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.

[qiiwexc]

How would you know?

Also, those were simple returns, not payment disputes.

[qiiwexc]

Big news! The scammer (from my original message) got banned!

[monster-deals]

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@qiiwexc wrote:

How would you know?

Also, those were simple returns, not payment disputes.

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Because it is 100% not how ebay works.

No one is winning "returns" with pictures, videos or any other visual media showing you packing or what you unpacked.

It is, plainly and simply, not a thing.

[qiiwexc]

Yet when a buyer opens a return, they are encouraged to provide photos to show what is wrong with the item. In my original post in this thread in the very first screenshot you can clearly see that the buyer attached a photo. Did they have nothing better to do? Does eBay have this functionality just for fun?

And if a buyer returns a damaged item, how else would I prove it's damaged? I can state that it's damaged to eBay customer support - but then it's my word against the word of the buyer. Where is the proof?

A picture or a video is not a perfect proof too, sure, but it's better than nothing.

If visual media does not play any role in the return cases, well then it only highlights the ever-increasing pile of problems that plague this platform. And judging by how the case I shared in this thread went - it may as well be "not a thing".