First time reporting a buyer, first negative feedback. Not bad for 28 years on eBay?
I know this forum is mostly used by power users of the site, which I am not, I'm just a guy who has occasionally bought and sold things here, for a long time. And almost 100% of those experiences have been positive. My FB was 424, 100% positive, till yesterday.
However! Yesterday I got an aggressive message from a buyer about an item I sold last month, a waxed cotton hood for a Barbour coat. A week after receiving it, he claimed it had undisclosed damage and wanted me to refund half his purchase price. I had owned that hood for 30+ years and had hardly used it; I knew it had no such problems, and the photos he sent show a different hood. Same model and vintage, and a close match, but not the same one. I sent him pics comparing the two and he responded that I should 'be reasonable' (and pay him off) or he'd file a report.
So I filed a report on him! I'd never done that before, and I don't know what difference it will make, but so far eBay hasn't penalized me or forced a refund.
He's now left negative feedback and I can live with that. I only sell occasionally and if I lose a bidder, oh well.
I can't seem to reply to his feedback though; the option is there but when I try to post it it doesn't go through, with no indication why not. Am I supposed to request him to change it first? If so, forget it, as I am not going to negotiate with him.
I know the 'smart' thing to do was pay him off to avoid the neg, but I just couldn't do that. Rewarding someone else's dishonesty would have bugged me way more than the one neg.
I'm not looking for sympathy or congratulations, just thought I'd put my story up here.
I know lots of you deal with this kind of stuff every day, and many of you have to tolerate it.
I decided not to.
deltilogical
·4 months agoThis is a great thread and I appreciate the important information the OP is documenting and sharing with us.
The hood was in good shape, I noted a little pilling inside which would be normal, but nothing was ripped. The buyer seems to have a lot of feedback but I can't see any of it.
The takeaways for me are 1. when someone wants a partial upfront, its a scam. People either want the item or not.
2. sellers need to not feed this scam and NOT offer partials, and ask simply for the buyer to report a not as described to start the return process. take their side and apologize and ask to please send the return back carefully. Yes, this will cost more in the short term.
3. Sellers need to understand ebay selling is not a yard sale but a business - you deal with this through your accountant.
alant24fps
OP4 months agoThanks, deltilogical! You got what I was driving at, and I've kept at it because I think it's going to be a widespread problem.
I was not familiar with the NAD option and maybe should have done that at the start. I was suspicious that he only wanted a partial refund but mostly was freaked out at his claim about damage.
My response to his first message, which had a single photo, was a polite note that I was 'surprised' and to ask for more photos, and those showed areas where I had photo proof that his complaint wasn't legit. It just took me a while to figure out the image-editing angle.
Anyway, even with an NAD I wouldn't trust him to return the hood in the shape I sent it in, at all.
stuff4divas
·4 months ago@alant24fps
your analogy showing the amount of time, in the feedback world, for you, is almost irrelevant.
what counts more is the amount of sales. each sale heightens the possibility of negative feedback.
you sold 149 items in 28 years, which is considered a very low sales volume, which translates to a very low possibility of negative feedback.
which do u think has a higher risk of negative feedback?
a seller who has 149 sales in a 28 year period
or
a seller who has 5000 sales in a 1 year period
BTW- the photos sent by the buyer and your listed photos look the same to me.
IMO- the age of the material caused it to disintegrate when the buyer went to gather the fabric with the pull string.
dm772012
·4 months agoHe would've still left you negative feedback. Sure, he does this to most sellers. I received my first negative feedback last year. Guy claimed he was in Chicago, but his location was outside the USA. He bought my item. I checked his feedback...every other purchase was negative. He had left negative feedback on most of his purchases, with sellers giving him the items and issuing refunds. I had never seen that many negatives before. I reported him to eBay, and nothing happened. The eBay rep told me to ask him to remove it... Without his removal, they could not do anything to remove my negative... which is WRONG! I canceled his order. A lot of dishonest buyers...do it online and in retail businesses in our communities.
soh.maryl
·4 months agoWhat gave you the impression that "this forum is mostly used by power sellers of the site"?
Many of us, including me, are not sellers, and even possibly rarely buyers.
This forum is open to all. It's staffed by fellow eBayers who volunteer their time to help others if/when possible.
alant24fps
OP4 months agoIf anyone reads this far in the tread, below are a cropped in detail from the first photo the buyer sent me, showing the 'damage,' and below it is the same area cropped in from one of my original iPhone photos. How, in the two weeks between me shipping and him contacting me, did the stitching magically unravel, and the wear and abrasion along the edge appear? And the hole by the brass snap?
If I'm right, that this is the buyer using AI image editing, then I can't be the only person this has happened to. For that matter I suppose sellers could also use the same tool to remove damage from photos, make them look good, then when buyers get something damaged and complain the seller could 'prove' that the damage wasn't there!
Ah brave new world that has such creatures in it.
ten_o_nine
·4 months agoWow, took you 28 years to get a negative, shape up, I got 3 the first year.😄
dirk12955
·4 months agoI can remember my first Neg back in 2000
I can't remember the last one,
Or the one before that,
Or the one's before that.
Part of the pleasure of dealing with
the buying public.
ten_o_nine
·4 months agoI used to sell on another eBay account back in 1997, then I got a negative after having 300+ positive, I was so devastated I closed the account and started a new one
dirk12955
·4 months agoLOL
I spent a lot of time and energy
on that first Neg. Drove me crazy and I ended
up on the old Trust and safety board to vent.
