EBay sucks and is terrible for sellers

[hpnuts]

I sold piece of industrial equipment on eBay , listed as new (see details). As it was in the lab and had not been installed.   After the purchase.  The buyer had me drop shipped to his end customer the customer did not want it.  So his end customer shipped the unit back to him.  I said no returns accepted. And the reason he gave was that it is not new. 

 EBay sided with the buyer and force the return through me.  This item cost over $2000 dollars so the final fees were over 200.   I didn't like it but they force my hand.  The problem was that the buyer then shipped a different non working unit back to me.  I told EBay about it and called the end customer to make sure that he sent back the correct one. The end customer was purchasing agent for a big manufacturing company and provided me with the pictures of my unit.(it had stickers on it.).  First pic is my unit second one is the picture of what I received.  I tested the equipment and all of the setup files are missing from the device.  So I pleaded with eBay not to refund the buyer.  No only did they sided with the buyer,  they are taking are also not refunding my final value fee.  EBay is does not work with sellers despite what they say on the web page.  I am out over $300, final value fee,  cost of return shipping and PayPal fee.  I would have been fine with it if the buyer had return my unit that was in working condition. So all in all seller beware!  they turn the cheek and let fraud be commited on their system and take their cut. I am going to Bonanza.  EBay sucks!

[double2trouble]

You can file a police report, IC3, and mail fraud with the Post Office. You also should never ship anything to anywhere but the buyers address. Doing so negates any seller protection you might of had. I hate to keep repeating this, but you should not list anything you can't afford to lose on eBay. 

[luckythewinner]

OP,

On eBay, any buyer can steal any item from any seller at any time as long as he dpoes not make a mistake in the process.

That does not mean that eBay sucks for all sellers, it just means that eBay sucks for the sellers this happens to.

My own guidelines are to never sell anything that I cannot afford to lose outright along with the shipping cost. Thankfully, in over 5000 transaction it simply has not been an issue for me.

P.S, if you go to Bonanza and accept payments through PayPal, the same thing can happen there as well.

Lucky

[hpnuts]

So in essence your gambling... throw all your stuff in this box and maybe you'll make some money, maybe we charge you more money... it's not set up well. The final value fee is what gets me! I am not only lost my item, I am being charged $250 by eBay!

[bubbleman2010]

Big error on your part you should have shipped it directly to buyer and let them reship it to end user. Once its shipped it voids any claim the original purchaser may file...

[hpnuts]

What about Amazon payments?

[double2trouble]

Shipping it somewhere other than the buyers address may be why they won't refund the fees. Does the unit have a serial# ?  You should have taken a picture of it and had it in the listing. You are also a low feedback buyer selling an expensive piece of equipment. you can appeal and send them the IC3, mail fraud, and police report, but because you sent it somewhere other than the buyers address, you may be hosed. I am sorry this happened to you, $2000 is a big hit.

[luckythewinner]

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@hpnuts wrote:

What about Amazon payments?

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I have no idea. I have never used them.

I assume they must have a user agreement you can look at to see how they handle disputes.

Lucky

[hpnuts]

well,  if the buyer explicitly put on the PayPal message that it's is a drop ship I should have said no?  That's new to me.  The final value fee hit is the icing on the eBay cake!    

[bubbleman2010]

Without seeing the original listing I would suspect you got hit by a upgrader. Their unit is junk they search ebay for a replacement that isn't listed bullet proof buy it and file a claim. Happens all the time to sellers on the ebay merry go round that are reaching for that golden ring. They've got your good working unit and you've got their junk...

[adspec1]

Put your items on Craigslist, cash and carry...........

Sold with no returns means no returns on Craigs, no interference with PayPal, no eBay buyer fraud program.

[hpnuts]

Never realized that about the merry go round. Do 

[mudshark61369]

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@hpnuts wrote:
So in essence your gambling... throw all your stuff in this box and maybe you'll make some money, maybe we charge you more money... it's not set up well. The final value fee is what gets me! I am not only lost my item, I am being charged $250 by eBay!

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hpnuts,

There has alwys been a bit of risk when selling on ebay, but they can be mitigated, if you follow ebay's rules, and do things to protect yourself from being scammed.

For example:  You wrote,

"After the purchase.  The buyer had me drop shipped to his end customer"

Why would you do that?  You negated your selling protections and set yourself up for being scammed.You only ship to the address on the payment page, never to another.

How far from your customer's address was the "end buyer's" location?  If it was close then most likely the buyer is who scammed you. Check that now if you still have the info for the person you sent the item to. It might help if you decide to file a report with the Postal Inspectors, or IC3.

Even if the buyer and their customer were far apart, in a pure business sense you made money for your buyer, by saving them the shipping cost to their customer. 

Mistake #1,

"I sold piece of industrial equipment on eBay , listed as new (see details). As it was in the lab and had not been installed...  I said no returns accepted. And the reason he gave was that it is not new.".

Your buyer is right, New is narrowly defined by ebay.  In that category, New Other was available as an item condition you should have used it.

eBay's buyer protections, trump a seller's  no return/refund policy every time, when a Significantly Not As Described (SNAD) dispute is opened.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/item-condition.html

2nd Mistake,

If you did not photograph the serial number of the item you sold, and put the photo in the listing,  you opened yourself up for receiving a different item back.

One reason for the Unwritten golden rule for sellers "Describe like there are no photos, and photograph like there is no description" Is for seller protection. This is especially true of expensive items.

I recently had a buyer try to switch a return, and was able to prove to customer service by the photos in the listing, that the returned item was not the one sent. In that case it did help that it was a rare item, and he had listed the one I sold on his selling account, again provable by the descrip, & photos.   Maybe you should look to see if the unit you sold is listed or has recently sold, hopefully you can absolutely prove it was your item. 

[double2trouble]

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@luckythewinner wrote:

OP,

On eBay, any buyer can steal any item from any seller at any time as long as he dpoes not make a mistake in the process.

That does not mean that eBay sucks for all sellers, it just means that eBay sucks for the sellers this happens to.

My own guidelines are to never sell anything that I cannot afford to lose outright along with the shipping cost. Thankfully, in over 5000 transaction it simply has not been an issue for me.

P.S, if you go to Bonanza and accept payments through PayPal, the same thing can happen there as well.

Lucky

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Unfortunately, this is true. They can also wait the 4 months until it goes out of tracking, file a Paypal claim for not received, and get it for free. Ebay has gone from the first place experienced sellers used to list great stuff, to those same sellers garbage dump of low cost items their not a lot of money into.

As a publicly traded company, ebay is going to focus on it's big sell through contracts, data selling, and investments that make (or try to make) money for shareholders. Sellers like you and me are disposable, and easily replaced in ebay's eyes. Our products are usually only desirable to a small number of people, and are in limited supply. If you are not easily commoditized and repeatable, you are useless to a large corporation.

[a_c_green]

In reading this saga, a few things occurred to me:

1) For all the talk about reshipping, etc., the root problem here is that the seller didn't get his original unit back again. He would be equally out of luck if the buyer had sent it directly back instead of from a third party, wouldn't he? The end result would be the same, and eBay would enforce the refund on the basis of never getting into the middle of he-said/she-said disputes about who shipped what, and what got returned.

2) While the seller did send the item to a third-party address, I don't see anywhere in the OP to indicate that the address wasn't provided with the payment. If the third-party address was provided with the PayPal payment, and not sent separately in email or whatever, then there's no-harm, no-foul on that point.

3) Given the amount of money at stake here, the OP might want to pursue this in civil small-claims court. eBay is not likely to be of any further assistance on this, I suspect.