Ebay stepped in for the buyer, he got the product and money back and I'm with the loss.

[iamwarpath]

The title is the "long story, short" version but I saw a thread that was titled "Suing eBay" that was eventually closed which led me here. I put a cell phone on eBay and the communications with the buyer were great. He said he is on a military base in Guam so after he won the auction and I received his payment, I sent it to him. He requested USPS and the USPS confirmed the location so I sent it via USPS. After some time of seeing no movement, he sent an escalation to eBay, they asked me to provide proof that I sent it to him. I'm not trying to blame the pandemic but it honestly wasn't going to get to him in a timely manner from NY. Ebay wanted proof of delivery vs how it was just "on route" so they voted in his favor, refunded his money back from me, and closed the case. I clicked on the appeal button so they could reopen it but because it was "on route" and not "lost or "not mailed out" they just closed it again saying since he doesn't have it, he gets a refund. One person said if he does get it, send him an invoice or if there are three failed delivery attempts, it will get shipped back to me. Two days later, it finally hit the next hop and some time after that, he picks it up. I can't send an invoice to him per eBay's 30 day policy and the buyer isn't responding to me over eBay messages (no surprise). What I don't understand is how after I explained the buyer got the product and the money and used your system to not get in trouble, eBay isn't returning the money back to me. Every email support person has found a different way to completely avoid "no" and phone support, though sympathetic, says their department can't do anything and no one over a supervisor will talk to me. Buyers or sellers can't talk to the appeals team or the manual corrections team. They were so quick to yank the money from me but are not willing to do that to the buyer. Now, it's been long enough that eBay took down the listing.

To me, it was simple, the buyer didn't get the product, he gets a refund but wait, he did get the product so heres your money back for the auction. This is my 20th attempt to work things out but the last person threw eBay's user-agreement and privacy-policy web pages at me to dead the whole thing so I just want to take eBay to court. I don't understand why they won't take proper accountability for making the bad decision. I'm not asking for an apology, just make things right. Does anyone know how I can go about suing? It'll cost an arm and a leg but I'd like to get started. I'm not a business account. Both the user-agreement and privacy-policy pages do not have contact info. I'd like to forward every email response I have gotten to the CEO of eBay. That would cause a stir because all the phone calls and emails have not. 

[kitschy*loot]

When eBay issues a refund to a buyer when the item is still in transit, unfortunately if the item does arrive they are not going to reverse the refund and they can't force the buyer to repay. A person who wants to do the right thing would repay if they were happy with the item, or send it back to the seller if they were not happy. Since the case would be closed you would have to send them money for return shipping and trust them to use it for a return.

Many people do not do the right thing especially when they know there is nothing the seller can do to them. It isn't mandatory to return items after a refund has been given and the case was closed. Maybe if you keep trying you can get a courtesy recoupment or something, but from what I have learned on the boards I wouldn't count on that.

[kensgiftshop]

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@iamwarpath wrote:

I'd like to forward every email response I have gotten to the CEO of eBay. That would cause a stir because all the phone calls and emails have not. 

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No it wouldn't, he knows how Ebay works.

Sorry that happened, but not much you can do.

If you do a little reading here, you'll see it happens often.

[ittybitnot]

 I can't send an invoice to him....

@iamwarpath 

There is no way to send an invoice through eBay.  It has nothing to do with the time frame, there is no procedure available through their Managed Payments system.  You can, however, send an invoice through PayPal to his email address.   

He said he is on a military base in Guam 

Guam is a US protectorate.  It uses USPS.   If your buyer is a member of the US military or an employee and continues to ghost you,  you may wish to contact the base commander if you don't get paid via your PayPal invoice. Time to do a bit of research.  You have their name and address as a starting point. 

Once eBay has provided the refund, they cannot take it back from the buyer and give it to you.  A refund to you would have to come out of eBay's wallet, and they most often refuse to do that.   What was the transit time from when you shipped to when it was deemed delivered? 

