Scammed by a payment dispute (unwarranted chargeback), then got lied to by the customer service

[qiiwexc]

I've been an eBay member since 2013, and I've been a seller on eBay for over 7 years. I currently have (and had for a while) the "Top Seller" status. This recent experience I'm about to share made me start actively looking into other platforms to move my business to.

I used to believe with utmost confidence that customer support would always get to the bottom of any issue and make it right. Oh, how naive of me. Now I have absolutely zero trust in them, in their competence, and in this platform. A single experience changed my outlook 180 degrees.

Me and my father are operating a small business selling TV parts here on eBay. A bit more than a month ago a purchase from a Belgian account was made - the buyer purchased a mainbord for their TV. Here's what happened next:

• The buyer received the item and soon after they opened a return claiming that the item we sent was defective.
  
• The buyer attached to the return a photo that was not the item we sent them (our initial assumption was that this was the broken mainboard from their TV that they wanted to replace and purchased ours, but they didn't identify the model number correctly) - red flag 1
  
  
• They shipped the item on October 2 - before the return was even accepted on October 3 - red flag 2
  
  
• The shipping label on the return package had 3 mistakes - in the last name of the recipient, in the street name, and in the city name. For privacy reasons, I will not be sharing photos here, but this information was shared with customer support. - red flag 3
• The buyer opened a payment dispute on October 9 - before the return was delivered on October 10. - red flag 4
  
  
• We received the return and unboxed it on video. After having been burned on a return scam case once, we always record unboxings on video to be able to prove what exactly was returned. This saved us twice before - buyers returned the wrong items, we provided the videos to customer support and it was the end of it.
  Here it was a similar case, but a nasty insidious one - the buyer sent us their broken board having put some of the stickers from our board to theirs before shipping, making it look at first glance that it was actually our item. We noticed signs of tampering while still recording and pointed them out on video, and only after some time did we realize that it was the wrong item altogether. But this doesn't matter - even if it was our item but tampered with, this should have been enough - red flag 5
• eBay requested our input for the payment dispute - I described what had happened, and shared the link to the unlisted (private) YouTube video of the unboxing with several timestamps where the board is up close and it's easy to see the difference. I also attached a screenshot from the video where the full board is visible highlighting some of the places where it can be seen that it's actually a different item.
  
• eBay responded that the decision was made in favor of the buyer scammer, and the scammer is getting our money. And on top of that, eBay is taking 20$ more. Scammed by the buyer, then scammed by eBay some more. At this point frankly, I lost my temper with the eBay customer support scam.
  
• In the dispute details, it was mentioned that it's possible to file an appeal, and there was a link to the "Payment dispute seller protections" page on the eBay help portal - https://www.ebay.com/help/payment-dispute-seller-protections/selling-policies/payment-dispute-seller...
  The only way to contact eBay was a button "Contact us" at the bottom of the page. I clicked it, described everything that had happened with additional timestamps from the video, and submitted the form.
• Here is the response I got.
  TL;DR - They are taking no responsibility for what is going on on their platform, and they point me back to the page I wrote my message from. And, most interesting - they did not even look at the evidence I provided, the video I shared. I can clearly see that because the number of views on YouTube stayed the same - 1 from when I originally collected the timestamps.
  
• I wrote another message from that page, highlighting with uppercase that it was an appeal since apparently, they did not get it the first time.
• The response I got.
  TL;DR - as a one-time courtesy they are refunding the 20$ they took from me. So I apparently should be grateful to them for not scamming me too. And that's all. No action against the scammer. And again, they did not even look at the evidence, yet they say they looked at all the details in full. Actual lies!
  
  

And yes, I did of course report the scammer, and I have provided all the details, including the link to the video. To this day not a single person at eBay opened the video.

Besides that, the buyer left me neutral feedback, and I left a comment under their feedback describing their scam. Now the feedback is gone, and with it - my comment. So not only eBay is siding with the scammer, not only they are refusing to review the evidence on 4 (!!) occasions, not only are they lying about having looked at the evidence, but they also are covering up the scam. One cannot simply remove the feedback, it's done by a request to the customer service. This means that the scammer requested the feedback removal and eBay had done it. - red flag 6

I also investigated this buyer's feedback.
As a seller, they received 14 feedbacks, out of which 10 were negative. Clearly, they are an "upstanding" eBay member. - red flag 7

As a buyer, they received an interesting one recently. It's positive feedback, but the comment describes a similar scam with a return - but it seems they were able to win the case. - red flag 8

And this is not an isolated issue. There are a plethora of articles describing unwarranted chargeback scams. Here are just some of them:
https://www.comparitech.com/identity-theft-protection/ebay-scams/#:~:text=Unwarranted%20chargeback

https://us.norton.com/blog/online-scams/ebay-scams#:~:text=15.-,Unwarranted%20chargeback,-Unfortunat...

https://www.dollarslate.com/ebay-scams/#:~:text=these%20malicious%20practices.-,Unwarranted%20charge...

