Report seller/negative feedback?

Question

How does someone report or leave negative feedback on a seller when they decide after the auction they don't want to ship to your location?

I am FPO.

Although the item never stated anything about shipping only to the lower 48 states or not shipping fpo/apo.

woodland_gnome · Answer

Did you pay, giving the FPO address? If so it was not excluded in the listing and the seller should have shipped. If not go to the item, click the "Show original listing" link, go to the Shipping and Payments tab and check the shipping exclusions to be sure (a ctrl f find helps if it is filled with a bunch of countries).

If it was not excluded, the seller should have automatically gotten a "defect" when s/he cancelled the transaction, but the reason given blamed you and avoided that. "Defects" are the primary tool eBay uses to weed out bad sellers, downgrading the selling status of those who get too many relative to their sales volume (as opposed to having to pay employees to actually investigate to see how likely it was that the seller had a legitimate reason to cancel vs. deliberate policy violations).

Report the abuse of the "problem with address" reason at https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicId=4850 I don't know if eBay will do anything about it (give the seller the defect s/he should have gotten if s/he had taken the blame him/herself, keep the cancellation blaming you from counting toward your Open Transaction Limits) but it's relatively easy to do it that way.

You may leave appropriate (calm, factual--if the seller said that x was the reason say "seller said x. . ." so people don't think you are just jumping to conclusions) feedback to warn future buyers/bidders. If the usual links have vanished, go to anyone's Feedback Profile (doesn't matter who, click on the feedback score in parentheses behind the username) then scroll down to below the last comment on that page to find a "Leave feedback" link that doesn't vanish (it brings you to a list of items you can leave feedback for).

Theoretically you could sue the seller for breach of the contract of sale (for the difference between the auction price and what you ended up having to pay for a replacement), but that is almost never practical.

mudshark61369 · Answer

@kennetkirke0 , On listing pages do you click on the Shipping, returns and payment tab to see where a seller will ship to? If not you should, and if the only country option is United States, it is very likely they will not ship to FPO or APO addresses. You can always contact a seller from the listing page and ask if they will ship to a FPO or not. Many do not ship to those type addresses. Since you have not left feedback for any of your sellers, starting out by leaving a negative, could get your bids cancelled and you blocked if you bid on an auction and a seller checks your profile. Buyer reputations are judged by the feedback they leave, not the ones received, since buyers can only receive positive feedback.