Buyer wants to return phone after thirty days

[jeriahayane]

I sold an cracked sprint lg g7 thinQ and a day ago the buyer messaged me wanting me to help him sim unlock the phone. i sold the phone as locked to sprint network. he is wanting to use it on tmobile and needs a pin to the account to sim unlock the phone. only way to unlock the phone is if youre a current sprint customer in which i am not. i strictly sold the phone as locked to sprint. now he opens a return request saying the phone is locked to boost mobile and cant be used. he has switched up his story. now mind you the phone did have several cracks and listed for parts because of the cracks and also another note that boost mobile has never sold the lg g7 thin q. so do i turn this over to ebay or call them tomorrow?

[goodluckselling]

The eBay money back guarantee is good for 30 days after the buyer receives the item ( not purchased).  It looks like it was purchase on Aug. 14th and depending on when you shipped and it got delivered it could be out of the time frame?  You can check the tracking for the delivery date.

I would not advice calling eBay to step in just yet.  Although you listed it as for parts only you are also saying in the description that everything works great.  You can not have two different descriptions about the product like this.

If it was me I would accept the return based on the different descriptions.  I understand it might work great but the buyer can not get it to work, and I understand the buyer should have understood it being locked to sprint. 

It is really your call but if you do call eBay which would be escalating the request into a case, I think the outcome would be eBay allowing the buyer to return it to you for a full refund.

I also want to mention that you can not stop international buyers who use freight forwarding services from buying.  If you cancel transaction because of this you are going to get your account in bad standing.  Starting Oct 1st you are being rated on new areas called service metrics (Look in seller hub under the performance tab) which could cause you a lot of stress and extra fees.

Good Luck Selling!

[jeriahayane]

Most people who use shipping forwarders scam sellers. Im definitely not waiting a long time to receive money just to get scammed. I only ship to people who actually live in the USA. Anyways i denied the return request. You can't return a phone just because you can't get it sim unlocked. Not my problem as i stated the phone was locked to Sprint. I barely sell on here because of stuff like this. I just mostly buy stuff. Only reason i sold the phone on eBay is because swappa has closed down their boneyard site which I've never had a problem on there because it's heavily moderated when a problem occurs. Was a great site to sell parts phones and not deal with headaches. I'll have to find another place to sell my parts phones.

[pjcdn2005]

Most people who use forwarding services are not scammers. There may be a higher porportion of them when it comes to selling phones but in general, buyers who use forwarding services just want to purchase something that the seller refuses to send them directly.

[femmefan1946]

I agree.

It's the phone that attracts scammers not the freight forwarder.

Keep in mind that you can refuse returns, but you cannot refuse refunds.

You can insist that the buyer return the disputed product. The only question is who pays for the return.

If the buyer goes to Paypal he has 180 days from Payment (not delivery) for Dispute, but he has to pay for returning  the phone .

If you get the phone back, it would be wise to sell it only as 'for parts' with no mention of its function.