[dnasilver]

You used USPS without tracking? We sent an expensive coin approx. 3K to Kandahar Afghanistan AFB a couple years back and took less than 3 weeks. We live in the middle of nowhere. USPS handed over to the military APO address and there was zero tracking for about 10 of the 18 days. Then it showed it had arrived Kandahar AFB and was delivered to the extremely happy buyer. Not sure why you did not use tracking. The Military takes delivery of mail to their service members seriously and NY to Guam should of been a simple shipment. It is not like it was in a war zone. Something went amiss

[tdrake]

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@iamwarpath wrote:

To me, it was simple, the buyer didn't get the product, he gets a refund but wait, he did get the product so heres your money back for the auction. This is my 20th attempt to work things out but the last person threw eBay's user-agreement and privacy-policy web pages at me to dead the whole thing so I just want to take eBay to court. I don't understand why they won't take proper accountability for making the bad decision. I'm not asking for an apology, just make things right. Does anyone know how I can go about suing? It'll cost an arm and a leg but I'd like to get started. I'm not a business account. Both the user-agreement and privacy-policy pages do not have contact info. I'd like to forward every email response I have gotten to the CEO of eBay. That would cause a stir because all the phone calls and emails have not. 

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You go about sueing eBay by engaging a lawyer and doing exactly what s/he says to do. Your new lawyer will probably tell you to not talk about your case on an eBay (or any) chat board. 

As for, "forward every email response I have gotten to the CEO of eBay. That would cause a stir..." No, it won't "cause a stir", and anyways your new lawyer would advise against it.

Good luck! 👍

.

[iamwarpath]

You'll see the option up to 30 days of the sale. It is there in case the shipping costs isn't correct (if you wanted to add signature for example). Ebay takes it away afterward. 

[slippinjimmy]

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@iamwarpath wrote:

You'll see the option up to 30 days of the sale. It is there in case the shipping costs isn't correct (if you wanted to add signature for example). Ebay takes it away afterward. 

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You can't send an invoice AFTER payment has been made, doesn't matter if the sale was 2 hours ago, 2 days ago or 2 weeks ago.

[itsjustasprain]

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@tdrake wrote:
As for, "forward every email response I have gotten to the CEO of eBay. That would cause a stir..." No, it won't "cause a stir", and anyways your new lawyer would advise against it..

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Plus I seriously doubt that the CEO of Ebay reads ANY of his email himself. He would need a squad of drones filtering out the looney-toon messages from the real CEO-level business messages or he would never get anything else done. After the first few messages from the OP later ones would go straight to the junk folder after which the OPs return address would be welded into their firewall.

[kensgiftshop]

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@iamwarpath wrote:

You'll see the option up to 30 days of the sale. It is there in case the shipping costs isn't correct (if you wanted to add signature for example). Ebay takes it away afterward. 

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Once the buyer pays, there's no reason to send another invoice, so there won't be an option.

[pjcdn2005]

According to the original post there was tracking but the item was still on its way when the buyer opened the claim.

[lakefor94]

@iamwarpath @Your only play after the buyer opened the INR case was to recall the shipment thru USPS before delivery. Especially as soon as the refund to buyer was processed. I would have recalled as soon as the INR case was opened if it was an overseas shipment.

[luckythewinner]

Seller protection requires you to have delivery confirmation within the delivery window.

You did not have delivery confirmation within the delivery window.

eBay policy says you lose those cases.

I believe a seller still has the option to exclude military addresses.

[iamwarpath]

I agree with you but this is what eBay said to me. 

"

This is Txxxx from eBay Customer Support, thank you for responding to our previous email.

Xxxx, upon reviewing the claim, it shows that at the time eBay had to step in and made a decision on this case, we weren’t able to verify that the item had been delivered. If a buyer has not received their item and we do not have proof of delivery, a full refund is due to the buyer. Please understand that if the buyer says the item was never delivered, tracking information is our only basis in deciding on the case.

We highly advise you to keep track of the item and be in continuous communication with your buyer. Once the tracking shows delivered, you have 2 options:

1. Send your buyer an invoice through PayPal for them to repay for the item; or

2. Send your buyer a return label for them to send your item back

Most buyers easily agree to these options because they already got their money back.

"

If it already took so long to get to him, I wasn't going to send him a return label. 

[iamwarpath]

Yes