a few odd questions like if I could lie on the customs report. I also believed that the package was fully insured and this was a solid program to ship through. Unfortunately every single thing that could’ve gone wrong has gone wrong so here I am now, out of well over $1100 – closer to $1650 if you include the cost of the original product.
This item was initially shipped out at the end of November and left the US at the beginning of December. The last shipping update was December 14th when it was leaving Frankfurt, Germany for Israel so the local post office could deliver it. The estimated delivery date continued to fluctuate but from DHL International (who was handling it up until the last update), I heard that January 4th was the last estimated date they had. So fast forward a few weeks and a case was opened with eBay by the buyer. I actually missed the initial notification for this because I got a bunch of other notifications at the same time for another item I had just sold that day (the 21st). The next notification I saw was on the 26th when it was escalated into a full case and I was given one day to respond (with a refund being my only option). eBay did no investigative work, didn’t bother to try me at all, and automatically determined that I had to provide a refund of $1094.
I attempted to appeal this and give my side but they’ve basically said that unless I have a tracking proof he received it, they won’t reopen it. The only other option I have is to open a claim, but there’s error with that too since I found out (after calling an insurance number they gave me) that the MOST the international standard shipping program offers is $100 MAX. So on top of that, no one’s been willing to help me investigate what happened to the package. After numerous phone calls between eBay and DHL international, I’ve gotten sparce information and run into a wall because eBay is the only one who’s able to further investigate this. The further I got was determining that this package actually HAD left Germany and gone to Isreal, but nothing more than that. DHL informed me that this was eBay’s account so THEY would have to proceed with further investigation.
This is eBay's standard international shipping service program, this is eBay's account with DHL International, and it was eBay's warehouse where the shipping was last updated from, so I have no further investigation I’m even allowed to do on my end no matter how hard I try. On top of that I'm speechless that eBay would force people to ship things internationally with only $100 insurance, because I didn't see any other options listed when I purchased postage on this. The insurance amount also wasn't even advertised anywhere on that page - otherwise I would've NEVER shipped this. I find every aspect of this situation absolutely unacceptable. No one from eBay is offering to do any investigative work and pretty much me I'm on my own at every turn EBAY is the only one who can investigate this further and no one is bothering to. My options are "wait for it to arrive and pray" or "it just doesn't arrive and I file a claim, get ONLY $100, and I'm out way over $1000" - none of those are acceptable.
In addition to that, I did my own investigation of the buyer as well. In addition to confirming it left Germany, DHL confirmed that the arrival date should’ve been January 4th. When I researched the buyer via Twitter and PSN(which I found on his Twitter) I have proof that he was using a PS5 as early as January 5th. I don’t know if that’s a weird coincidence but I find this to be highly suspicious. It becomes even more suspicious given a few of his questions about refunds and when he asked me to lie about the value of this item on the customs form to save money.
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What's everyone else's experience been like? I just reported eBay to the BBB and opened a case, but are there any other recommended steps?
