Conversation with a representative at Adyen about eBay "seems" to negate eBay's seller protection?

[lagarto_electronico]

I just had a lengthy conversation with a representative at Adyen who vaguely explained the nature of their relationship with eBay. However, it brought to light a basic problem that would make it impossible for this platform to be viable for casual seller (unless the Adyen representative and myself are mistaken).

To try to understand, I used a hypothetical sale of a $1000 motorcycle engine to a buyer in my discussion with this representative.

(1) The buyer purchases the $1000 motorcycle engine from the seller which is shipped to their address.

(2) The buyer opens a "Not As Described" claim, stating the engine is the wrong color, then forces a return. The buyer keeps the engine and returns a concrete block in a box. The box is returned to the seller with a tracking number.

(3) As soon as the box is marked as "delivered", all $1000 of the money automatically is credited back to the buyer's bank account.  On the back-end Adyen simply processes the API key (the technical process of digitally transferring funds securely).

(4) Once the seller discovers the truth, the seller obtains a police report and a USPS report to substantiate that fraud has taken place for eBay.

(5) The seller appeals the case with eBay. Representatives at eBay agree that the buyer was not telling the truth.  However, as the money is already in the buyer's bank account (and not a PayPal account, which acts as a sort of buffer in these transactions), the bank will not release it back to eBay or the seller.

So, the seller has now lost both the motorcycle engine, the $1000, and had to pay $150 for the concrete block to be mailed to the seller. Under US Code 18 1341,1343, and 1346 this constitutes mail / wire fraud which is a federal crime.

(6) The Adyen representative concluded that it was her understanding that there was no real mechanism to return the funds to the seller in these situations. The bank has the final say. The representative and I agreed that without the legal and investigative resources of a large corporation to come to bear on the criminal exploiting eBay, the concept of seller protection would be negated as I understand it.

Am I missing something here?

[2013grotz]

It underscores what a lot of people have been saying on here, to not move anything you can't afford to lose given policies.  But for $1000, I'd be filing police reports long before I'd be talking to ebay.  For sure.

[downunder-61]

I don’t really see the link to Adyen ?

This happens now, A LOT , and has been since the introduction of MBG - I don't see how MP/Adyen relates at all

[lagarto_electronico]

"I don’t really see the link to Adyen ?

This happens now, A LOT , and has been since the introduction of MBG - I don't see how MP/Adyen relates at all"

Adyen handles the managed payment system of eBay on the back-end.  The link should be obvious. Without PayPal as a buffer, it is much easier for criminals to exploit eBay because they use Adyen and their Banks to force funds one-way, to their accounts. Ayden is the invisible replacement for PayPal. It is a different type of payment processor.

Telling people they should not sell anything they can't afford to lose under circumstances like this is absurd because it presupposes that in at least some circumstances the buyer will not lose the value of the item entirely. As thieves begin to see how easy it is to take advantage of this system, no casual seller will be able to use this platform, only professional business with attorneys and investigators will be able to.

I was hoping someone would respond with some kind of insight to negate this and that I might have missed something.

[dhbookds]

There never has been seller protection in the situation you describe..  Paypal did the same.......

Ebay has instituted the reporting method on the buyer, allowed some deductions in some cases for qualified sellers.......try to mitigate some of it..  Presumably if a buyer gets too many neg reports they will be kicked off.  And in some cases ebay does courtesy refunds to the sellers from some reports. 

But recovery of the money from the buyer is impossible without a court order as I understand it......and haven't read about too many of those........

[lacemaker3]

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@lagarto_electronico wrote:

...

(5) The seller appeals the case with eBay. Representatives at eBay agree that the buyer was not telling the truth.  However, as the money is already in the buyer's bank account (and not a PayPal account, which acts as a sort of buffer in these transactions), the bank will not release it back to eBay or the seller.
...

It is exactly the same when the payment is processed by PayPal, or a merchant account. The PayPal  account does not act in any way as a buffer. eBay has never offered any seller protection in this situation, and PayPal seller protection was only provided if the buyer filed an INR case, and the seller could prove that the item was shipped to the correct shipping address that was attached to the PayPal transaction, because in that case PayPal could legally bill the buyer for the funds. 

In the situation you described, when the buyer returns a different item than they received, the seller's only recourse is through legal action.

[gracieallen01]

As ebay lacks the transparency in most all instances, I highly doubt that you will find many, if any, on the forums that will or can fully address your concern(s).  It seems to have been shown that, though 'blues' admit to having read the boards, they didn't answer or publicly acknowledge their awareness or knowledge of problems mentioned on the boards, even when tagged.  I think this may be a distancing recently instituted with the recent revamp of the forums.

[lagarto_electronico]

"There never has been seller protection in the situation you describe..."

This is not correct.  

I have personally reversed transactions for items that were of that approximate value in the old system in similar scenarios (buyer returning fake merchandise).

In this new situation, the limited recourse I had would not be possible.  The buffer that PayPal represents and the ability of eBay customer support to intervene is what made it possible.  Two elements have been eliminated, not just one.

The new system is automated in a way that precludes the influence or interference of eBay customer service to do anything as far as I can tell. 

Like I said, I hope someone can shed some light on this and prove that the Adyen representative and I overlooked something.

[farmalljr]

Ayden is in NO different a position then PayPal was.  There is no difference. 

If a buyer opens a case with eBay, then eBay is the arbitrator of the case opened. Not PayPal, and not Ayden. eBay is going to side with the buyer in almost every case, without fail. Ayden and PayPal are the payment processors of eBay, not  the sellers. 

