eBay

snowieowie · ‎07-05-2017

Scroll down for a TL;DR version

Hello,

Recently I had an item up for sale on Ebay, I had given the option to bid and also entered an auto-win price. ("Buy now!" or whatever that option looks like for buyers).
I had also checked the option saying that I will only ship inside Europe.

After a few hours, someone actually click the option to pay the full price, and they sent me a message.
However, in this message they asked me to e-mail them the total price and gave me a suspicious looking e-mail address. After looking at their account, it also seemed that their address was from the US, which is not a location I would be shipping to. They also had a weird name.

So I replied to their message (through Ebay, not the e-mail they gave me). telling them that I do not ship outside of Europe, and requested that they cancel their purchase.

I have since then removed the item from Ebay since I was getting too may suspicious-looking messages for my liking. The person who offered to buy it never actually responded, and it has been over a week now.

A few days later, Ebay sent me an invoice asking me to pay a commission fee (which appears to be about 10% of the price I had put the item up for). However, I never actually sold anything, and if no sale takes place, there should be no commission fee.

I have contacted support about this issue. asking them why I have to pay this fee even though nothing actually sold.

None of this actually answered my question, so instead I decided to go and see if I can find this transaction cancellation option...
Except my item was no longer available on my account, so there was no way to actually cancel whatever transaction could have happened. (Which I assume to be none, as no money ever came to me)

tl;dr:

*Placed item for sale on Ebay
*Removed item due to suspicious attention.
*No payments were ever sent or received.
*Ebay wants to charge commission fee for something that didn't get sold.

I don't really know what to do in this situation. Wouldn't Ebay be considered the scammer if they insist on having me pay that fee?

luckythewinner · ‎07-05-2017

@snowieowie wrote:
I have since then removed the item from Ebay

Until the OP comes back and explains *exactly* what "removed the item from eBay" means, most of what has been posted here is nothing more than a guess.

d-k_treasures · ‎07-05-2017

@lintbrush* wrote:
I can only go by the OP's post.

They said they 'checked' the option to only ship inside of the EU which means, to me, that blocks were in place.

Buyer also sent the a message asking for a PP invoice - and provided an email addy. Also, the buyer has now been unresponsive for over a week. Smells like a scam attempt to me. I'd go the unpaid route.

Not if it works like it does here - many sellers click US Only, but don't know that they also need to exclude all other countries and apply that block also.

And if the charge is on this invoice, they still have to pay it and the credit will be on the next invoice once resolved.

_____________________________
"Nothing is obvious to the oblivious"

lacemaker3 · ‎07-05-2017

@snowieowieyou have only sold one item in the last month, on June 30. so I think that must be the item in question.

It was an auction with Buy It Now, so it ended when the buyer did the BIN. I think that you may have deleted it from your sold list afterwards? That would look to you as though it had been deleted, but the listing is still available MSI GT72 2QD Dominator 17.3-inch Laptop. So you should be able to cancel or file an Unpaid Item case for it.

The listing only has shipping costs to Europe, so if the buyer is in the USA, they won't be able to pay for it because there are no shipping costs. It says: "The seller has not specified a shipping method to United States. Contact the seller and request shipping to your location." To be positive, you could go to your PayPal account, look for seller preferences, and Managing Risk, and then block payments from foreign PayPal accounts, and from anyone using the Send Money tab. (That works in a PayPal USA account, anyway).

By eBay's definition, the item is "Sold" when the listing ends with a winning buyer, and the 10% final value fee is charged at that tie. If the buyer doesn't pay, you have to either cancel the transaction, or file an Unpaid Item case.

When you start the case, you should be able to choose the item from a list of your sold items, even though you deleted it from your selling list. Once the case is closed, then the final value fee will be credited back to your eBay account.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

How did you find this info? When I look at the OP's ID I see it's a new ID created on June 29, 2017 with no listings up and no completed or sold items and no feedback & no feedback left.

partial*eclipse · ‎07-05-2017

It doesn't show when you search as a US-based buyer . The OP is registered in Belgium. If you go to the belgium site their listing will show up.

http://www.befr.ebay.be/sch/snowieowie/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=12&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m...

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

OK~~I found the listing. It does say that the item sold for 9 hundred + US dollars and it says the seller didn't give any options for USA shipping so you should contact the seller for shipping options. I'm sure that was what the buyer was doing in sending the OP a message or e mail~~wanting an invoice with shipping charges. The listing also states "MAY NOT ship to the USA"~~it doesn't say they won't and they have no countries blocked from bidding.

How did the OP remove that listing totally from their history?

fern*wood · ‎07-05-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:

How did the OP remove that listing totally from their history?

I can delete any of my sold listings if I want to, but they just disappear from my facing my ebay page. There is a delete option at the bottom. I can also undelete them.

partial*eclipse · ‎07-05-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:
... The listing also states "MAY NOT ship to the USA"~~it doesn't say they won't and they have no countries blocked from bidding....

That's just ebay's very unfortunate wording which shows up even if a seller won't ship to your location. This seller has specified shipping for a variety of specific countries, not including the US, and has apparently merely failed to set up their buyer blocks effectively; the OP clearly states, "I had also checked the option saying that I will only ship inside Europe."

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

The whole problem is that the OP is a brand new member who hasn't even experienced buying anything let alone selling anything & dived into selling high $$ items without a clue as to what they were doing. The buyer "had a strange name", took the item off ebay because OP was "getting suspicious messages". I get buyers with such strange names I can't even pronounce them but I'll sure send the item to them and take their payments. None of us are responsible for what our true names are.

snowieowie · ‎07-05-2017

You are right, I should not have said that a strange name makes people suspicious.
I apologize if that offended anyone.

It is true that I only just created my Ebay account a little over a week ago and that I had no clue what I was actually doing. It took a few more hours of reading around to finally figure things out. (Like country blocking, etc.)

After a few more days of back-and-forth e-mailing with Ebay Support, I figured the best way to resolve this was to undelete the item and request a cancellation of the transaction with the reason "Buyer not in countries I ship to." (Or something like that).
If they end up not responding within a week, everything should get cancelled automatically. And even though I will be charged the commission fee at first, it should be refunded after the cancellation goes through.

Lesson learned, I'm a newb, I made mistakes, hopefully I'll do better next time.

kattinsanity · ‎07-06-2017

GREAT!! I think ebay will make you pay the July invoice with the fees for that sale on it. Then you will see the credit on your August invoice. How much is this GSL or GLS going to cost you for shipping? You may want to find that out as well before you relist the laptop. If it's going to cost a lot you may want to pass that cost onto your buyer.

Are you shipping & selling to EVERY European country? Remember that if anything happens you have to pay return shipping back to you as well as already being out the original shipping. I've been selling here for over 17 years and I still won't ship outside the lower 48 USA states. A lot of sellers ship worldwide but for a small seller like myself there are enough buyers right here in my country to keep me happy with a LOT less hassles should something happen.

snowieowie · ‎07-06-2017

GLS would cost me between 35 and 44€ (40~50$), so depending on what the highest bid ends up being, I might offer to pay part of the shipping costs myself.

Although in the meantime, one of my parents' friends has taking an interest in the laptop, and if they end up wanting to buy it from me, I might not have to ship it anywhere at all.

I have no idea when I'll ever have anything up for sale again though, the stuff I have lying around isn't really worth much anymore. (I don't think anyone has a use for rusted motherboards or damaged hard disks, heheh)