evry1nositswindy • seller since 2013
There is no appealing. The numbers on your seller dashboard don't lie. The only way to bring the percentage down is sell more items with no problems. Have you been keeping an eye on your dashboard? You should have been aware of this before the extra fee kicked in.
@se_appl wrote:About a half of the return requests I got was a scam or a buyer mistake, however, eBay forced me to approve them. For example, I sell a damaged item, listing shows it's damaged, description shows, it's damaged, pictures show it's damaged. Buyer opens return request because item arrived damaged. EBay forces me to take this item back and it hits my statistics. What can I as a seller do to this?
This is the direct result of an obscure FTC ruling that was put in place way back in the day of mail order catalog sales. A lot of those 'catalogs' were really just scams to get people to send money and receive trash or damaged goods. So the US Government stepped in with consumer protections - one of which is an FTC ruling that if a buyer files a complaint regarding a purchase delivered via 'common carrier' (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, etc), that the seller is held liable to either replace the purchase to the buyer's satisfaction or refund the buyer in full. Failure carried a fine and possible criminal charges.
eBay is required to either enforce that ruling or be held liable for the actions of it's sellers. When a buyer opens a Return Request, they are 'filing a complaint' as required by the FTC ruling. The seller then has to either refund or reship, unless they can convince the buyer to rescind the Request.
eBay has, I suspect with legal research & support, determined that if the buyer opens a Return Request because they simply changed their mind, that the FTC ruling does not apply, which I would agree with -- it's a simple return, not a damaged goods or not-as-described product. In those cases, since the FTC ruling does not apply, the seller is allowed the option to deny the Request. Buyers can only file one Request per purchase - if the file a Changed Mind request which is denied, they cannot file an Not As Described request after being denied. One bite of the apply. They -would- be allowed to file an Item Not Received case, except their previous Changed Mind Return Request would nullify the "I never got it" part of the claim.
Buyers who have a Request denied are still free to file a chargeback with their financial institution, but those folks are not as lenient as they once were and may not accept the chargeback request. Or if they do, eBay will send them the chain-of-events regarding the transaction and allow the financial institution to make the call (first the buyer said this, then they said that, now they are telling you something else).
Returns bite. They consume time, they nullify the invested time in shipping the original order... they just basically consume profits for no real benefit. Sellers who hand our partial or full refunds upon simple "I'm not happy" messages from buyers simply increase the odds that the buyers will try it again. Requiring the customer to open a Return Request creates a record on the buyer's account on eBay. eBay monitors these kinds of things -- otherwise seller's wouldn't be suspended for this or that offense. When a buyer's Return Request ratio gets high enough, I would assume a 'deep dive' is performed, part automated, part by a thinking, reasoning human, and if a pattern of abuse is found, the buyer is dealt with accordingly. But this requires sellers to require Return Requests and stop handing out free refunds with no recovery of product or record on eBay.
If you think eBay Returns are bad, I could tell you horror stories about Returns on Amazon - one of my clients lost close to $20K of pending payments, for products shipped in the previous 1/2 month, when their account was suspended for 'too many returns'. AMZ just made the call, sent the notice, closed the account, and pocketed the not-yet-release payments. The claim was that the funds, or what remained of them after any further customer returns were processed, would be refunded to my client after a set period of time. It's since been much much much longer than that timeframe and no refund has been received... but the client is still receiving, some 2+ years after account closure, that funds were deducted for customer refund requests.
If you think eBay Returns are bad, you need to talk to sellers on other venues. Crooks are crooks regardless of the venue.
-Bob.
@se_appl wrote:Well, I didn't even know that they count returns. Now my rate is extra high. Whats gonna happen next if I will get more returns?
Eventually, I would guess, they would suspend your ability to post into specific categories. If too many categories are affected, they may suspend your account fully. I've never personally gotten that far, nor have any of the companies I assist in dealing with eBay issues. So I'm just guessing here.
On those 'damaged goods' listings -- I personally had two similar Returns, one which eBay overturned the refund and one which they did not. Both were the same product - bulk lots of new-in-package unscanned cellphones from retail bankruptcy sales. The phones were all listed "as-is/for parts" since I was unsure if they would be usable on any service without that register scan (these were all prepaid phones, not postpaid/contract phones). Two buyers complained that they did not get what they thought they were buying - one said the phones were only good for parts, the other that there were parts missing. eBay's definition of 'as-is/for parts' condition covers both of those -- the product may be broken, missing pieces, or requiring service to regain operational status. The Returns never should have been allowed based on the condition status used.
The refund from the only good for parts Return was overruled and returned to me. The phones had been returned, so I simply relisted them and someone else understood the condition and was satisfied with their purchase.
The refund from the missing pieces Return was left standing, without a sufficient reason as to why. My assumption is that I had stated the phones were new in retail packaging but did not mention that some of the packages had been damaged/opened, altho I -did- mention that I could not confirm all pieces were present.
Based on those two Returns, I changed the template I use for these bulk lots and haven't had any similar issues. Of course, the original template worked just fine for several years before those two Returns, but I guess things change and templates need to adapt.
It would be nice if more detail about -why- a refund was left standing were supplied. But that would require eBay to be able to determine who was a decent seller and who was a nasty scammer, so only the decent sellers would learn why things worked out that way, and the nasty scammers would be left wondering. Which is probably why they don't share a lot of decision background with members, buyer or seller -- it's hard to tell the good from the bad sometimes.
-Bob.
