Apparently partial refund extortion is no longer reason enough to get negative feedback removed

[westchestervillage]

Buyer bought a stamped envelope, sold as described at a best offer deal of $10.

He got it, then someone from a different account sends us a message on that item talking about our prices, not the buyer but a different account, demanding why we are pricing our items the way we are. We think its the same buyer with 2 accounts and forgot to switch his accounts.

Then the actual buyer with (0) feedback (new buyer) sends us a message, now mind you, we have a 30 day return policy, we pay for return shipping, all he has to do is return it. No he states in a private message "You failed to mention that it is completely ripped open on the side of the envelope anywhere in your post. I feel like that’s a disservice, and I should at least get a partial refund for the disingenuous sale or else."

There is no tear anywhere we can see on the item. So we responded to him right away, the whole thing was a $10 sale. That we can give him a full refund if he just opens a return or we can give him a 50% partial refund ($5) and keep the item and we also asked for a picture of the damage he is talking about so we can understand what happened. We check all the items and we would notice rips or tears, its kinda crazy. 

Message sent. He never replied.

Then we get a negative feedback stating that "They lied about the condition of the item, and failed to mention tears in the product - i’ve contacted them and they have since never replied back. "

Just a bunch of lies. There are no tears, we would disclose that for sure, the image is what he got. He states he contacted us and we did respond to him right away within 2 hours of his message.

We asked customer support if our message was recieved by him and they said yes it was sent and received.

I then asked CS to remove the feedback based on the 'partial refund or else' message he sent us initially and they said "Unfortunately we won’t be able to remove this comment because it doesn’t violate any of our feedback policies"

Talked to a CS rep supervisor and took our concern but can't promise anything, that we should get a response in 7 days, lol.

Then you see this buyer and he's a new buyer already left 2 negative feedbacks to 2 sellers.

Just awful.

So in the end, I guess we can all start asking for a partial refund and then if we don't get it, its OK to leave a negative. You all can use our case as an example moving forward. Apparently, partial refund extortion is back on the menu folks!

[vintagecraze50]

Ebay has a policy, it says that partial refunds are generally not allowed but the seller can choose to do this, AND don’t do it unless this is a goof up on your part that you know deserves a partial if you want to. A partial cannot be forced by the buyer. That is against policy.

[lakefor94]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

This is one of the few places where people can buy stufF and then try to extort money back and keep merchandise. You go to any store, buy on Amazon, walmart.com blah and blah anywhere and you return the merch for a full refund, you do not get money off and keep merchandise after the sale in most cases ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET.

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You can offer a partial on Amazon as a seller.

[chapeau-noir]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

"or else" I will be unhappy

"or else" I do not know what I will do

I understand what the buyer meant, but it may not be spelled out enough to be removable by eBay standards.

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Yes - extortion has to be crystal clear for the FB to be removed - this was just innuendo. The red donut will be buried under lots of great feedback soon enough.

[vintagecraze50]

Yes, the seller can offer a partial but generally a buyer cannot force that issue.

[westchestervillage]

Yea, we might get out of the stamp business completely. Its very tough and very picky buyers and I understand but we do have free returns, we dont want anyone to get something they don't want. If we made a mistake on listing, we will take responsibility for sure. But like this one, we were "grading" the stamp and not the envelope and now we know the envelope is just as important to these collectors but we are not sure if we missed this tear or not and if we did, we will own up to it. Gonna probably put all the stamps in a lot one day and just sell them in a box and not individually. Too much time. lol Thanks for the reply but yea stamp selling is very tough business! We are not experts. The weird part is that we got a question from another account in the same city about the same envelope and we think he was using his other account to buy and one to sell which is fine but I dont think this buyer was being straight with us too.

[inhawaii]

I didn't read your entire rant but if a buyer says "I want a partial refund or I will leave you a negative feedback" ebay will remove it. 

