I had a set of 4 expensive wheels and tires listed for quite a while on eBay, then someone bought them for a highly reduced price. I had always dreaded that day because I had a feeling that shipping them would be a major pain, but as it turned out, it was even worse. As the whole set was over the maximum shipping weight, each wheel would need to be shipped separately. I contacted eBay help about it and they said Ebay shipping had no provision for multiple packages for one sale, and I would need to ship through another shipping service. I ended up shipping with UPS through paypal which was comparable in cost to eBay Fedex shipping. The total shipping bill was $380.
So they were all delivered to the buyer on the same day which was good. But a couple days later I got a message that the buyer 'just didn't like them' and wanted to return. Really? I sent him a message outlining the return shipping cost and hopefully talking him out of the return, but no, he used the built in return shipping process. It charged him $50 and gave him ONE shipping label which he printed out 4 copies and attached to each wheel.
Of course the Fedex driver screwed up in not realizing that they all had the same tracking number, and he took them anyway. About a week later I get one wheel delivered which I had to sign for, and in the system, that signaled a completed return, and I was given 2 days to approve a refund. I filed an incomplete return with eBay because........ it was incomplete, and that extended the deadline a few more days. I got one more wheel a couple days later. Then I got a message from eBay that the issue had been decided in my favor.
Ok, great. But then I got the last two wheels about a week later. So I told eBay that the buyer should be refunded. Right thing to do, right? Well they did, but they kept their 13% fee and charged me that extra $300 on top of the original purchase price. So I am out not only the $380 shipping, but $300 on top of that. **bleep**? Is that ok? I did my part by the book, but they screwed me.
