Over the past 6 months, I use to put up for auction 1 box of 4000 collectable cards every week. In the 6 months (approximately 24 auctions), I had 5 non-paying winners, and 3 buyers who paid, received the box, went through the box, pulled out ALL the cards that had any value, open a "return - doesn't match the description" case, Ebay ruled in their favor (even though the descriptions matched the items exactly!), Ebay put a hold on my funds, buyers returned the box, and EACH time the boxes were missing over 30% of the items that were packed in the box! I noticed a pattern that the buyers who either didn't pay or paid and returned the item for a full refund but didn't return all the items, all had accounts with less than 10 feedback and the accounts were created within 30 days of the end of my auction.
The fact that they (Ebay) allowed the returns in the first place really angered me! Then when I got the items back and they were missing everything of value, I lost it. I am not a business (which I don't know if I would be more upset or less upset if I was) and my son and I were selling our collection to help pay bills. So when these buyers who steal and abuse the Ebay system with no recourse is absolutely absurd. I disputed Ebay's ruling and they gave me this statement:
"I reviewed your account and please understand that there may be instances where seller and buyer may not agree on an item being 'not as described'. When this happened, we are humbly asking for you to try to put yourself in their shoes. I know that this may not have been clear when they selected that return reason, but in order to be fair, we have to go with the first reason they selected.
I would like to reiterate that we are asking you to provide return resolution so your buyer can return the item because it is the fairest outcome for both you and your customer. You get your item back and your customer gets their money back. We believe that the best option that we have is to have the item returned to you so that you can inspect it upon receiving it back before issuing a refund.
I know that this wasn’t the response you wanted, but I trust that I've explained things clearly."
I don't feel that this was explained clearly. And I have a "no refund or return" on this listing and yet, Ebay allows this to happen.
Even though this is NOT an isolated incident, Ebay is still allowing this type of stuff to happen. However, because we cannot cancel a bid (that happens in the last minute) from a bidder that has less than 10 feedback, we have no way to see if the buyers are trust worthy, honest, scammers or abusing the system (this also ties into the post of Negative feedback for the buyer). This means that we, the sellers, get screwed and there is no way for us to be protected from this. Especially since Ebay always rules in the buyers favor.
