I spent some time with a pleasant CSR today, who politely defended the ebay "system" that decided against my report of buyer abusing the return policy in the buyer's favor. I requested politely I wanted to ensure that some human intelligence and discernment had read my correspondence with the buyer and my presentation of information to assess the cogency of my argument contradicting the claim of item defect from the buyer.
To her question of what I was looking for ebay to do I replied that I wanted a fair treatment in not being required to pay two shipping charges for an item returned to me in perfect working condition claimed by the buyer to be defective. I was willing to make refund of item cost, since the "defective" item had been returned to me in perfect operating condition, and I have it relisted for sale with no changes to the description. She took a couple of minutes in which she claimed to have read some of the messaging, and apologized for not being able to change the previous decision. When I asked if she could tell if the decision in favor of the buyer had been made with intelligence and discernment by a human review, she replied that it had actually been "made by the system."
The buyer had claimed that a cassette deck he'd bought from me broke two of his cassette tapes in rewind. (What is the age of any cassette tapes you have in your home or buy at thrift shops?) The ironic thing that refutes his assessment of fault of the machine is that he returned in the cassette deck a name brand unbroken tape that will not break with multiple rewinds, and no other tape I have inserted will break. Why should I pay refund for not only the item he returned, but for shipping cost both ways, all because of the buyer's poor assessment ability and ebay's bots and idiots forming policy that accepts a buyer's report of an item defect with no intelligent assessment of the validity of the claim?
I was courteous through the conversation, as was the unfortunate CSR. I told her I was sorry she had to spend her day defending indefensible decisions and policies, and I wished her a good day. It's pretty bad when ebay employees have to own up to the fact that ebay decisions are made (all day long, every day) in the absence of intelligence and discernment. ebay is providing an environment of complicity in fraud. The most absurd part of it is that ebay promotes honesty on the part of sellers while charging sellers for the promotion of buyer fraud.