There are YouTube videos describing these scams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQXuSAq62jY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nMSut97JTs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p7bvOkEp88

There are huge threads on this very community:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Payments/Sellers-Beware-of-Payment-Dispute-Scam/td-p/31278521 (120 replies)
https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/Payment-dispute-CHARGEBACK-SCAM-SELLERS-BEWARE... (308 replies)

This is a very well-known issue. It is widespread, yet eBay still takes no action to fix this and lies while at it. This is absurd. So many lines have been crossed that I have absolutely no trust in this platform anymore. Looks like it's time to set up my own online shop with Shopify.

[bonjourami]

Plain and simple....when there is a cc chargeback, Ebay never gets involved with those.Sorry.

[civicwagonparts]

I am going through the same situation.
Mine was a rare used car bumper with high shipping costs.
Bumper was as described with a couple scuffs. The buyer used my pics from the description to file an ebay claim. The ebay claim was denied, and buyer filed a CC payment dispute. Which was decided in the buyers favor.
My buyer has a 3-page criminal record, most recently for shoplifting, fleeing the scene, and driving a car w expired plates (same car he put my bumper on).  ebay refused to look at any of this evidence.

For years, ebay handled the CC chargebacks and did not involve the seller.
Within the last year or two, ebay has now made the seller responsible.

I heard all the same rhetoric they feed you. Pee-ing on our backs and tell us it raining.

This maybe it for ebay and me. I had 100's of parts ready to list before the holiday. I now plan on listing them elsewhere, and just dropping the prices on all my ebay items until I sell out my ebay inventory..
The good thing is, EB is no longer the only game in town. FB mktplce is getting much better. Google is starting a sales platform, and Google Search is giving more relevance to smaller websites.

[qiiwexc]

Sorry to hear that, @civicwagonparts...

@bonjourami wrote:

when there is a cc chargeback, Ebay never gets involved with those

---

But they say lie they do - https://www.ebay.com/help/payment-dispute-seller-protections/selling-policies/payment-dispute-seller...

"When a buyer opens a dispute with their payment institution (for example, their credit card provider or PayPal), the payment institution will inform eBay of the dispute and initiate a process to resolve the dispute with the buyer. eBay will collect information about the transaction and help the seller build evidence to defend the dispute." - this is a big fat lie. Plain and simple. They will collect the information, yes, but then will not even look at it.

"The final outcome of the dispute is decided by the payment institution. If the payment institution determines that the buyer is owed a refund, eBay will refund the buyer and will then seek reimbursement from the seller for the refunded amount. However, the seller may be eligible for payment dispute seller protections by eBay. For details on how these protections work – which transactions are eligible or excluded, and what sellers need to do – please read our full policy below." - lies again.

"Payment dispute seller protections may apply when the buyer opens a payment dispute for one of the following reasons:

• They didn't receive the item
• They don't recognize the transaction or have an issue with the transaction
• The item they received doesn't match the listing

" - exactly my case.

[civicwagonparts]

Seems to me, this problem go much worse when eBay dropped PayPal, and went to "Managed Payments".
I never had this problem in 20yrs with PayPal. Now I have had three "Payment Disputes" filed this year.
eBay told us how great managed payment would be, lol. Fees have gone up, Promoted listings are now being pushed on sellers, and no recourse with "Payment Disputes".

I don't know if eBay really understands how much better their competition has become, FB and Google will soon be the preferred online platforms for used goods. Then eBay will go broke trying to compete with AMZ. I have seen a recent uptick in my sales on other platforms, while eBay is stagnant.

eBay really does favor the AMZ model, eBay now wants sellers who sell new-chinesium parts cheap as possible, and have all sellers compete for the lowest price.
Like the new "eBay Product Identifier, EPID", you can already see eBay trying to merge listings. Works fine for an iPhone case, not so good for used OEM parts.

I only pay $10k a year in eBay fees, clearly I am not a valued customer.
I told ebay in my last conversation,
"This was not a fair process. Please have someone call me if you do not want me to close my account"................I have received no response.

[qiiwexc]

I too never had issues with "Payment Disputes" when PayPal was managing the payments. Now I had 2-3 when eBay seems to have handled them on their own. And then I got scammed. Great!

The current system is marginally more convenient - having everything in one place with no third-party dependencies. But that's all, no more benefits. eBay promised lower fees when moving away from PayPal, but the difference was tiny, and it seems the total fees are even higher now.

Also, I'm located in the EEU, so eBay converts USD to EUR for me and makes money on the conversion rate they set. On PayPal, I used to be able to decide when to withdraw the money (depending on the conversion rate), or I could not withdraw at all and then spend USD back on eBay or somewhere else. This is no longer an option.

