Hello and sorry to hear your friend is dealing with this person! I'm only going to tackle part of this as I'm pretty tired and don't want to mis-advise. No doubt other posters will be along tomorrow.
@zlygophemous wrote:
I'm trying to help a new seller, but don't know what his next step should be. It sounds like the buyer (who is an experienced eBay seller with multiple accounts) is trying to scam him on several levels because he's new to eBay and vulnerable. In fact the buyer has almost come right out and said as much several times.
I don't know every detail, but as I understand it:
-- The buyer won 2 auctions and then afterwards demanded the seller drop her total shipping cost to $5, when she knew he doesn't offer a combined shipping discount. She aggressively guilt tripped him about how she's disabled, and so expects and deserves extra discounts from all eBay sellers!! (And was super rude too, imho.) She acted like the essential oils she'd bid on were something she was buying for herself to support her own health, but that it was a real financial hardship for her to buy them. He gave in and agreed to charge her only $5 for shipping both items together, thinking that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately that is never the end of it with people like that. Better to stick to your guns from the get go or they'll continue trying to walk all over you. 😞
-- Instead of paying for the 2 oils, she bid on a 3rd bottle of oil, then immediately sent a message to the seller saying she was going out of town for 3 weeks and would pay him for it all when she got back! (Hey lady! Ever hear of a mobile app?!?) She also insisted the shipping cost stay $5, despite the extra item. Again he agreed to her demands for the sake of good customer service, and hoped she'd go away forever, not just for 3 weeks. Lol.
Your friend would have been better off sending a message back saying he could not hold the items for 3 weeks and that eBay was automatically set up to open an Unpaid Item Case after 2 days. Then he should have opened the UPIs against this buyer after 48 hours. Note for the future.
-- When she finally paid weeks later, she didn't ask for, or wait for him to send, a combined invoice with the correct shipping cost. Instead she paid for each item separately, thereby overpaying him for shipping by about $3, and making him pay the .30 PayPal transaction fee 3x. He figured this meant she didn't remember/care about the shipping discount, and let it go. She said nothing about it until...
-- ...The day the oils arrived, she started out saying they were fine, but complained he'd intentionally overcharged her for shipping and demanded her $3 immediately. She insulted and bullied him, claiming he was dishonest and she was going to leave negative fb for it. He sent her a partial refund of $3 through PayPal right away. She did not mention any other problems, and again he assumed he was done with her.
-- Several hours after he sent the partial refund, she contacted him again, now claiming all 3 oils were SNAD. He'd sent her 3 brand new sealed bottles of essential oil, but she claimed they were not new or sealed, they'd leaked all over, the labels were torn up, and there were scribbles in black marker all over 1 white cap. She even claimed they weren't "new" because they all have the older style labels the manufacturer stopped using in Dec. (Strange that, as she herself has a bunch with the older labels listed for sale, but she calls them all "new"!)
She ranted about how she couldn't possibly sell them to anyone in that state (Remember her sob story about needing them cheap to use for her own health?) and should be given a 50% refund through PayPal immediately, plus be allowed to keep the oils.
-- Shortly after that message, she increased her demand to an immediate 100% refund processed through PayPal (meaning no eBay protection for him), plus she keeps the oils. She refused to send him pictures as proof of the damage, and told him she was making him this generous offer as a favor to him; It only appeared he was getting ripped-off because he's new and inexperienced!!! (Yes. AND because he IS getting ripped off.) She also said he had until the next day agree, or she'd mail them all back in separate mailers, on top of the negative fb she'd already left him. (No offer to remove the neg.)
Did she make any mention of neg fb other than that? If she offered to remove if he did what she asked that would have been fb extortion and she probably knew that. Did she ever say anything before leaving neg fb about leaving a neg if he didn't do what she demanded?
-- 2 hours later she sent another message saying she'd just mailed all 3 items back separately, so as to cost him more for the return shipping!
She sent them back herself, so how is it costing him more? She voluntarily mailed them. No case attached so no way for her to force your friend to pay return shipping. It's done already.
She claimed she'd opened a case with eBay and had sent them pictures of the damaged bottles, and therefore he should send her a full refund by PayPal right away, before things got any worse for him than they already were. She even sent him a Payment Request invoice through PayPal, demanding he send her the money, but it didn't have any info in it to tie it to the original transactions at all! (Probably needless to say that she didn't deduct $3 for the partial refund she'd already received either.) Instead of paying her anything, he waited for the return packages to arrive and for eBay to contact him about the case.
-- So far eBay has not contacted him. Strangely enough there doesn't seem to be any pending cases on file for him at all! It's almost as if she lied about opening a case against him! *gasp* Right. That's probably because she did lie about it.
-- Yesterday the 3 packages showed up. Fortunately she didn't just send empty padded mailers like I'd warned him she might. 2 of the returned bottles were as pristine as when he sold them to her. No sign of the leaking, stickyness, messed up labels or black marks she'd claimed. The 3rd bottle, however, had clearly been swapped out for an older bottle with a damaged label. No other damage to it though.
-- Today she started threatening him again, and still demands the refund be sent through PayPal, not eBay, and that doing it that way is somehow to help him.
I made sure he understands that's not true, and why it's risky to give refunds through PayPal. How if he'd given her the 50% or 100% refund through PayPal, she could have still opened a case w/eBay and gotten a full refund from them on top of it. (Kinda surprised she hasn't done it yet.)
Maybe she hasn't done that because she has too many reports or strikes on her account - too many false cases or reports of abusing the eBay MBG.
Ideas about what to do next? Should he report her, and for what offense? (I'm not sure how reporting a buyer works, so don't know how to advise him.) Open an eBay case of some kind? Give up and process a full refund through eBay (and eat the cost of shipping both ways + the $3 he already gave her + PayPal fees + the neg fb), and hope she'll dry up and blow away for good this time?
You've advised your friend correctly that he should not refund without a tie-in to eBay - whether that is due to a case the buyer opened or due to a cancellation at buyer's request. I'd say wait to report her until this plays itself out and see if you can find legit reasons. Below is a link and maybe the e-mail threat policies could apply? But that would really depend on what she said to him: http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/report-trading.html
Your friend should handle things through proper channels. Just an FYI, if he does a 100% refund through the original transaction and that is NOT tied in to an eBay case or eBay cancellation then he will get a defect on his account, x 3 transactions. The system sees that as a seller cancellation. Do not let him do that. If he pays her paypal send money request it is not tied to the transaction and she can then go and file a case on eBay to get paid twice.
He does have 2 out of the 3 items back, so the buyer should be refunded for them. It would either need to be:
- He does a cancellation through eBay "at buyer's request" and refunds - out of all options this would probably be the easiest and the "safest" in terms of not provoking the buyer any further.
- Seller opens return request so he refunds.
- He refunds through the original transaction in paypal, but does partial refund (ie: item cost minus shipping/fees).
As for the 3rd item - the swap out - if the buyer opens a SNAD case, he could report her for abusing the eBay MBG. Just make a note of that in case it happens so you can add it to any other reports he files after the whole mess is over.
I'm going to stop at offering advice on how to handle the 3rd item as I'm way too tired. Know your limits, right? Today 3:20am is my limit for clear-headed thinking.
On the bright side, she's very open about having multiple eBay accounts, and what the user IDs are, which made it really easy to block them all!
Silver lining!
