Buyer provided an invalid shipping address, then left negative feedback

[thotup12]

I recently sold a lot of 4 items to a buyer that turned out to be from the Ukraine.  The address the buyer provided on both eBay and PayPal was not a personal address, but was in fact for a US based re-shipping company.  When I attempted to generate a shipping label, both eBay and PayPal failed, with eBay providing the feedback that the address was not valid.  I attempted to generate labels approximately 6 or 7 times, and I even attempted to fix the address so that eBay would accept it.  But I was completely unable to generate a label.  Buyer insists that the address is valid. 

Long story short, I cancelled the order with the reason "something was wrong with the buyer's shipping address".  That was the truth; eBay repeatedly rejected the address and I could not generate a label.  How can I ship it if eBay and PayPal won't generate a label?

I contacted the buyer and explained the situation.  I also explained that I would re-list the items and if they wanted to edit their address and repurchase, I would be happy to sell to them.  They responded by offering me a purchase price lower than their original purchase price, plus I got sent an even lower offer from another Ukrainian in the same exact zip.  When I rejected the low-ball offers, buyer left me negative feedback misrepresenting the reason for the cancellation.

So here's the question: What recourse do I have?  How do I appeal a negative review?

Thanks for any help more experienced sellers can offer.

[corvettestainless]

1st- 'exempt' all international buyers from buying your items going forward

2- call ebay to try to get Neg removed- depending on what they said, it may get removed. 

3- did you check the address on google- usually redfin, Zillow etc. will come up with the address. Is it valid, or was there a small typo? 

[kensgiftshop]

Don't know what message you got, but there has been some complaints about getting an invalid State when trying to get shipping labels.

[thotup12]

It just said, if I recall correctly, that the address or zip was invalid.  I did attempt to fix the problem - I scoured the web and looked for solutions but none of them worked.  It also failed in PayPal.

It's not my responsibility that buyer is using some wonky re-shipper that eBay flags as an invalid address.  Beyond that, there is a whole thread on PayPal communities about this address being used by scammers: https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Managing-Risk-and-Fraud/Scammed-by-removed-New-Castle-DE-19720/t...

The last page includes exactly the same shipping errors I received.

I contacted eBay and both reported the buyer and also requested that the negative feedback be removed.

[mesodude]

Did you try contacting the buyer first? I recently sold an item to someone who requested I ship to an address that was different from the one listed in the email I'd received from eBay instructing me to ship the item. I told him I could only ship to the address in the email. It turns out the buyer's zip code had been recently changed due to re-zoning and when I printed the label, PayPal auto-generated the address the buyer had given me. If this happens to you again, whatever you do, don't bypass eBay's or PayPal's system based solely on what the buyer tells you is the correct address. 

[thotup12]

I didn't contact them first, no.  But the address the user is using is a known scamming address that has an active thread on PayPal dating way back to 2016.  See this URL:

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Managing-Risk-and-Fraud/Scammed-by-removed-New-Castle-DE-19720/t...

Of course, eBay sided with the buyer and closed my feedback removal request.  It's pathetic, really.  eBay tells us that we have to ship to the address provided or it voids our seller protection.  Then when their own freaking system won't generate a shipping label for the bogus address, they STILL let the buyer ding my metrics.  Worse, I can't issue any negative feedback against the buyer, who clearly was playing games.  So basically eBay rejected the buyer's address and no I'm penalized for it.  And the only possible way for me to have avoided the negative feedback would have been to ship to a different address and thereby void my seller protection.   But yippee!  We made a customer happy because they got to be vindictive.

I'm pretty upset.

@Anonymous 

[gwzcomps]

Call CS and walk them through the fact the address was bad. Explain that you canceled the order because of it. In theory they should remove the feedback. If they don't try a different CS person that is more helpful 😛 Also I find it good practice to block problem buyers like this. Link for your convenience 😉

https://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?bidderblocklogin

[mesodude]

"I didn't contact them first, no. But the address the user is using is a known scamming address that has an active thread on PayPal dating way back to 2016."

I'm trying to understand why you didn't try contacting them or eBay before you cancelled? Regardless, I think if this happens again you should contact eBay and explain that their system is generating a message that the buyer's address is invalid. You could also contact the buyer and explain that the address is coming up as invalid on eBay. I don't know if this is a scammer or not but I think in the future, it will be to your advantage if you at least document that you made the effort to clear things up before canceling. Other than looking up the information, it doesn't sound like you did that here.

"Of course, eBay sided with the buyer and closed my feedback removal request."

Did you get some message from a human being or was this possibly a computer generated message? If you haven't already done so, I really think you need to talk to someone--either to explain what happened to a live human being or to find out how to appeal the feedback removal request. I really hope you are able to resolve this but I really don't understand why you cancelled before you tried contacting eBay.

[inhawaii]

If the address was deemed invalid by ebay, to the point where you couldn't even print out a shipping label, you had no choice but to cacnel the transaction. 

The buyer got refunded.

There is nothing more you could have done.

That being said, that negative feedback is not acceptable in my opinion.

I would be on the phone with ebay customer service  tearing them a new one until i got it removed. 

Good luck to you.

[gracieallen01]

"How can I ship it if eBay and PayPal won't generate a label?"