Besides these money-related issues, one of my favorites is how they shift blame for the items arriving late. 
They set the delivery date on behalf of the seller, and then if the item arrives late - even if the seller sends it in time - the seller is at fault and gets penalized. They set the arrival estimate for you, but you are at fault if the estimate turns out to be wrong. Brilliant!

At this point, I am trying out other platforms. It's never a good idea to keep all the eggs in one basket, and I was doing it for too long. It's time to branch out.

[powell-memorabilia]

Principled stands are great, and sorry that you were scammed.  But you have spent more time fighting this issue, multiplied by minimum wage, than you lost on the item.  Move on is my advice.  

[vintagecraze50]

There is no difference between how Ebay and PayPal handle chargebacks. NEVER WAS a difference. PP did more behind the scene cleaning up of item not received chargebacks when tracking showed delivered. These were just auto done without seller involvement and resolved immediately. These are easy to dispute. Not as Described/ defective etc  transactions are a problem with ANY payment processor. 

[qiiwexc]

It just keeps getting better. I thought I would at least remove the positive feedback I left the scammer before I was hit by the payment dispute - but eBay will not remove positive feedback. Great! eBay removed the neutral feedback the scammer left me (which I commented on with the outline of their scam), but they won't remove my positive one.

@powell-memorabilia you are right, too much time was wasted on this already. I just wanted to post about what had happened to let others know how this kind of scam can be carried out and that eBay doesn't give two hoots about seeking truth (contradicting their own policies), and they will actively lie - which was eye-opening for me. At this point, I have blocked the scammer and started creating a bare-bones store with Shopify.

I suppose the Wikipedia page about en**bleep**tification needs one more entry.

Edit: eBay redacted the term en-shi-ti-fi-ca-tion in the link above (in both text and URL). How ironic. 

[sdneped]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

There is no difference between how Ebay and PayPal handle chargebacks. NEVER WAS a difference.

PP did more behind the scene cleaning up of item not received chargebacks when tracking showed delivered. These were just auto done without seller involvement and resolved immediately.

These are easy to dispute. Not as Described/ defective etc  transactions are a problem with ANY payment processor. 

---

eBay cannot handle chargebacks how PayPal handles chargebacks. Because eBay is not a payment processor. 

In the same way that your PayPal account cannot see the buyer's card issuer

-- eBay is buried under PayPal, and

-- eBay is blind behind Adyen

so eBay is not in contact with the card issuer and EBAY HAS NO IDEA WHO IS THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY.

Everyone is welcome to download the graphic, to doodle and repost it 

• with what we understand or don't know
• about credit cards processed by Adyen and PayPal
• then paid less commission to eBay running Managed Payments.

[qiiwexc]

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@sdneped wrote:

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eBay is not in contact with the card issuer and EBAY HAS NO IDEA WHO IS THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY.

---

Oh, but they very much are - albeit via Adyen or PayPal. At least that's what they say themselves:

"When a buyer opens a dispute with their payment institution (for example, their credit card provider or PayPal), the payment institution will inform eBay of the dispute and initiate a process to resolve the dispute with the buyer. eBay will collect information about the transaction and help the seller build evidence to defend the dispute."

But ultimately, the point isn't really that eBay does or does not talk to the payment processor. The point is that eBay promises seller protections and doesn't apply them even when the criteria for the protections are met - and then lies about having looked at the evidence.

For the platform the size of eBay it's insane that they take scams like this so carelessly. At this point why don't I purchase something, return a brick, then open a payment dispute claiming I got sent something wrong and get my money back? Seems like a lucrative endeavor.

[monster-deals]

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@qiiwexc wrote:

• and unboxed it on video.

---

For what purpose?

[monster-deals]

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@bonjourami wrote:

Plain and simple....when there is a cc chargeback, Ebay never gets involved with those.Sorry.

---

Ebay gets involved on every single chargeback. 

[qiiwexc]

To protect myself from being scammed, to have proof of what I received back.

How else will I be able to prove that the buyer returned something different from what I sent them, in case they do?
I can take a photo of the unpacked package, sure, but I can also take out the returned item, put it in a brick, take a photo then, and claim this was what the buyer sent. So just a photo doesn't prove anything. But having a video of the package how it was originally packed by the buyer, and then unboxing it - albeit imperfect too - has more credibility, in my mind.

This saved us twice before, but this time eBay wouldn't even consider it. I could send them photos too - and I have shared one, but I doubt they looked at it either. With an unlisted YouTube video, I can at least see if they bothered to have a look (which they didn't).

[monster-deals]

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@qiiwexc wrote:

This saved us twice before,

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It didn't. 

Your pictures you may have shown someone is not why you got any refund from ebay.