Back on October first, I had issues with a buyer who bought a "new in box" item and he disassembled it saying he found rust problems with bearings inside it. He rated me good but made comments concerning his findings. How would I know the internals of a new miniature engine no longer in production, and alter its value by taking it apart to see its internals? Most are used for display these days after all, and bearings are $10. I combined shipping for him saving him $12. Clearly these are not your most mainstream items and people who are involved in this hobby understand bearings are readily available on Ebay and can be installed if you actually want to use them still (fuel is $30/gallon), which was the case for him, but if he was a communicator and reasonable minded person, I'd have provided those to him at my expense if he contacted me before the rating surprise which he was sure to ask for combined shipping after all. There was no communication beforehand about the bearings, just a surprise in the feedback of what he found. His feedback left for others was critical with every purchase he's ever made as well which you can see for yourselves, like he's a critic. So I blocked him. That set him off with a dozen vulgar messages. He wanted to buy more in spite of his criticism and I explained I didn't want more feedback surprises, or a critical buyer, that I maintain 100% feedback and always introduce myself to buyers when I ship with my email, phone number should anything come up so they can talk to me directly and work things out fast and easy. I want to have first shot to make it right, which I ALWAYS DO, keeping my 100% rating intact. 14 messages of insults and vulgarity followed (ironically his first messages were "god bless" so some kind of christian he is. Just a nut job). A month goes by and suddenly he opens a return "not as described" claim against me. I contacted Ebay, and discussing the disassembly issues he chose, the 14 messages, the timeline, and they sided in my favor. Now fast forward 2 months, he creates a new account rickn734, foolishly and fortunately for me similar to his old user name, and bids on my higher priced items, circumventing the block features on Ebay. His new account is only 7 days old and again, my category of items are not common, I asked in a message for him to identify himself, if he had other forum ratings I could view to keep his bid, or explain why he just became an Ebay member. I received no reply, so I blocked him, removed his bid, and searched my messages and found this similar name in the history. I contact "Nathan" at Ebay today and explain this to him, but I don't think he got it or wrote it down accurately.
The issue is this; if I pay $2,500 a year in Ebay fees (and I pay more than that) to have Ebay security available to intervene and believed they were preventing users from having multiple accounts like this to avoid being blocked, why am I still here? I can save $2500 a year in ridiculous fees and get this sort of behavior from anywhere else and handle it just as I'm forced to today. Nathan on the Ebay side has a language barrier and no clue how to help me, he said "report him on the site." How the heck do you report a random member on EBay when the new account has no transaction history, and I've already blocked him and removed his unwanted bid? You can only report buyers and sellers from your history. Nathan needs more training. Nathan doesn't have my confidence that he was able to keep up with the story. Nathan will send a convoluted messages to EBay security and the end result will be like others where more follow up phone calls with be necessary until you find that ONE employee that understands, and is proficient in their job to pass along the matter. Nathan assumed my call was about payouts after all before I even spoke.
2021 closes and 2022 starts. Why feed the machine that for me anyway, hasn't provided me the level of protection as a seller that I expected? I have a very high level of feedback that isn't just "got it, thanks" in my feedback, but I treat people as I want to be treated. Instead I got a crazy nut job from Maine that is a narcissist who has dwelled on me for months for blocking him, and won't go away. He should be banned to protect my business activity and instead, I'll abandon Ebay after my items run out Sunday. I've already closed my buy it now items, but good old Ebay hits you with a fee if you close an auction item early. Rant over, relationship over.
ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
