Locked
Discussions in this board are limited to the original poster and Community Mentors
Ebay assisted a buyer in scamming us. Help requested
Summary: rococoroasters expressed frustration over an 'Item Not as Described' case on eBay where a buyer received 10 pounds of specialty Jamaican coffee but claimed some beans were broken and demanded a refund. Despite contacting eBay multiple times and receiving support from representatives who agreed the complaint was unreasonable, eBay refunded the buyer. rococoroasters argued that this system enables buyer exploitation, particularly for non-returnable items like food that can't be resold. rfmtm suggested reporting the buyer and appealing the decision, while krazzykats noted the impracticality of returning the coffee due to high costs.
I am at the end of my rope with eBay over an outrageous Item Not as Described case, and I genuinely need some intervention because sellers have almost no protection when this system is abused.
We are a Canadian company and have been selling on eBay for about ten years. I have personally been importing, exporting and roasting specialty coffee for 30 years. We offer free shipping on eBay and absorb the shipping and brokerage costs ourselves.
A customer ordered approximately 10 pounds of Jamaican coffee from us, worth roughly $300. This is expensive specialty coffee, and we roast every order specifically for the customer. Nothing sits around in inventory. His coffee was roasted to order and shipped within 24 hours of roasting, exactly as described. After receiving it, he contacted us demanding a refund because some of the coffee beans were broken. He opened ONE 454 gram bag out of the ten bags he received and sent a photograph showing what appeared to be about 5% breakage. Five percent of a 454 gram bag is roughly 24 grams of coffee... 24 grams.
That is what this entire complaint is about. Approximately 24 grams of broken coffee beans in a 454 gram bag, and those beans are going into a grinder anyway. Could you imagine buying a box of crackers or cookies, opening it, finding some crumbs or a few broken pieces at the bottom and saying, “I want a refund because this product is defective”? That is essentially what we are dealing with here.
It is literally impossible to buy a bag of whole bean coffee and expect every single bean to be completely intact. No coffee company in the world can guarantee that. You can walk into Starbucks or any coffee retailer, physically pick up a bag yourself, open it and find some broken beans at the bottom. That is simply the nature of roasted coffee. Now put 10 pounds of coffee through an international FedEx Express shipment, sorting facilities and normal carrier handling. Some breakage is inevitable. In 30 years of importing, exporting and roasting coffee, I have never received a complaint like this. Not once. In roughly ten years of selling this same type of product on eBay, no buyer has ever made this kind of demand either, because most people have common sense and understand that a small amount of breakage in whole bean coffee is NORMAL.
And there is another problem. Once a buyer opens a bag, pours the coffee out or handles it and then photographs broken beans, how is the seller supposed to know exactly what happened after delivery? For all I know, some of those beans could have been broken after the package was opened. I have no way of verifying that. Either way, even if every broken bean shown in the photograph arrived exactly that way, we are still talking about roughly 24 grams of broken coffee in one 454 gram bag. We explained this to him and then he opened a return using “Item Not as Described.” I reported the buyer to ebay, but I'm unsure what they actually do, and I have zero confidence that this helps in any way.
In any case, this is where the real problem begins.... Our coffee is sold as nonreturnable for obvious health and safety reasons. This buyer had already opened the food product. We could never resell it to another customer, nor would we ever do so. On top of that, the coffee was freshly roasted specifically for him. Had we actually made a mistake, sent the wrong coffee, sent the wrong roast or genuinely shipped something that was not as described, we would have replaced or refunded the order without argument. We stand behind what we sell, but that is not what happened here. Instead, the buyer used Item Not as Described as a loophole to bypass our no returns policy.
And based on the circumstances, it is very difficult to believe he did not know exactly what he was doing. He had a perfectly usable product, complained about something completely normal and unavoidable with coffee beans, selected an INAD reason that overrides the seller’s normal return policy, and ultimately ended up with roughly $300 worth of coffee for free.
Could you imagine if every buyer on eBay did this? Any buyer could order hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise, find some normal characteristic of the product, call it “not as described,” open an INAD case and potentially end up with both the merchandise and the refund. That would put sellers like me out of business. Once he selected INAD, eBay essentially gave us two choices: accept the return and refund him, or provide a shipping label and then refund him. Even if we wanted to simply follow that process and take the loss, the return shipping cost from the United States back to Canada on approximately 10 pounds of coffee would be astronomical. There would be no economic sense in paying a huge international return shipping charge to receive opened food that we could not resell anyway. So either way, the seller loses. Where is the seller’s opportunity to submit evidence before that happens?
I called eBay to help. The first representative was extremely nice, reviewed what happened and expressed disbelief at the complaint. He agreed that expecting every coffee bean in a shipment to arrive completely unbroken was unreasonable. I was told that because the return request was still open, I needed to contact eBay again when it closed on September 3 at approximately 7 p.m. Central and they would make it right.
