Fair decision from ebay, case 2

[rati-store]

We are being banned from selling for the second time in a year. The first time, eBay made some serious mistakes that resulted in too many defects. After a huge investigation, the account was opened, but no one told us why.

eBay told us that we were no longer allowed to sell on their site. eBay removed the listings. Because of this, we did nothing for a long time, and when we realized that we could still list, some of the listings were already expired and we had to re-post them. We had over 3,100 listings that were removed, and now, after several months of work, we have put 2,300 listings back.

Now eBay has banned us from selling again because we are a threat to their platform.

We have 2 defects. The first came from a case where a customer gave positive feedback even though parts were missing from the shipment. We are sure that nothing was missing from the shipment, but we did not intervene further because the customer was happy. eBay did not report anything about it, and we did not know that we had a defect.

The second defect came when the customer reported that we had delivered a used part, item as not described and opened a request. We asked the customer to provide a photo of the machine plate so that we could check whether he had ordered the right part for his device. The customer did not respond and because we immediately knew that this was a case where the customer wants us to pay the return costs and refund the money, in other words, pay for his mistake.

We reported it to eBay and told them that the customer was cheating. The customer did not respond to our several requests and eBay demanded to handle the matter within 3 days. We ordered return shipping for the part so that we could prove that the buyer was lying.

However, the buyer returned the part at his own expense. We stated that the product was unused, since it had been delivered to the customer in its original factory packaging. We reported the matter to eBay and asked them to step in. They did nothing and after some time they claimed that the customer had demanded that they step in. Ebay of course decided the case in favor of the buyer, that's ebay's normal practice, no matter what the buyer did.

We filed an appeal and, as ebay requires, we submitted new evidence, photos of which we saw that item was unused. Ebay of course stuck to its previous decision and no longer answered our questions.

We contacted customer service first via chat and then email. We received a response in which the customer service person praised how good and honest we were and how we form the basis for their operations. Well, everyone knows this empty chatter, but now there was a change! Surprisingly, the customer service person said that we had done everything right and that they would remove the defect.

But how it turned out. Instead of a promise from the ebay customer service person, we were told that we could no longer sell on ebay because we were a threat to their operations and they were trying to protect buyers. Instead of removing the defect, in less than a week we were in a hopeless situation again.

We have had several cases over the years where eBay has made unquestionably wrong decisions. We have told them about them and proven them right.

eBay does not admit to making wrong decisions and their messing around is incredibly unprofessional. Of course, we have also made mistakes and have been prepared to take responsibility for them. By far the majority of the things we have been judged to be wrong are scams intentionally made by the buyer and supported by eBay.
Over the years, we have been convinced that the decisions made by eBay are mostly wrong and unfair. eBay customer service does not follow the rules stated on eBay's website. When they realize that they have found themselves in a situation where they can no longer explain their actions, they stop responding. They do not always read the messages presented to them carefully and then respond with a message that contains 90% pre-written phrases and self-evident statements that do not help the seller at all, quite the opposite. Every time a different person answers, who hasn't had the time to read the facts presented earlier in the matter.

I believe that eBay's customer service is working under a lot of pressure, but that doesn't justify destroying the work that others have done in accordance with eBay's rules.

I have read about the desperation of many sellers here and I feel sympathy for them because of my own experience. I don't know what eBay's decisions are based on, but they often feel like revenge because you dared to criticize their actions.

But really, now they have gone to new heights, first promising to remove the defect and then closing the account. We can't understand the situation at all. No matter what you do, they always think you have done wrong and things are always sorted out afterwards, they don't help proactively.

[rati-store]

Many thanks for you comments, we will give some comments belov.

"Ebay sellers must, from a practical point of view, handle their customer service problems themselves."

We don't totally agree or we might not understand your meaning. There are things which you can't do yourself. But if you mean that it is seller who has to be active and follow that everything is done like it should, then you are right.

"If they ask Ebay to step in, they have failed and will be punished, sooner or later."

The case was not so simple. Buyer lied that "item is not like described". Buyer could not send valid proof so we decided to pay return costs and show to ebay that buyer was abusing rules. We sent address labels and paid return costs. But buyer did not use our labels and paid return costs himself. When item came back and ebay asked us to refund, we denied to do it because buyer had broken rules. We asked ebay to step in but they did absolutely nothing. Then ebay said that buyer had asked them to step in and made decision in favor of buyer, of course. We appealed and lost, of course. We tried to discuss and the stopped to answer. We opened the case again and won, defect was removed. It is still hard to believe because ebay customer service in most cases doesn't care what sellers are saying.