There is NO meaningful protections for sellers. Period. Ayden has nothing to do with it. You are selling here under eBay's policies. That means you are selling under their rules, and those rules are not in favor of sellers, but instead lean heavily to buyers. You had no protections under PayPal as a seller. You have no protections from the buyers credit card company. 

Many sellers are or were, under the false impression that you were somehow protected under PayPal. Sellers never were. BUYERS always were. 

[valueaddedresource]

@lagarto_electronico   Leaving aside whether protections would even apply or not in your specific hypothetical scenario - I think the missing piece here is to assume that the only way a seller can ever get their money back from "seller protections" is if the funds are literally reversed and taken back out of the buyer's bank account.

That's not always the way it works, even before Managed Payments or Adyen.

You may or may not have seen sellers around here recommend to other sellers to have what's usually called "cookie jar insurance" - the idea being from a business perspective it is smart to set aside a small amount of the profit from every sale (like extra coins stashed away and saved up in a cookie jar) so that when unexpected expenses or costs come up like refunding for a damaged item or having to pay for return shipping, you have the money available to do that.

In theory, hopefully you don't have to dip into that self insurance fund too often and at some point you end up with a nice little bit of saved cash on hand.

Now, expand that idea out to the size of a multi-billion dollar company like eBay.  Some of the protections they offer like the Money Back Guarantee for buyers or seller protections in certain instances come out of eBay's own much bigger "cookie jar".

I've personally had several situations where eBay says they found a case in the buyer's favor and refunded the buyer - but because I was covered by whatever seller protection was appropriate for that situation, the funds were not being taken from me, eBay paid the buyer themselves.

I've also had situations as a seller where eBay originally decided a case in the buyer's favor and *did* take the money from me, but upon appeal and eBay redeciding in seller's favor, they paid the money back to me themselves, not by taking it back from the buyer.

The Money Back Guarantee for buyers and certain protections for sellers are simply programs where eBay has likely very carefully calculated the risk/reward ratio and believe it is in their favor to offer those benefits even if it costs them money occasionally.

It's like gambling at a casino - the house may have to pay out every now and then, but the amount of money they are taking in far outweighs what goes out. 😉

[valueaddedresource]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

@lagarto_electronico   Leaving aside whether protections would even apply or not in your specific hypothetical scenario - I think the missing piece here is to assume that the only way a seller can ever get their money back from "seller protections" is if the funds are literally reversed and taken back out of the buyer's bank account.

That's not always the way it works, even before Managed Payments or Adyen.

You may or may not have seen sellers around here recommend to other sellers to have what's usually called "cookie jar insurance" - the idea being from a business perspective it is smart to set aside a small amount of the profit from every sale (like extra coins stashed away and saved up in a cookie jar) so that when unexpected expenses or costs come up like refunding for a damaged item or having to pay for return shipping, you have the money available to do that.

In theory, hopefully you don't have to dip into that self insurance fund too often and at some point you end up with a nice little bit of saved cash on hand.

Now, expand that idea out to the size of a multi-billion dollar company like eBay.  Some of the protections they offer like the Money Back Guarantee for buyers or seller protections in certain instances come out of eBay's own much bigger "cookie jar".

I've personally had several situations where eBay says they found a case in the buyer's favor and refunded the buyer - but because I was covered by whatever seller protection was appropriate for that situation, the funds were not being taken from me, eBay paid the buyer themselves.

I've also had situations as a seller where eBay originally decided a case in the buyer's favor and *did* take the money from me, but upon appeal and eBay redeciding in seller's favor, they paid the money back to me themselves, not by taking it back from the buyer.

The Money Back Guarantee for buyers and certain protections for sellers are simply programs where eBay has likely very carefully calculated the risk/reward ratio and believe it is in their favor to offer those benefits even if it costs them money occasionally.

It's like gambling at a casino - the house may have to pay out every now and then, but the amount of money they are taking in far outweighs what goes out. 😉

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Edit to add:  I know that not all MBG claims are funded by eBay, and often eBay will try every way possible not to be on the hook for paying out to either a buyer or seller.

Obviously they don't want to pay if they don't have to and there are a lot of ways they've set the system up so they don't have to.

But just because Adyen says they can't physically take the money back out of a buyer's account doesn't necessarily mean all seller protections are null and void. eBay can and does fund those protections themselves in some scenarios.

[dentalrprtek2012]

Exactly, we should be able to sell our items at any price and know the we will not be####### by eBay but here we are. I went thru this and had to remove all expensive items from my listings. Ebays willingness to give full refunds to dishonest buyers who openly lie is just crazy. Be very careful.

[dbfolks166mt]

    What seller protection? There has, for the most part, never been any seller protection with eBay. What there is and the level of effort a seller has to go through to satisfy eBay they were scammed or cheated out of money is simply ludicrous and often all for naught. 

     I find some irony in the fact that under MP it take 3-?? days for a seller to receive their funds into their bank account but for cases decided in the buyers favor or for the issuance of buyer refunds it takes a matter of minutes to extract the funds from the sellers account. 

[numisnorway]

Making return scams easier is just what i would expect from ebay.

[donsdetour]

"The buyer keeps the engine and returns a concrete block in a box. The box is returned to the seller with a tracking number."

This single statement of the imagined situation make it completely for the buyer in a payment dispute:

You have no proof what you sent and no proof what was returned. You could have put a brick in a box to claim such happened etc.

This becomes  mater for LAW ENFORCEMENT and or cival courts. Not some payment system, or eBay.