I’ll go ahead and start with the most recent situation first, but fair warning, this is absolutely a gripe post and it’s a long one….
This week I had someone purchase an item from me, specifically a bike frame, and the buyer was from Guam. Ebay did not give me any shipping label options and the buyer shouldn’t have even been able to purchase it based on my shipping restrictions. The buyer asked to cancel and I had no problem with that. When I went to cancel the order and give the refund, it would not allow me to do so for a couple of reasons. First, there was currently a hold on my account due to me shipping an item late. I was literally a day past the due day to ship due to a family emergency and the buyer opened an item not received complaint. I communicated with the buyer, everything was amicable, and the item was shipped a couple days ago with a label purchased through eBay. This happened a couple days prior to the bike frame sale, and there was still a hold. I called to get an answer to why and they stated that the hold would be there until the item was actually delivered. Ok, fine. I can understand that and will wait until that’s delivered for the hold to be released. But the main issue here(they said) was that they would not refund the buyer of the bike frame because that buyer paid $334 and there was currently only $283 available in the available funds account. The difference in those amounts was the fees that ebay charged for the listing! I had not touched or even been able to touch any of the funds from the bike frame sale at all. So they are telling me that I need to front the money for a refund for an item that I don’t even have access to the funds yet! They do! And they would have been willing to refund them, but ooops, there wasn’t enough left from the bike frame sale to give a full refund because they charged the fees! The money has basically been in their hands the whole time but they can’t just cancel the sale and refund them? I have to pay it all out of my personal account before I have even received access to the money in the first place? What sense does that make? I could understand if I withdrew it to my personal account, but all of the funds from that sale has been in their hands the whole time.
And that leads me to the next issue. Even when I tried to go ahead and pay it out of my account, it wouldn’t let me use my bank account to do so. My bank account is set up to pay seller fees(reason coming up soon…). I have run into repeated issues with this over the past few months because of another listing issue. I had tried to issue a refund on another listing but it wouldn’t let me. At that time, my debit card was set up to pay seller fees. When I attempted the refund, it kept asking me to enter a new form of payment. When I tried re-entering my debit card info, it would say it couldn’t be verified, which doesn’t make sense because it was already verified for seller fees and used for payouts, in addition to being used to purchase other things on eBay. When I questioned eBay about this, they couldn’t give me an answer and told me to just use a different form of payment. Like, you already have this card verified? Why is it not letting me use it now? Also, during this same time period, the card was being used for instant withdrawals without issue. When I kept running into the same issue, eBay told me to just change my seller fees to come out of my bank account. I did so, and it still wouldn’t let me and kept asking for a card. I would try my debit card again and it would give me the same error. Ebay continued to give me the runaround on this until it passed the 90 day mark, and then it wouldn’t even give me a refund option on the listing. Before you ask, “Why did it even get to the 90 day mark?”, the reason is that the item from this listing was a large, heavy credenza. They can be difficult to arrange shipping for from a reputable company that isn’t trying to gouge you on shipping. I sell mostly furniture on my account and have done so for years without issue. I have a regular shipper that I use, but they usually only accept jobs when they have multiple deliveries in the same area. I gave the buyer the option to either wait for my shipper or I would acquire a shipper from Uship. She said she was fine using my shipper since I have used them in the past without issue. She knew at the time that it could be a while until they were able to deliver and she was fine waiting, as was I. I usually pay all of the shipping fees specifically with the money paid by the buyer, so that money was withdrawn from the eBay account. Long story short, my shipper strung me along until they eventually said they couldn’t deliver, and at that point, the Uship offers would have had me losing money so I decided to refund the buyer. When I attempted to, I ran into all of the issues above. They stated that because the 90 days had passed, they couldn’t give me the option through the listing(which was their fault due to their broken payment system). They told me I could refund the buyer outside of Ebay and that they would refund my listing fees as long as I showed screen shots of the refund in the message thread with the buyer. I was super hesitant and asked if the buyer could just open up a case of item not delivered and then I just agree to refund that way and they said that because it was past the 30 day mark, the buyer wouldn’t even have the option to open a case. I spent hours on the phone with multiple people, including a supervisor, making sure that this would be ok and that I wasn’t at risk of anything by refunding outside of Ebay. They also told me, to my astonishment, that I could just not refund the buyer($1650!!!) because it was outside the protected 30 day mark. Multiple agents told me this, including the supervisor! Like, they literally just told me on a recorded line that I could commit fraud and just not refund her! **bleep**??? And to a guy whose day job is investigating theft and fraud for a major retailer!!! I was adamant that I wanted to refund this buyer and would not just take her money, and I also wanted assurance that they would refund me for the listing fees. The supervisor told me specifically that she would write in the notes that I was to be refunded listing fees once I showed proof of sending the refund in the message thread with the buyer. The buyer refused to use PayPal and requested a cashier’s check. I said I was fine with that, but that I would have to ask eBay if photos of the cashier’s check and shipping label would be suffice as proof. She immediately got mad, said she wanted the refund now, and then opened up an item not received case(which she shouldn’t have been allowed to do) and it put a $1650 hold on my account until I addressed it! Which I couldn’t even do because their payment system wouldn’t let me use my already verified accounts to do so! So then, I had to contest the open case so I wasn’t risking sending her a cashier’s check AND getting charged through eBay as well. At this point, I wasn’t sending her any money until the case was lifted and the hold was gone because I didn’t trust that eBay system wouldn’t still charge me. That took days for them to clear, during which time the buyer is accusing me of fraud and threatening lawsuit. All because of eBay’s messed up payment system. The hold finally lifted after 5 days and I obtained and mailed the cashier’s check refund that same day. I the called ebay to show them the proof in the message thread that I had refunded her and requested my listing fees refunded. I was then told that they would have to review it because it was outside the protected timeframe and that I had issued a refund outside of eBay!!! They are the ones who told me to do it!!! It literally took them 72hrs to review, and they even initially sent me a denial before sending me a follow up that they would make an exception and approve it this one time only, like the whole thing was my fault in the first place and they were doing me a favor! I have been a seller on ebay for decades, but this is literally some of the worst business practices I have ever seen anywhere. Ebay has just turned into a greedy, money hungry company that doesn’t give a **bleep** about their sellers or buyers, and is even willing condone or overlook fraud as long as they collect their fees. Which are ridiculous to begin with and cut into sellers margins by counting shipping costs into the final values. Get your **bleep** together, eBay. Some of these actions are borderline criminal.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
