Dear fellow eBay users,
A quick tale of woe and warning, with some odd details thrown in. I have the suspicion that certain unscrupulous buyers are exploiting the current postal delays, with eBay's unintentional support due to their buyer-friendly policies, to rip off sellers. EBay have indirectly confirmed that this is the case.
I sold a valuable CD player (€517) on ebay.de to Taiwan in early October. Because of the weight of over 10kg, the postage cost was €120. The buyer immediately paid, I gave them positive feedback and when they gave me good feedback a few days later, I thought no more of it.
A few weeks later, the buyer opened a case, as the item had not been delivered. It was Friday evening. Oddly, the eBay overview that the buyer had seen estimated delivery on the 19th October at the latest, whereas my view on the iOS app showed 19th November at the latest. More on this later.
I sent a screenshot to the buyer, and asked him to give me time to begin track and trace with the post office. The buyer told me that he was no longer interested in the CD player, as "his client had cancelled the order". He just wanted his money back.
On the following Monday, I initiated track and trace with the post office and phoned eBay to tell them what I had done to try and resolve the conflict.
A very friendly call centre operative thanked me for calling, said I had done exactly the right thing, and that eBay would therefore give me an extension for resolving the conflict.
Two days later, with no further communication, eBay decided in favour of the buyer, who received a full refund of €637.
I called them up, they were very friendly and said that they understood, and that in any case I would have 30 days after eBay's decision to appeal. When I pointed out the discrepancy between estimated delivery dates of a month between the buyers' and sellers' views, they claimed that my screenshot of the app was "not an official eBay view" and was "not evidence"... Hmm... Have a look at the attached screenshots for yourselves...
They insisted that until there was a change in the situation, they could not do anything anyway.
Then, on Friday the 6th November, I got a message from the buyer saying that the post office had invited him to collect the parcel and pay €83 import tax. If not, he claimed, the parcel would become property of the state and auctioned off.
When I had sent the parcel, I had ticked the box asking for it to be returned to me if undeliverable, so I immediately contacted the post office with this new information, hoping that they would organise the return free of charge because of the excessive delay.
On Monday 9th November, before I had a chance to sort things out with the post office, the buyer informed me that he had picked up the parcel, paid €83, and if I wanted to have it back, I would have to transfer €83 tax + €125 postage to his PayPal account and he would then send it back to me...
I spoke with eBay again at length on the evening of the 9th. As far as they are concerned, there is nothing that they can (or are willing to) do. The case is closed for them.
They did, however, tell me that they think there are buyers in several parts of the world - the countries they mentioned were China, Thailand, Italy and the USA - who are exploiting eBay's buyer protection scheme and the postal delays being caused by the global COVID-19 restrictions to rip sellers off. Even if postal workers are working, there are fewer planes flying and that means capacity is reduced, even while there are more online purchases being made.
I had suggested to my buyer that sending another €208 to him without any protection would be a risky proposition for me, given everything that has happened so far, and that a fairer approach would be for him to list the CD player on eBay in Taiwan, take his costs out of the proceeds and return the rest to me. Needless to say, he did not respond to this proposal.
Here is a direct quote from his last message to me: "I won't respond to you again unless you have a better solution."
I wanted to warn other eBay users about the current situation. By not changing their predicted delivery times and/or refund policies and by showing buyers and sellers different delivery date estimates and then denying that they are doing it, eBay are currently losing custom, money and goodwill.
Just for context, I have been using eBay for 20 years to buy and sell, perhaps I have been lucky but I have never experienced anything like this before.
Be careful out there!