You said sooner or later. Now it is later and our selling is finished in ebay. 

"If you have a problem with an order or customer, you own it and you need to fix it."

That is what we have tried to do and mainly with success. 

"If you do not fix your problems you are a danger to the site."

That is what they say. But in practice buyers and ebay itself is much bigger danger. They can do whatever and seller pays.

"Unfortunately, it is never stated this bluntly, by Ebay, and even on this forum, which can be quite blunt, some posters will send you for help which rarely helps on the social media sites."

We might not understand. ebay says that we are danger al thought we had done anything wrong, just got those BBE bad points from baseless requests which buyers have open.  Do you mean that it is useless to contact ebay members through for example Facebook?

"If you could prevent having Ebay step in by paying for return shipping it would have been a cheap way to retain your ability to sell here."

If you mean that one particular case, we paid return costs but finally buyer paid return costs by himself. It was weird and we thought that he had changed his mind in somehow. We are still out like snowball, did buyer think that he is in weak position, when we did not let him keep item but wanted it back and did not refund immediately. It was not expensive part (our items mainly are not expensive). Because sending costs were included in price, they were together with return costs higher than total price, it had been clear loss to us if they had used label which we sent. It might sound crazy but we did not want to give up to the cheating buyer. Most probably it did not help us at all, we have to still check did ebay send money back to us, most probably not. But anyway, we paid return costs but buyer did not accept it. And we paid them because ebay forced us to do it and we wanted to avoid problems until we could prove that we were right. 

Who knows how big influence it finally had to reason why they kicked us out.

"Life is not fair, and neither is selling on the internet. Accept it or find another way to make a buck."

We totally agree.

When profits are low and you loose money to cheating buyer, you have to sell several items to honest buyers to cover losses. 

[lacemaker3]

@rati-store,

This isn't a debate. We can explain what the rules are, but you can't change them by arguing about them.

Arguing and justifying is a waste of time. The rules are what they are, and they are not going to be changed.

You can complain about the fairness of life, the universe and everything until you go broke. But I don't recommend it. It doesn't help and it won't change anything.

[rati-store]

The major mistake was to start selling in ebay. When you are new and full energy and believe all those beautiful words concerning for example seller support, you just believe and trust to it. It is of course own fault.

With warning messages we actually meant something which is happening automatically. Sometimes it is mentioned that case is closed and it does not have impact to your seller level. Why it could not be mentioned in opposite cases. We totally agree that it is impossible to send separately letter to every seller. But what does it help if you follow dashboard all the time? You can't know in advance when buyer is opening a request and when you have many open deliveries, you can't know how they end. We don't keep the system fair at all al thought it is same to everyone. It is like lottery and when you have bad luck, you happen to get 2 idiots to your customer at same time and game is over. Basically when it is calculated in % you career could be in end after first selling.

We understand well the need to get everything to work automatically but there will always be cases where a human has to step in. 

The cases did not come to account months later, you are right. We just did not understand how the evaluating happens. There just was happening so many things at same time that we had difficulties to follow and understand it. We now know that in message from ebay was told:

"After evaluating your transactions, your account's shipping performance does not satisfy the requirements of the Shipping Performance Policy - Item Not Received Rate."

There were  3 cases which were mentioned in Dashboard. We asked from ebay that is that all and are they those ones which are causing the closure of account. They refused to answer. We tried to ask almost everything because in their messages they gave an impression that there were many cases and that we have at least killed someone. To be honest we still don't understand all details because ebay refused to answer. They all were repeating almost same prewritten message whatever we asked. For example after you have discussed via chat with their agent, you should get copy of that automatically to your email but we did not. That happened several times and we neither get any comments to emails to which we got possibility to send by automated assistant. 

We also noticed that in reports from dashboard were weird days. For example days when delivery time expired where different compared to those which were given in listings as estimated delivery time. There has to be explanation for that but how to check it when customer service denies co-operation.

You said: "The cases were not manufactured by eBay. Your buyers started the cases."

ebay makes situation worse when they don't concentrate to what they are doing. We could tell tens stories where they have made wrong decisions and then everyone is repeating the same and no-one has glue what they really are doing/saying. We can remember only one case where ebay has confenced that their workers have made wrong decision and they have to be sent to re-education. We did not understand that we have to ask them to remove defect and when we tried to do it, it was too late. So even in such cases the seller pays. Unfortunately we have to say that ebay is in one way manufacturing the cases.