Been posting on these goofy boards off and on ever since,
My first Neg was from a NPB
My second Neg was from a buyer that
couldn't be bothered with reading the description
of a doll. His Neg was something like, "I thought the doll was bigger"
Good times are easy to remember.
soh.maryl
·4 months agoSo telling the buyer to open an NAD case would not have worked for you?
12345jamesstamps
·4 months agoI got another silly neutral today...and eBay only helps with negatives so I see.
I give up....requested a revision from the buyer and made it worse which it did on one of my neutrals.
So I will just ignore them and not even respond to them.
Got one neutral in Polish and ask eBay for a revision and eBay ended up just sending it to the buyer for a revision which will make it worse if the buyer reads what I say...I got 3 days until buyer can no longer do anything...sweating bullets here...🤐
iamalwaysright
·4 months agoWhat do you mean by "reads what I say"? When ebay sends a revision request on your behalf to a buyer, ebay includes a testimony of what you say? I ask because I've never been thru this before.
asset_liquidators
·4 months agoThe one they show in their photo looks to be the same as the one in your listing. Looking at the stain on the "100% cotton" tag, it matches. The inner plaid liner also matches for the pattern being in the exact placement as your listing.
authentic*vintage
·4 months agoYep. Missed that. AI says these are the same hood, down to the matching pulling of the fabric and tension of the stitches.
authentic*vintage
·4 months agoNo. You did the smart thing by refusing to be scammed.
asset_liquidators
·4 months agoLook closely at the photos submitted by the buyer. Unfortunately it looks to be the same item.
slati_2013
·4 months agoThe question rather is what picture did he send to the OP? Scammers are not above deliberately damaging items to scam. And since the OP is an infrequent seller, he thought he had an easy prey.
asset_liquidators
·4 months agoYou are confusing completely different scenarios. Why would a buyer deliberately ruin the item by putting holes in it to try to get a discount? (not a return, just a discount).
alant24fps
OP4 months agoI understand your skepticism, but the hood I sold was remarkably clean. Most vintage Barbour does show wear, but I'd bought this hood with a long Barbour coat new in the early 90s but found them kind of heavy to wear, so they went into a closet for about 30 years. I finally pulled them out and sold them separately. You can see how pleased the new owner of the coat is in my feedback.
I will admit that I was surprised at how close the hood in the buyer's photos looked to mine, but it's the same model, same vintage, likely sewn on the same machine BITD. The stain is weird, but as far as I remember mine always had that and I wonder if it's from the wax finish.
But, if you really want to drill down, look closely at the '100% cotton' tag. The one I sold had that tag tightly stitched, while in the buyer's photo it's come loose because the stiching on it is gone, and there's now a hole starting by the snap. In the buyer's second message to me he upped the ante with pics of holes in the outside of the hood. Look closely at my listing photos of the hood: not a single pinprick, nothing like buyer's photos show. I have full res pics of the outside that would easily show any flaws like that.
Something that has occurred to me is that he might have been able to alter photos of the original hood digitally using AI. I'd assumed that he had a damaged hood, wanted a nicer one, so bought mine and was trying to get half off. But AI image editing is beyond belief now (I'm a retired cinematographer), so I think it would be pretty easy to feed it pics of an article of like-new clothing and prompt 'make it look like it's been worn for 30 years.'
In any case, no regrets.
alant24fps
OP4 months agoThis has been bugging me, not because of the feedback, but the question of 'how did he do that?' Because I agree, it does look like the exact same hood, only with wear and damage that my photos don't show.
There was a logic issue, too: if you bought my hood thinking it was super clean and it arrived with that kind of damage, wouldn't you want to return it rather than get $20 to 'have it stitched'? You want one that's in great condition, not one with repairs, or at least I would. Maybe I should have told him to return it.
Anyway, a few minutes on google showed me how he was able to produce photos showing the hood with damage that wasn't really there. It's amazingly simple:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXJl1jeEbN_/
I'm not going to follow through on this and do it myself, but the technique shown by this guy on Instagram, or something like it, is clearly what the buyer used.
I probably shouldn't message him about this, eBay might regard it as harassment.
Any tips on how I can reply to the feedback though? My reply won't post, and now I want to mention the AI thing, though the link probably won't be allowed.
I was going to post pics here showing side-by-side detail shots of the area by the 100% Cotton tag and how the wear has magically appeared, but they won't upload. Maybe later.
soh.maryl
·4 months agoThat's a fairly recently negative FB, so can't see why you'd be unable to reply.
Exactly how did you try to reply? All you need to do is go to that FB and answer.
house*of*paws
·4 months agoVery true. There’s actually no time limit for leaving a Reply or Follow-up to a feedback. [I tested that out once, and left a Reply after several years.]
alant24fps
OP4 months agoI tried to reply, filled in the box, hit 'send,' the comment box flickered, but nothing posted. This happened several times, even after I reloaded the page. I find glitches like this happen on busy sites like FB and eBay, but in this case I thought maybe I needed take another step before I'd be allowed to reply. Glad to hear I should be able to do so now, and I will.
I'm actually glad it didn't work before, because I understand better what the scam is now...though I probably can't say 'scam' in my reply.