[westchestervillage]

Thanks, yea at $10 we wanted to solve this, giving him $5 or 8.50 refund with ship would solve this and not kill us and he would keep it but apparently this site never sent me his response back to us at all, that is what he told us just now that he did sent a reply accepting the partial refund and he also sent pics he said but we never got this message from him. So I dont know if he was lying or this site never really sent his message to us to answer him!? Just sucks. Like we are not going to get a negative over a $10 sale so we did offer that partial refund to not have to pay for return shipping which was going to be another $5 or so. Someone let us down but it wasn't us. Was shocked when they rejected the removal of the feedback explaining to them the entire situation. If that guy did send that message and we didn't get it, never appeared in our online message box either, then this site glitch was to blame as well. Oh well.

[luckythewinner]

Apparently partial refund extortion is no longer reason enough to get negative feedback removed

Your claim of 'extortion' is incorrect and CS is correct to say it does not violate any eBay policies.

A buyer who claims an item is SNAD is allowed to ask for a partial refund. That is not extortion. In fact, a partial refund from the seller for a SNAD item is one of the remedies that eBay explicitly encourages in their polices. 

eBay is not going to remove a negative simply because a buyer asked for a partial refund for a SNAD.

[westchestervillage]

We disagree. Why didn't he just return it then? Free returns. He specifically wanted a partial refund and messaged that out of the gate. We did tell him to return or and did offer him a partial refund but never responded. He says he never got our message but this site confirmed with me that he did get our partial refund offer.

We think he could be a stamp seller maybe trying to knock other stamp sellers with his buying accounts maybe because we had a message from another account in the same city on the same envelope a day before the sale. It was a stamp seller. Nothing wrong with that but the whole thing has been strange.

[westchestervillage]

UPDATE: Finally got a response from the buyer. They said they messaged us agreeing to the partial refund, so he kinda proved that he did get our response (unlike what he states in his feedback) but he says since we never responded, he left the negative? It so confusing perhaps he doesn't want to get caught in a lie? At this point, who cares. lol

We never got this reply message from this site from him at all. So that was the main issue imo.

He didn't know we never got his agreement to the partial refund message. We honestly never got it from this site.

So just now, he agreed to revise / remove the feedback since we are sending him a partial refund of 50%. His words.

We sent him a 50% partial refund just now and sent him a feedback removal request.

Hope he keeps his word but we're not holding our breath.

At least we have this new documentation, but now I don't trust this site honoring anything he has agreed to with his own words. lol

[luckythewinner]

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@westchestervillage wrote:

At least we have this new documentation, but now I don't trust this site honoring anything he has agreed to with his own words. lol

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That is a good stance to take, because nowhere in eBay policy does eBay say that they will read messages, interpret the intentions of the buyer, and take action based on that interpretation.

[ed8108]

As a top rated seller you deserve better treatment, ebay in my opinion should have removed the neg .

[motts40]

We got extorted for something that wasn't in our listing. Buyer left a bad review and said he would change it if we gave him money back. It was cheaper to send $60 then to receive a $1000 keyboard back broken. 

[westchestervillage]

Hey its Top Rated Seller PLUS! haha This site wanted us to switch all the items to free returns to get the PLUS!!!! We did it, jumped thru the hoola hoop and everything. haha Then a newbie buyer goes on a partial refund tirade and I'm walking around the office like Poppy's character in Mythic Quest. haha

All good. Such a learning lesson to investigate the buyer before accepting their best offers. Going to be reading their Feedback Left To Others more closely again. Usually one can find a pattern there maybe. lol

Like on this one, I should have seen they were a newbie with 0 feedback and had left a negative to someone already, their only feedback left to others. So yeah, I should have avoided them from the get go.

[dqdistribution]

Haha, I'm a new seller and I do investigate the buyer when it's an offer. That is one reason I typically allow offers. Gives me time to deny offer and add them to my blocked list.

Saw one the other day with a bunch of negative feedback left for others. Was like nope.