There's a lot in your post. I'm not aware that most of what Walmart sells is consigned products. I might believe that most of what Walmart has listed on their website is "consigned," although that isn't quite the right term for the third-party listings on their website. I'm also not sure how that is relevant. I believe that third-party sellers on Walmart.com don't generally use Walmart to house goods or fulfill orders. That is an arrangement, like Fulfillment by Amazon, that would be considered consignment.
eBay has no way to validate whether what the customer received was as described. But eBay can validate that the user agreed to the eBay terms and conditions, that the user selected and purchased the item (which, if it is like the seller's other items is described as not accepting returns), that the user agreed (pursuant to the eBay terms and conditions) to pay for the item, that the terms and conditions of the Money Back Guarantee give the user three days of receipt to lodge a claim with eBay that the item was not as described, and that the user did not lodge a claim that the item was not as described within those three days. Having done all they promised, eBay is entitled to their money and the seller is entitled to his or her portion of it.
As for the fee for communication about chargebacks, that's between eBay and its credit card processor. That's part of eBay's cost of doing business. They should eat it on a $12 chargeback and decide whether its worth it on a $50 chargeback. eBay's cost to defend their sellers against undeserved chargebacks should be on them. That is part of what we pay for when we list items.
Writing off a loss due to credit card fraud isn't a way to make money. This is one of those lunatic things that people who don't understand deductions say. The tax code is weird. Sometimes, in some industries, people can write off losses greater than their actual losses and thereby use tax losses to make real profits. Banks' losses on fraudulent use of the credit cards they issue is not one of those times.
Displaying statistics of buyers might help but only if individual eBay users are better at determining which users to exclude based on those statistics than eBay is. Honestly, eBay does an imperfect job of vetting users but there is no way to perfection. My hunch is that they do a better job excluding fraudulent accounts than I could likely do on my own because I would have only a tiny portion of their data and a tiny bit of their experience with frauds.
Many small sellers, if given the power, would just exclude buyers who had zero feedback. If eBay allowed that, there would be no new buyers to replace those who die off or have a bad experience with a seller and give up on eBay altogether. One seller who posts on this board just wants to redline buyers from certain places, which is probably illegal and is certainly a policy that when applied historically to housing led to lots of bad things, the ramifications of which we as a country are still struggling with. eBay needs a steady stream of new users for us to have people to sell to. eBay can't leave the ability of new buyers to purchase up to the whims of quirky sellers.
albertabrightalberta | Volunteer Community Mentor
