@sodelight wrote:
Made what I thought was a simple purchase of 2 bags of cat food on Sunday. Used a $10 off $30 coupon. Just a few minutes later I receive a seller message which states first they found the cat food to be defective when preparing to ship and then that they had returned all the cat food to the distributor due to being defective and didn't know when it would be available again. They asked me if I wanted to cancel.
I told them I would not initiate a cancellation and if they selected buyer cancellation as an option I'd contact ebay. I knew they were trying to avoid an OOS defect. I asked them what the defective bad issue was and called them out on their opposing excuses. I quickly receive a reply stating they found another distributor (on a Sunday) and would be processing my order after all. They failed to address my questions and left me the canned 'have a nice day' response. I knew this seller was lying about everything and making up reasons as to why they didn't have the product to ship.
Monday shows tracking input. Today (tuesday) I'm awoken by packages being thrown on my porch. I think, "Wow! They really did ship my cat food". I opened the door and saw a plain white truck pull away. The boxes were from Walmart.com, I was perplexed since I didn't order anything from them. I see the tracking number on the label matches the seller provided tracking. I open up the packages shocked and appalled to see they shipped me 2 4# bags of Kibbles n Bits DOG food and NOT the 12# Fancy Feast CAT food I ordered. I knew they did this on purpose just to mess with me and create a hassle, but needed to be sure it wasn't a warehouse fullfillment mixup. I confirmed this with a call to Walmart, who this seller dropshipped from. This seller did in fact order the Dog food shipped to me. I then further confirmed this by seeing Walmart is OOS on the Cat Food I ordered! This proved 100% the seller did this on purpose! When I messaged them about what I received they continued to lie, claiming Walmart filled the order wrong. This was 100% invalid!! No matter what, this seller wouldn't admit to lying through this entire ordeal.
I phoned ebay throughout these issues. I then had to file a return. Of course I knew the seller would agree in order to avoid the defect they tried to avoid from the start! So minutes later I received a return shipping label addressed to Walmart returns center. I confirmed with Walmart that this seller did in fact expedite a return and Walmart supplied a label. Walmart was appalled that any anyone would do this type of thing to a buyer on purpose.
The shipping label kept printing blank! It required me to download the label versus a direct print option. It wasn't my error, I printed something immediately after to check. I had to phone ebay yet again and spend a half an hour to get a workable label. The Ebay CS rep lied stating ebay supplied the label when I questioned why I was given a label with a return address to Walmart. There is no way ebay supplied that label, they didn't know where the seller was shipping this bogus item from! I don't understand why the seller was able to get away with this. I'd expect the return would have to go to their seller account address and not a third party.
If sellers wonder where all the buyers have gone they only have other sellers to blame!! All I did was purchase 2 bags of cat food to feed my rescue cats, immediately paying. That should have been it. Instead this has been a nightmare ever since I pressed the purchase button!! While the horrible seller sits at home drop shipping items galore, a buyer is left holding the bag having to make constant phone calls, having my monies out there and having to go through the PITA return process. Not to mention I lost the $10 coupon I used to purchase from this awful person. Ebay claimed they were immediately reissuing it to me, but of course they failed to do so!
This seller is the absolute WORST I've ever come across. The intentional fraud they've perpetrated is simply disgusting! Next time you wonder why ebay has to believe the buyer over the seller as to what they received, think about this post! Ebay continues to let these type of sellers chase away the buyers!
I guess I am curious as to why you even questioned what they said in their original message? If a seller tells me that something is defective and he does not want to ship it, I would have just said 'go ahead and cancel my order.'
I wouldn't question them nor push them. I wouldn't know if they lied to me or not. I would just move on. But that is just how I would deal with it. Others take a different course of action.
Of course, I think that giving a defect or a strike against either buyer or seller is childish. Things like this happen in almost all retails venues from B&M stores to catalog sales to on-line sale sites. It is just a fact of selling and purchasing.
Of course, as I posted earlier, I don't care whether or not a seller gets a defect. That is what happens tons of time in the real world. Seller is out of product so either the buyer or seller cancels the order. I agree with the poster who thinks that E-bay is forcing these issues on sellers. If they don't want sellers to dropship, ban it on the site. But if they are going to allow sellers to use this method, then E-bay should use a less punitive approach to the dropshipper who has OOS problems. Not being able to get the product from their wholesaler or whomever, on the drop of a hat, is usually not under the control of the seller.
I am perfectly in line with banning it if the problems are so horrific for both buyer and seller.