We had 3 INR cases. Ebay removed defect from one case. Buyer opened request in both 2 other cases before delivery time expired (at least we believe so and ebay refuses to give comment). In one of those two, buyer wanted that we refund him because he did not need item anymore. We refunded. In our eyes the case changed from "item not received" to "changed mind". In last case we delivered one item first without tracking (someone could call it also death kiss) but we can't get it to letters in Finland and it is told in listing. Buyer asked after it already 1 week after we sent it, we made several proposals what to do. We decided to order new item from Germany with tracking because we were afraid to get problems with ebay.  20 minutes after we got order confirmation buyer opened request al thought we believed that we had agreed that he can wait few days.  Buyer get item (at least one) during delivery time. But we got BBE from all those. Afterwards it is easy to say that we should have done something in different way but we still believe that we made everything in right way. If you can't get tracking and when you can't trust to delivery times which transport companies give, what to do?

[rati-store]

Many thanks for your efforts to guide us.

When we go to Facebook, how and where we can find such person to whom we could contact? We have Facebook account but we use it maximum once/year🙄. 

Do we make a search in somehow or do we go to certain part of it or... Unfortunately we are handless.

[gurlcat]

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@rati-store wrote:

Do we make a search in somehow or do we go to certain part of it or... Unfortunately we are handless.

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You .... don't have hands????

[a_c_green]

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@gurlcat wrote:

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@rati-store wrote:

Do we make a search in somehow or do we go to certain part of it or... Unfortunately we are handless.

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You .... don't have hands????

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OP is registered in Finland. We'll give them a little latitude with the English language... 😁

[bdmh-enterprises]

@rati-store couple things here I think you're not understanding.

First of all, when any sale is made using a bank or credit card as payment, the customer is ALWAYS right. So if they file Not As Described case, as far as eBay is concerned the item IS not as described, period. It doesn't matter how much "proof" or "belief" you have the buyer is lying. There are only two outcomes in this situation: buyer keeps item and gets refund, buyer returns item (at your expense) and gets refund. If eBay has to do this for you, you get a defect. This isn't eBay making bad decisions, this is consumer protection laws at work.

Secondly on a marketplace this large everything that can be automated is. This makes things a lot easier in most cases, but does mean that the protocols of the system have to be followed exactly. This means that even if there's a great customer friendly way to deal with a situation, if it doesn't fit the protocols it can't be done. Again your beliefs don't matter to a system that only deals in facts and when you do something that can't work with the system there will be negative effects.

[mam98031]

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@rati-store wrote:

Many thanks for your efforts to guide us.

When we go to Facebook, how and where we can find such person to whom we could contact? We have Facebook account but we use it maximum once/year🙄. 

Do we make a search in somehow or do we go to certain part of it or... Unfortunately we are handless.

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How often you use your Facebook account has no bearing on getting to Ebay's Facebook account and try to get your concerns addressed.  As long as your account it there, you can get to Ebay's facebook via the link I previously posted.

[luckythewinner]

We reported the matter to eBay and asked them to step in. Ebay of course decided the case in favor of the buyer, that's ebay's normal practice, no matter what the buyer did.

So to sum up:

• You knew a defect would harm your account
• You knew you would get a defect if you asked eBay to step in
• So you asked eBay to step in anyway

[spacecoastparts]

I've experienced the "seller didn't respond" defect from asking ebay to step in. If you don't wind up winning the case, that defect will stick, otherwise it will be wiped from winning the case. If you don't win the case, you can still possibly get the defect wiped on appeal.

Asking eBay to step in is a sure way for an inexperienced seller to find out, NEVER ask ebay to step in unless absolutely sure per policy that you'll win. Example: INR case times out and tracking has already shown delivered. Ask eBay to step in and you'll instantly win the case plus get the INR wiped from metrics.

[rati-store]

Many thanks for your comments but unfortunately your are partly wrong. We tried to describe what happened in this particular case. You are right when you say that seller has to pay return costs when case is "item not  like described". We told that we sent return labels (or what ever you call them), that said we paid return costs. But buyer did not use that possibility, he paid return costs himself. Why he made that, we are not sure.

You are right when you say that there are only two outcomes in mentioned situation. And yes, buyer was refunded. We made appeal with "proof" and they still kept original outcome. We did not give up and finally someone was listening us and removed defect. But in history it stayed causing influence to BBE rating.

