Filing an appeal

[silverstarvintage]

I recently sold an iTero scanner on eBay. The buyer claimed it “does not work,” but their own messages show the issue was with an Invisalign subscription, not the hardware itself. The unit was fully functional when shipped, and my listing clearly stated subscription access was not included.

eBay forced a refund anyway. To make matters worse, the entire transaction has now been removed from my order ledger, which prevents me from filing an appeal through the Resolution Center.

This feels like eBay is deliberately preventing sellers from exercising their right to appeal. I still have the Item ID, proof of shipment, proof of functionality, and the buyer’s admission that the problem was not a defect. Yet because the order was erased from my seller dashboard, I cannot even access the appeal option.

How is a seller supposed to defend themselves if eBay removes the record of the sale? This is a high-value medical device, and I’ve not only lost the item but had the sale wiped from my account history.

eBay, I’m asking for a clear answer: What is the proper process when an order is removed but a seller has evidence for an appeal?

Other sellers — has this happened to you, where eBay deletes the transaction so you can’t appeal?

[christworks]

I hope you are sitting down because I am about to deliver you some bad news.

The proper way to have handled it was to accept the return the seller opened. It is irrelevant what the buyer told you in a message. If they opened an Item Not As Described Return, you had three choices:

A) Accept it. Issue Refund.

B) Issue Refund. Allow buyer to keep item.

C) Ignore it. Let eBay step in and refund your buyer from your money AND allow buyer to keep the item.

Unfortunately for you, you chose option C. By the way, you also will get a ding on your account because eBay had to step in. You cannot appeal. eBay's decision is final.

You need to to learn about eBay's Monday-back Guarantee before you sell anything else. You need to understand that you putting "Seller does not accept returns" on your listings does not mean no refunds. It does mean you will have more issues than if you just accepted 30-day returns. In fact, you have even less issues if you do 30-day free returns. It really is not that bad. I have probably lost less money the past two years accepting free returns than you have on the one item and not accepting returns. And I got my items back and all but two have lived to be resold. On the two items I could not relist, I did recoup half of the selling cost from the buyer so that I still made a profit on the returned sales. 

You need to accept this as learning lesson, and reevaluate your business model before this happens again. If you had not ignored the return request, you could have gotten the item back, issued the refund, and if the item did work and the buyer lied, you could have reported them for return abuse. Your buyer probably knew you were not likely to take the return, so they banked on you ignoring them knowing eBay would refund them anyway and they would get to keep the item, which probably does work as you said. 

Before you say this is eBay's fault, let me stop you. It isn't. This is your fault. You are putting your hard-earning money at risk without knowing the rules you are playing by. That is completely on you. We've all had to learn painful lessons like this. I'm sorry. 

As far as your question, as far as I know, if eBay steps in the order should still be in your order history. I've never had eBay to step in, so maybe they remove it? Someone else will have to help you with that. It really doesn't matter. You cannot appeal this. You can claim the loss on your taxes if you aren't a hobby seller, so make sure you are keeping good business records.