Activity on your account isn’t following policy: Abusive buyer policy

[grenierc]

eBay sent me a message saying this:

"Activity on your account didn't follow our Abusive buyer policy. Buyers may not misuse our feedback, returns, or buyer protection programs.

What activity didn't follow the policy - Filing excessive returns claiming the item is not as described when the seller described it accurately."

I have returned THREE items recently, but multiple days apart. I think I do know which item it may be.

I bought a 3.5” Solid State Drive off a seller. I put it into my Mac Pro (cheese grater tower) and it says Initialize Disk. Well, the disk wouldn’t initialize. I kept getting errors in Disk Utility in macOS. So I run Disk Drill and it finds more errors. I return the item since I can’t get it to work and just as I get the refund I get a message saying “Activity on your account isn’t following policy: Abusive buyer policy.” 

Excuse me? What did I do wrong? Is there something I am not noticing?

I DID NOT make a false claim, I did not damage the item, I packed it the same as I got it and sent it back.

I also bought a graphics card (GTX 680 nVidia). I installed the drivers for it (I tried it in a PC) and couldn’t get it to work even though I hooked up 2x 6 pin cables to it. I kept getting “No signal” on my monitor. I spent 3 hours fiddling with it in my PC but I could not get it to show anything on the display. So I returned that too, but I wonder if it is because of that. I did NOT misuse the policy once. 

AND then, I also ordered a DVD IDE drive 5.25” for my Mac Pro but it was not being detected when I plugged it in. I tried several solutions but NOTHING worked, so I returned that.

It turns out that my tower was having motherboard issues, I had corroded cables and it had severe water damage on it. I got rid of the junk Mac Pro since it wasn’t working… now that I knew it was broken. But why did I get this message?

Now I look like an absolute fool; but I did nothing to abuse the policy as all I was doing was returning the items I bought since they didn’t work.

I did not try to cause any harm/bad things to any of the sellers.

Why did eBay send me this warning?

I am confused… Can someone help me figure this out? 

Thank you!

-C

[morste_3351]

3 returns in a short time frame doesn't look, especially when you admit it's your fault.

[fab_finds4u · Accepted solution]

Buyer Protection is like insurance. The insurance company will drop you if you file too many claims in a short period of time.

I would say returning two of them when the problem turned out to be on your end is abusing the returns policy.

[monster-deals]

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@grenierc wrote:

but I did nothing to abuse the policy

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The policy is excessive returns.

The sellers reported you for abusing the MBG....did you refund the sellers for making them refund you?

[tutwa-20]

Speaking as a seller I could go on a total rant here.

[magicjohnsonsvariety]

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@tutwa-20 wrote:

Speaking as a seller I could go on a total rant here.

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Ha, same here. 

Surprise, surprise...ebay actually does pay attention to seller descriptions after all....who knew....too bad it's all investigated AFTER sellers lose their money.

[ljmgoods]

e  bay  don't care buyer  is  99.99005%  RIGHT  F  THE  SELLER

[ljmgoods]

THATS A LIE  THE TAPE THAT WAS ON THE BOX  WAS RIPPED  I WANT A RETURN ITEM NOT AS DISCRIBED ANOTHER EXAMPLE BOUGHT A PAIR OF SHOES  THEY DONT WORK NOW  HOW CAN A PAIR OF SHOES NOT WORK ...

[ljmgoods]

BRO DIDNT  YA  KNOW  SHOWING  **bleep**  ON  E BAY  IS A CRIME 

[campanaelia]

That abusive buyer message is **bleep**. I've gotten that message too when I was opening my most recent claim for receiving a laptop that was a much cheaper model. The one I purchase had an Intel chipset and I planned on upgrading the processor with one I had already. Instead I received the model with an AMD chipset with a very slow processor that was not upgradable. After about 2 weeks and the seller never responded I received a refund. I actually didn't even have to ask ebay to step in, they did it automatically. I also had a return before that for a popup play tent I bought for my niece who has a small apartment. Instead of a popup play tent that is supposed to just spring up and collapse quickly, I received a tent with a PVC frame that takes hours to build and take down. It was from a chinese seller that was stalling me for a solution, but finally they agreed to refund 50% and keep it, so I agreed to be done with it. And I had another claim for some shampoo from china that never was received the seller kept stalling for the refund trying to run out my MBG clock so I had no choice but to get ebay involved for the refund. The only other ones were for some MS office product keys, they were supposed to be multilingual retail versions , I received a builders version ISO and product key. For the builders version you can not download from the language packs available online, you can only get them through a MS developer network account. Then since I still needed a key I bought another and received the same exact builders version ISO with the same exact 25 character product key.

None of these issues had anything to do with me being an abusive buyer. With so many bad sellers on ebay and with them currently removing negative feedbacks to cover for them, the day my MBG is restricted is the day I stop buying on ebay. I have no problem buying locally and actually find I get things cheaper. I can totally survive without ebay, I've done it before and I can do it again..

[meecheem]

It seems that the policy itself is abusive. I returned 2 items this year. One was a laptop that absolutely did not correspond to the description. I contacted the seller, they suggested that I ordered the wrong item when the description itself stated what I was ordering. They finally (kind-of) recognized their error, I returned the item and got 100% refund. The second was a DVI/HDMI adapter that did not respond. How is this abusive??? I actually have a bunch of junk at home that I did not bother returning in spite of it being junk. What's up ebay, are you trying to lose customers? I've been a customer since 2003!!!

[hqwo_23]

@ljmgoods  you are correct! Ebay do not care about sellers at all and will 99.999999% of the time actively support a fraudulent buyer. Ebay will also often ignore messages sent by the buyer, as well as the comment written for the return reason.

What a scam this company is!

[7606dennis]

You are aware that you, as a seller, are not permitted to leave false positives for your buyers, right?

[jasonalaneichelberger]

We bought an igloo cooler from ebay and I buy lots of stuff, it came with a broken handle broken front body and the box looked like it had been shipped 10 times before. I emailed the buyer 3 times with no response, sent pics finally contacted eBay and proved that I had tried to contact them with pictures. Ebay said OK looks good so I got refunded no problem. Then a week later I get a buyer abuse message saying something on my account didn't follow protocol for the policy.  How do I know the seller wasn't trying to sell a broken item and paying for insurance on the item as an insurance scam.  Makes me a little **bleep** that eBay would send that to me after buying 100s of things from them over the years and returning a smashed cooler. 

[native_plant_shop]

I like the false positive feedback you left 

"Buyer is demanding money from me because they didn’t read the listing-bad buyer"

Could you be describing your self?