So I did exactly that.
Call number two.... I had to relay the entire story again. That representative was also wonderful. We were on the phone for close to an hour while she reviewed the case, the buyer’s messages and the photograph he submitted.
She came to the same conclusion. She said the buyer’s complaint was outrageous, that the allegation that the item was “not as described” did not make sense, and that it was completely unrealistic to expect a bag of shipped coffee to contain no broken beans. She told me she was putting the case on hold and said she was putting a sticky note on her screen so she would not forget about me. Her point was that I had already spent so much time on the phone with her that I did not need to stay on the call any longer. She told me she would take care of it after we hung up. I thanked her and thought the issue was finally being handled.
Several days later, I received another message telling me to send the buyer a shipping label, so I called eBay a THIRD time. Once again, I had to repeat the entire story. The third representative reviewed it and again agreed with us. I was told not to worry, that she would have the situation reversed, and that I would not need to call again. The very next day I received an email from eBay saying the money had been taken from our account and refunded to the buyer. So now this customer has approximately $300 worth of freshly roasted Jamaican coffee for free.
Does anyone seriously believe he threw ten pounds of perfectly usable Jamaican coffee in the garbage because roughly 5% of the beans in one bag were broken? Of course not. He is going to grind it and drink it, because that is what coffee beans are for. At that point I called eBay for the FOURTH time. I had to explain the situation yet again to another representative. I told him I wanted to formally appeal the outcome. He reviewed the case and also agreed that what happened did not appear consistent with the circumstances of the return. He told me the appeal could take up to three days. It has now been three days.
I have spent hours on the phone, spoken to four different representatives, repeatedly been told that the buyer’s claim was unreasonable and that the situation would be corrected, and eBay still took our money and handed this customer hundreds of dollars worth of coffee for free. That is not seller protection. From a seller’s perspective, this is theft facilitated by a broken returns system.
The fundamental problem is that eBay allows a buyer to select “Item Not as Described” and immediately puts the seller into a position where the return process moves forward before eBay meaningfully reviews whether the allegation is legitimate. That needs to change. When a buyer selects Item Not as Described or another return reason that overrides a seller’s normal return policy, eBay should give the seller an opportunity to respond and upload evidence BEFORE forcing a refund or return label. Let the buyer submit their claim. Let the seller submit photographs, correspondence, listing information and an explanation. Then have eBay review both sides before deciding whether INAD protection actually applies. Otherwise, “Item Not as Described” becomes a loophole buyers can use to bypass a seller’s return policy.
There also needs to be proper protection for sellers of food, cosmetics and other products that cannot safely be resold once opened or tampered with. A buyer should not be able to open a consumable product, make an unreasonable INAD claim, receive a full refund and effectively keep hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise.
And what is the point of calling eBay support if four separate representatives can review the circumstances, agree that the buyer’s complaint is unreasonable, say that the case will be corrected, and yet the system simply continues until the buyer gets refunded anyway? I have sold online for many years. I understand that legitimate buyer protection is necessary, and I have absolutely no problem refunding a customer when a seller has actually made a mistake. But buyer protection should not mean seller exploitation.
Sellers are customers too. We pay the fees, purchase the shipping, absorb the losses and provide the inventory that makes this marketplace exist.
I want this case reviewed by someone at eBay who actually has the authority to correct it.
And beyond my individual case, eBay seriously needs to redesign the INAD process so sellers have a meaningful opportunity to present evidence BEFORE their money and merchandise are simply handed over to a buyer.
Because if every buyer behaved like this one did, there would eventually be no sellers left to protect.
I would appreciate anyone's help in getting this matter resolved, and ebay sticking to their repeated promises. Thanks.
rococoroasters
rfmtm
Mentor2 weeks ago · EditedFirst if buyer open a IND accept the return before you refund. Don't let him keep the coffee.
REPORT the buyer for abuse of the ebay MBG.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/resolving-buyer-issues/report-issue-buyer?id=4084&st=12&pos=3&quer...
Then appeal the refund:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/managing-returns-refunds/appeal-ebays-decision-return-missing-item...
krazzykats
Mentor2 weeks agoIt was too expensive to ship back 30lbs from the US to Canada.
Like throwing good money after bad.
rfmtm
Mentor2 weeks agoYes, and the buyer is probably counting on that so he can keep the coffee for free. Usually this type of thing is the buyer just trying to get a partial refund, but if that was already offered, then it is outright theft.
Hopefully, you still reported the buyer through the report system to put them on ebay's radar. I think I would also tell the buyer you will be reporting this as fraud to the postal inspectors and his local police. This is something I do after I accept the return and often results in the item never being returned so it blocks any refund from ebay.