When there are only two outcomes possible, their BOT did not understand, when we after receiving the item back, asked ebay to step in. They offered only one option: after you have checked the returned item, please refund. When we followed their advices, it was little complicated but still possible to do something else. That might be the reason why they did not react to our demand but waited until buyer asked them to step in. There is clear lack in their programming the BOT. 

They informed us that our account has "no selling privilege" 16.7.2025 and message belov came 21.7.2025.

Here is part of message which we got from ebay. Hopefully it can convince you that they really removed the defect and also promised that case has no influence to our account (what ever it means). The problems started after their "Special Forces" jumped in:

"Hello ......,

Thank you for contacting eBay Customer Service regarding the defect on the return cases. I am Shrey, and I am glad to assist you today.

I truly understand how discouraging this experience has been, especially when you've made every effort to act in good faith. Your commitment to transparency and fairness is clear, and I want to assure you that your concerns have been heard and are being treated with the seriousness and care they deserve.

.....,  I am delighted to inform you that I have removed this defect administratively from your account related to the return cases considering the fact that you have fulfilled your obligation by delivering the item as described to the buyer is an effort to ensure a positive and satisfactory experience for the buyer throughout the transaction. Be informed, you are not required to take any further action.

This defect will not have any negative impact on your eBay account. Please allow up to 24 to 48 hours for this defect to be removed from your account. I seek your patience in this matter.

Thank you so much for taking the time to bring all of this to eBay’s attention. We truly value your transparency and the effort you've made to outline your experience in such detail. It’s clear that you’re deeply committed to maintaining a fair and professional selling environment, and we genuinely appreciate that.

L.................................................................Our core mission is to foster a fair, transparent, and supportive environment for both buyers and sellers. We deeply value the essential role sellers like you play — you are the foundation of our marketplace — and we remain committed to empowering you through dedicated programs, protections, and ongoing improvements.

Please rest assured that the inconvenience you've faced has been escalated to our specialized team. They will carefully review the situation, and your feedback will play an important role in helping us identify areas where our policies and processes can be improved. Our goal is to ensure that sellers like you—who consistently act in good faith—feel supported and protected on our platform.

I appreciate to have been given an opportunity to assist you and have provided you the resolution you were looking for.

Thank you for contacting eBay Customer Service and your continued business with us. Have a wonderful day.

Kind Regards,

......

eBay Customer Service"

Mainly the rest what you said is right but as we have mentioned, there is wrong information in their files. The computer does not understand is it right or not, it just makes decision according to what is there. And please don't say that there can't be wrong information because there is and ebay customer service refused to answer when we asked details. We have seen several times where it leads when their BOT is making decision and workers in customer service blindly believe to it. Fact are not always facts.

From message from ebay, you can clearly see, that there is always, and has to be, a place for common sense and human touch. We are of course going to direction where AI is making more and more decisions and making many things safer but.....

[rati-store]

Sorry, refer to our just sent message: we said "But in history it stayed causing influence to BBE rating" but ebay said "This defect will not have any negative impact on your eBay account."

We actually don't know what is true.

[rati-store]

Read the reply which we gave to bdmh-enterprises

We knew that we were right and we wanted to show it to ebay and to buyer. There has to be someones who just don't want to be payers in their cheating schemes.

We simple don't have afford to share our money to every direction. Ebay rules should be followed also by buyers and ebay customer service.

But you are right, we are boneheads and we paid from it.

[rati-store]

Many thanks for your true comment. We know that our English differ from English which they are speaking in England, as well as English spoken in USA is different compared to same in England. 

We have such saying in Finland and mainly it means "inefficient in manual tasks : clumsy". But it can also mean that in this case you are not so familiar with Facebook. Anyway we already got answer from person who originally gave advices how to go further with our problem. 

It is good to get all kinds of comments, but our biggest concern and reason why we have asked for help is not in the language we use, but our sorrow is much greater. I hope we will focus on the essential in the future.

[rati-store]

Maybe we are gullible and childish still after 8 years, which now is over, in ebay platform. But we were absolutely sure that we win. Well we did not do that until we had luck and someone understood what really had happened. And it happened after appeal was already rejected. How it is possible, that in platform where never should happen anything, which is against ebay rules, the outcome after every sale,  is depending from luck who is buying from you and who from ebay is handling the case if something happens. 

But most interesting is what you said about INR case. It is said that you can't remove (wipe out as you said) the effect of request if it is opened for certain reason. You can remove defect but it stays there still as sign from buyer who has not been satisfied and has influence to your seller level, BBE rating etc. It seems that we still have something to learn and we might have misunderstood something again.