Just as a side note -

Once upon a time, long, long ago in an era far away, there were pens and hand-written labels that people put addresses upon, attached to packages, and then those people trotted down to the Post Office to mail the package to the person who had purchased the contents of the package.

Of course, on occasion, the seller had to double-check the address and possibly make corrections.

[inhawaii]

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@mesodude wrote:

"I didn't contact them first, no. But the address the user is using is a known scamming address that has an active thread on PayPal dating way back to 2016."

I'm trying to understand why you didn't try contacting them or eBay before you cancelled? Regardless, I think if this happens again you should contact eBay and explain that their system is generating a message that the buyer's address is invalid. You could also contact the buyer and explain that the address is coming up as invalid on eBay. I don't know if this is a scammer or not but I think in the future, it will be to your advantage if you at least document that you made the effort to clear things up before canceling. Other than looking up the information, it doesn't sound like you did that here.

"Of course, eBay sided with the buyer and closed my feedback removal request."

Did you get some message from a human being or was this possibly a computer generated message? If you haven't already done so, I really think you need to talk to someone--either to explain what happened to a live human being or to find out how to appeal the feedback removal request. I really hope you are able to resolve this but I really don't understand why you cancelled before you tried contacting eBay.

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If the address is bad, it's not the sellers responsibilty to contact ANYONE (the buyer or ebay) before cancelling. Cancel the transaction, Reason: "problem with the address" and move on. 

[gwzcomps]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

"How can I ship it if eBay and PayPal won't generate a label?"

Just as a side note -

Once upon a time, long, long ago in an era far away, there were pens and hand-written labels that people put addresses upon, attached to packages, and then those people trotted down to the Post Office to mail the package to the person who had purchased the contents of the package.

Of course, on occasion, the seller had to double-check the address and possibly make corrections.

---

Address "corrections" after a sale is made is currently a violation of eBay policies.  The only way to correct or change an address is to redo the transaction.  Granted eBay is hiding behind the word "generally" but shipping to a different address will put you at risk of losing seller protections.

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/shipping-delivery/changing-shipping-details-purchase?id=4028

[thotup12]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

"How can I ship it if eBay and PayPal won't generate a label?"

Just as a side note -

Once upon a time, long, long ago in an era far away, there were pens and hand-written labels that people put addresses upon, attached to packages, and then those people trotted down to the Post Office to mail the package to the person who had purchased the contents of the package.

Of course, on occasion, the seller had to double-check the address and possibly make corrections.

---

This is a singularly unhelpful comment.  Think this through:

- The address is a remailing service in the US.  
- It is NOT a valid personal or business address.
- It is being used by an international buyer to fool eBay and PayPal into thinking the international buyer is a US buyer, and therefore to skirt limits placed by sellers who don't want to sell internationally.

In short, it is scammy, and eBay should not be siding with that sort of buyer.

Beyond that, what possible rationale could there be for me to hand write an address label to an address that both eBay and PayPal says is not valid?  I sure cannot think of one.  Sounds like a great way to lose all of my seller protections.

I can't even understand how PayPal confirmed the address.  By their own policy statement, an address is confirmed if it matches a linked credit card or bank account.  There is NO WAY that a guy living in the Ukraine has a credit card registered to the address of a remailer in the US.

Like I said, this was a scammy deal from day one and eBay is simply letting this scammer victimize me.

[thotup12]

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@mesodude wrote:

I'm trying to understand why you didn't try contacting them or eBay before you cancelled?

---

To be blunt, because I was ticked off that the buyer misrepresented themselves as a US person / Business when they were in fact international, despite the fact that I explicitly block buyers in regions I don't ship to and I explicitly indicated US shipping only.  As it turns out, the buyer insists that the address is valid, so of course I would have had to cancel it anyway, as there was no way for me to generate a shipping label.

On a side note, why does eBay provide “there is something wrong with the buyer’s shipping address” as a cancellation option if that isn’t a valid reason to cancel?  If it is a valid reason, then why allow the buyer to post negative feedback because of such a cancellation?

What people need to realize is this: by allowing this sort of behavior, eBay is willfully creating loopholes whereby international buyers can scam sellers into selling to them even when they disallow international sales... by pretending that the address of a remailer in the US is in fact their address.  It is defacto fraud, and eBay allows it.

I'll definitely be calling CS tomorrow.

[chapeau-noir]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

"How can I ship it if eBay and PayPal won't generate a label?"

Just as a side note -

Once upon a time, long, long ago in an era far away, there were pens and hand-written labels that people put addresses upon, attached to packages, and then those people trotted down to the Post Office to mail the package to the person who had purchased the contents of the package.

Of course, on occasion, the seller had to double-check the address and possibly make corrections.

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That invalidates seller protection, and the OP states that they tried numerous times to research and correct the address to begin with.  That's pretty much the rock/hard place scenario and at that point we're kind of stuck.

I've diddled with addresses a bit - some of the items I've sent to the Middle East, Japan and China have different address conventions, but I've been able to do so within the parameters of address validation, which are not very broad.  I have a regular buyer in Beijing who just drops me a note with the address in Chinese as well, asking me to stick it somewhere on the package - it helps a lot!