Fedex underpaid shipments and eBay freezing all of my funds
Need help with this nightmare of an issue.
I sold eight ninja fireside360 fire pits within the last month. I used eBay's pre-filled out listing to post My fire pits for sale. I sold five within the first week and shipped via FedEx using eBay's discounted rate.
Within a week and a half I received a notification that FedEx charged me an additional $505 for each shipment due to the incorrect size of the box that eBay automatically populated on my listing.
I called eBay support and found it difficult to find somebody that actually wanted to help. I was able to get them to open up a dispute with FedEx for each of those five shipments and was told by eBay support that it would take up to 2 weeks to get a resolution on these disputes.
Well now it's been over two weeks and every time I call eBay support they tell me that they send an email to the back office and I'll hear when I hear.
Now during this time I sold three more fire pits and shipped them via USPS. One of them made it to the buyer in Dallas, one of them was returned back to me and another one was lost in transit and never scanned it. Because of this, two of the buyers are now demanding refunds which is perfectly fine but all the funds that they paid is being Frozen by eBay because of the $2500 that FedEx is trying to bill me.
eBay has been no help and they won't even step in at this time. I don't have the money to pay the buyers back for the returns until eBay unfreezes all my funds. I can't seem to get in touch with it back office or anybody that could be an actual update on the disputes.
Has anybody ever ran into this issue and if so what did you do to resolve this?
babyers88
·6 months agoall I can tell you is you cannot depend on ebays pre-filled information on anything, 95% of the time it is wrong in some form or completely wrong.
It is up the seller to verify the dimensions and weight of any product, lest you be holding the bag like what has happened now.... those fedex disputes easily take 4-6 weeks if not longer
can't even tell you how many times I have submitted correct information to be corrected in there pre-filled data and nothing EVER changes.....
yeswayrecords
·6 months agoFedEx (and any other carrier) has the most advantageous cost when the box is simply square or rectangle.
When boxes are unusually shaped, or when shipping tubes, cylindrical containers, etc., you can expect an additional cost added by the carrier.
If possible, it may actually be less expensive to ship in a larger rectangular-shaped box than in a tube or other unusually shaped box.
momtoabeautifuldaughter
·6 months agoIt is up to you to make sure the weight and dimensions are correct, you can change the prepopulated info if needed.
ryry-jj
·7 months agoYou got yourself in a mess. You sold some expensive items without double checking and verifying the information for proper shipping Did you have signature confirmation on all these, especially the ones you shipped USPS. That is required for any total invoice above $750.
You also needed to be aware that you would be responsible for all up front costs on returns. In other words, you are prepaying the refund until your money is released. 30 day holds are common for newer sellers.
You got too far over your skis and over extended yourself beyond what you could financially support. You hear a lot on here, don't sell anything you cant afford to lose....and I'll add "or refund". You needed to take selling a bit slower until you understood all this.
At this point, all you can do is hope to negotiate down the FedEx cost, the refunds, you must pay for up front. And never trust prefilled information...its riddled with seller errors
grann-4629
·7 months agoI don't see any of these fire pits in your listings. Sold out? I would really like to have one of these, depending on price of course.
I hope you are able to have this issue resolved in your favour ... that's a lot of money to be out.
bonjourami
·7 months agoLooks like until your recent sales, you havent sold anything for a year? If thats the case, your funds will be held for up to thirty days. Ebay will not take the refunds from pending funds, but from whatever payment source you used for your account, cc,debit card, or checking account. When those funds are released, they will go to your account.
kensgiftshop
·7 months agoThat was your mistake.
It's your responsibility to make sure the information in your listings is correct.
roccotacodad54
·7 months agoFedEx.........................
wastingtime101
·7 months agoeBay makes it clear the prefilled info is an estimate based on similar items. Those estimates are often off.
With shipping even 1/8" can impact the cost. It's on the seller to provide accurate weight and dimensions. When you take a shortcut and use an estimate, you're going to (literally) pay the price.
eBay submitted disputes, but if FedEx finds the adjustments were accurate, FedEx will not approve the dispute. FedEx will review the scans and images taken during transit to see if their stated measurements were accurate or if yours were.
If you haven't updated your listing yet to enter accurate package weight and dimensions, you need to do that now. USPS will also hit you with cost adjustments if your package info was wrong.
Edit to add: As for the buyers wanting refunds, the process is you refund them using your backup payment source (bank or credit card), and after you refund them the hold on the funds for the refunded transactions will be released pretty much right away - but if you haven't paid off the FedEx money owed yet, eBay will put the funds towards that amount until it's paid off.
Edit again: I looked at the fire pit listing. You definitely undercharged for shipping that item. The size of it alone would have demanded a much higher shipping cost. I'm very sorry to tell you I don't think the FedEx disputes will come out in your favor. The fire pit uses propane - does it ship with propane or does it ship empty? Make sure you're complying with hazmat shipping regulations as they are serious.
fullers_uk
·7 months agoI had the opposite last week, I shipped a parcel of items tha were bought direct from me through my website, I measured the parcel with a measure thats calibrated and valid for trade and weighed the parcel on proper parcel scales, when I checked the parcel size and weight on the fedex system they had reduced each measurement by 1cm and reduced the weigh by 400 grams, I wont get a discount but it seemed very weird, maybe there scales are hammered and the lasers are bending round corners.
wastingtime101
·7 months agoOP's dimensions were off by much more than 1cm, unfortunately. I'm guessing the weight was also underestimated by a lot. What's not clear is whether the OP used eBay's estimates, or whether OP used 'sell one like this' from another seller's listing.
With the former it will prefill eBay-generated estimates based on other similar items. With the latter it will copy over the other seller's entered weight/dimensions.
In both cases it is very dangerous to use the prefilled data when it comes to shipping, especially with large items.
This is, unfortunately, a very expensive lesson for the OP that didn't verify if those estimates were accurate compared to the physical item - not when setting up the listing, and not when they had a second opportunity before purchasing each label. ðŸ™