How to deal with a buyer who is a scammer | Selling

volteratek · 2024-01-09T03:14:21.833000Z

Hi everyone. Recently I received a message from one of my buyers. They told me that they received the item that we shipped but there was nothing inside of the box. We keep a reference for all of the items sold on our store. This reference is a USPS receipt that has the weight of the item we shipped on it. This particular item, weighed about 9.4 ounces. The buyer said that they received an empty box. But that couldnâ€™t be true because the receipt clearly states that there was something in the box when we shipped it. An empty box would weigh far less than 9 ounces. Now, I have no problem with refunding the buyer but they have threatened to leave us negative feedback if we donâ€™t give them their money back. They insisted on leaving us negative feedback and said because we are a new store it would and I quote, â€œhurt your salesâ€. It seems as if they are trying to extort us. Maybe trying to get something for free? We have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth, and it is hard to verify their claim. However, via the USPS receipt, we know for a fact that we shipped the item. The receipt is evidence of this. Now to protect other sellers on eBay, we are seriously debating on whether we should involve law enforcement. Stealing from USPS is a federal crime in any capacity and we want to make sure that the responsible parties are held accountable. The only problem? eBay does not allow you to talk to a real person if you are a seller. We have no way to know if this would be frown upon by eBay. We tried to contact the customer service number but never got a real person on the line, and the help from the robot agent kept sending us to the help articles. But they donâ€™t exactly tell you how to deal with a situation like this. We reported the buyer through eBay that doesnâ€™t stop them from using blackmail to get what they want. If they leave us negative feedback, how could we mitigate it without complying? We donâ€™t want the negative feedback, but more than that, we donâ€™t want the buyer to take advantage of other sellers. If the buyer is authentic in their claim, this should be verified by the postal service. What would you do in this situation? And why does eBay make it so difficult for sellers to contact them when a problem like this arises?

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How to deal with a buyer who is a scammer | Selling | eBay Community