check your invoices

[lasantino]

hi,

I pay attention to my invoice but i don't regularly go line by line to check if its correct.

since being transferred to managed payments.. something seemed to be off.

Here is what i discovered.

For sales that I made that i processed a refund in full.. (as i have always done)  , ebay did not always credit be back my final value fees.  They sometimes only credited me the ad fee.

I at first thought I must be missing something.  No way could ebay make this big of a mistake. But after spending hours going over my invoices and trying to locate credits that ebay is required to give me back(since i didn't make the sale), the credits were not there.

So far , I have not been able to pinpoint exactly what about a refund caused the fee not to be credited. However. its about 50% of my returns.

I have seen other people on the boards complain about not receiving their final value fees back and mostly thought they just didn't know how to read their invoice.   I CAN NOW CONFIRM,  EBAY IS NOT CREDITING BACK FINAL VALUE FEES ON MANY OF MY REFUNDS FOR ITEMS RETURNED!...  

you can check first to see if you were credited correctly by going to the resolution center select "items eligible for finalvalue fee credit"   this is where  I first noticed the discrepency.

If I can get some other sellers to check this on their own account it will be helpful.

AGAIN, I assumed that when i processed a refund through the refund flow ebay was crediting me back the final value fees as required.  THIS HAS NOT OCCURED in almost 50% of my returns.   As far as I have seen,, the promotional fees are all credited back when items have been returned.

[lasantino]

ok,,Its not as bad as i thought,,  There are only 4 missing credits..but they were pretty big purchases..so the credits would amount to almost $95.00.  I have a call into ebay for them to research what happened.

I can confirm,  if a transaction you processed a refund for was anything other than the standard buyers remorse. ..  if you asked ebay to step in to help because of a problem buyer.   Even if the you received a message that says you will not be penalized and any feedbackwill be removed.   Ebay doesn't credit back those FVF automatically.. 

[lasantino]

specifically,this occurs when i have called ebay regarding a buyer that falsely claimed not as described, even though the reason the buyer stated was," it doesn't fit".    Sellers are already stuck with the point against us on the seller metric...   At least ebay was making the buyer pay the return shipping by doing a "forced return"..   I just discovered that ebay keeps all the FVF in this case.. even when the seller processes the refund when the recieve the item back..

this is really sneaky and not acting in good faith on ebays part.

[pjcdn2005]

It has been like that for quite a while. If ebay steps in then they do not credit fvf. You will also receive an unresolved case defect which can be serious if you get more than 2.  eBay does not to step in, they want the seller to handle the disputes.

It isn't sneaky as they are clear that fvf will not be refunded in some situations.

You are not eligible for fee credits in any of the following situations:

• You refund the buyer outside of eBay (using PayPal to send money, for instance)
• You issued a partial refund to the buyer
• You or the buyer asked us to step in, and the case was closed with a refund to the buyer

[ads.ink]

so many ways ebay has to squeeze every last penny from sellers.

[lasantino]

can you provide me a link to where you found that info.

 I have never seen this list.

for years. ebay even instructed sellers to refund through paypal as an option in some cases .

and i certainly have never seen the" you or the buyer asked us to step in.."

ijust got off the phone with ebay and they did manually me forthe 4 transactions that were returned either because i manually had to refund through paypal(during the transition over to managed payments)

and the others were when i asked ebay to step in to help with a buyer who was misusing ebay mbg policy.

[lasantino]

@pjcdn2005  .. forget it I found the text you listed.

So if a seller  asks ebay to step in to help with a fraudulent return or a problem return.   ebay willnot refund    the FVF.   obviously.. that is an abuse of process.

If they are going to punish sellers for asking for help then that's not really help.

[electronics510]

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@lasantino wrote:

If they are going to punish sellers for asking for help then that's not really help.

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Long term, I have determined they don't want to help. From a psychological perspective, punishment only trains the creature to avoid the punishment. In this case, the fewer people they have to employ in the call or support center, they less they have to pay. Two benefits then, training you(by punishment) to avoid this 'help' is a sensible approach for minimizing cost and making the problem magically disappear.

Except it's not a good long term outlook. They should be working to retain sellers.

Turning to the community is often also an exercise in further frustration, as the prolific posters tend to minimize seller concerns. Catch phrases like 'the cost of doing business' and anecdotes about success on eBay are offered as justification for the abuse you mention.

[lasantino]

ebay publicly expressing that they value sellers and that they are implementing seller protections..  then making the miniscule protections they do offer actually end up being punishments to the seller .

that's deceptive trade practices.

[electronics510]

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@lasantino wrote:

deceptive trade practices.

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I lean towards ineptitude and the path of least resistance. I don't think it's intentional fraud on their part, but maybe I'm being naive.