Yes, this actually happened. The buyer confirmed it.
Last night, I received a call from ebay. I have a few cs numbers saved as contacts in my phone. My phone only rang once before I could get it. I rarely answer anyway and do not want to talk to ebay at night. 2-3 minutes later, someone purchased an item and I recognized the user ID. I looked it up in my email and yes, they purchased something a while back, no questions and returned it. The item stated what it fit.
Returns have exploded since June. People who ask no questions that could dictate whether something would fit and then just open a return that the item doesnt fit go on my bloked buyer list. It costs us money and time . We block a lot of people to save ourseleves the headache of dealing with buyers like this. I thought it was our right to get out of the way of bad transactions.
I looked at my blocked list, which I back up to a file on my computer and there was a string of characters and deleted at the end. Ive seen this before when an account is closed I thought. I looked at my backup which is copied directly from the blocked buyer/bidder and they were on it, they were blocked. I messaged the buyer and asked politely if they had ebay call me. They replied "Yes, i wanted to buy this item and we were blocked". So the ebay rep unblocked this buyer.
So now CS is removing ID's from our blocked lists? That is completely insane. That can clearly cause us all kinds of harm if a buyer can just call and have themselves removed. I feel like it goes way too far. I had a buyer this year get extremely abusive going so far as to call and leave violent homophobic messages on my phone. I kept the messages and the persons account sold uninterupted even after he responded about the phone calls via ebay messages.
I have been contacted before by message that a buyer would like to purchase but, do not recall someone being unblocked. I have saved the correspondance and I have an idea people will say it isnt so but it is absolutely the case with the buyer confirming it. It made me sick to my stomach. This is my store and I pay a lot to do business here. I follow ebays rules even when they are getting really bad. Apparently I dont habe the right to protect myself from harm in one of the last ways that exists.
The only reason we block anyone is the feedback and return systems are such a mess for sellers with zero fault being placed on the buyer regardless of when its obvious. Sellers are rife for abuse as every buyer is not going to be fair as we all know. Sellers who have sold for a couple of decades and in some cases tens of thousands of items can start to see what questions and actions will cause problems as conversations involving this comes up frequently here.
Being able to block buyers who have cost us money in the past which could have been avoided by asking a simple question, is more important now than ever. With free returns being pushed down our throats (which it is or supposedly we may not show up well in search results) people may think its fine to just buy and try on and not even attempt to ask if said item may fit. They may do it once and see how easy it is to just guess, they may do it 5 times if we cant stop them. That would be ebay sanctioned abuse.
So now is ebay forcing us to do business with buyers who weve blocked? I think that is going too far and putting us in harms way after we are stepping out of it.
