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?

klassic*kids · ‎07-05-2017

@snowieowie You were right to not respond to this person's outside email address. It sounds like you very well have been dealing with a scammer. Once they had your outside email address they likely would have sent you a fraud email that looks like it was coming from paypal alerting you the item had been paid for, when in fact it had never paid paid for. A very common scam to new sellers. Many have shipped only to find out later that they had never been paid at all. You have no idea how wise you were not to fally prey.

As far as getting the 10% back -- go into your sold folder and you should be able to find this item. In there do a cancellation and choose as the reason "problem with buyer's address" as this person was not within Europe.

Please don't let this incident turn you completely off of eBay. Most buyers are good, honest people and once you build up some more selling prowess you will see less and less scam buyers.

Happy 2018! May this upcoming year be a prosperous one!

*help_no_brakes* · ‎07-05-2017

Did you read the message?

I only glanced at it & it tells you to open an Unpaid Item Case in the Resolution Center.

Close it as unpaid after a further 96 hours & you will receive a credit for your fees.

Most sellers would be well pleased to receive such detailed & surprise, surprise correct information from eBay.

Lose the ridiculous scam conspiracy & spend some time in the Seller Information Center & the Site Map.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

If the OP does not have the USA or any other country listed as countries they don't sell or ship to they are open to bids from ANY buyer. If this buyer is in the USA and the OP opens a unpaid item dispute the buyer just may pay for it. Then the OP will end up either having to ship it to the USA or refund the buyer and take a defect for cancelling a transaction.

If a seller doesn't want to ship anywhere other than Europe they have to block bidders from all the other countries. THIS is what the OP needs to do to prevent any future problems like this.

Right now their best option is to cancel the sale using the "problem with buyers address" as the reason~~NOT opening an unpaid item case. If the buyer pays they will have a lot bigger problem.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

OP~~You aren't going to get your fees refunded.

*placed the item for sale on ebay

*removed the 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

Your mistake was taking the listing down. When you take a listing down (cancel the listing) and it has bids on it or in your case a BIN buyer you are responsible for the fees whether you sell it or not.

As far as ebay can see you had a BIN buyer when you cancelled the listing. For all they know you sold it to this buyer outside ebay to evade ebay seller fees. SO...they are going to make you pay the fees whether it sold or not. You shouldn't have taken the listing down after it had already sold.

partial*eclipse · ‎07-05-2017

@kattinsanity

The only time that eBay charges a fee for ending a listing early is if it is an auction-format listing that has received bids and the seller chooses to cancel the bids rather than sell to the current high bidder. That's not what happened here: The OP had a sale through the "Buy it now" option.

lintbrush* · ‎07-05-2017

eBay charges a commission once a person "buys" the item regardless of payment. They do this because not all methods of payment are in a way they can see (cash on pick up, bank transfers, etc)

It is up to you to tell them that the buyer hasn't paid. You can do this through the Unpaid Item process or through the Cancellation. Personally, I would file the Unpaid.

Customer Service provided you instructions on how to do that with links.

I do not know what other information you are looking for.

Go to your Sold History. Check the refinement filter along the top of that sub-section. Is it set to July? or maybe past week? That may be why you cannot see the item.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

It was an auction with the BIN option. The buyer chose the BIN option and then the OP cancelled the listing after the buyer had already won it.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

If the OP files a unpaid item case what do they do if the buyer pays for it? They have no intention of ever sending it anyway. Their only option then is to cancel & refund as the item is no longer available since they don't have their blocks in place to block other countries. Just "saying" you only ship to Europe is not binding without blocking the countries you refuse to sell or ship to.

lintbrush* · ‎07-05-2017

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.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

The OP told the buyer they don't ship to the USA and told them to cancel the transaction. That could be why they haven't heard anything from the buyer. The buyer can't cancel the transaction~~that's something the OP would have to do. They should have cancelled the tansaction themselves instead of telling the buyer to cancel it and taking the listing down.

I only ship to 48 of the 50 USA states and I have to choose where I will NOT sell or ship to. I have my blocks set up for AK, HI and every other country & option that is available for me to choose from to block.

The buyer most likely accepted the fact he can't buy the item and it sure would be a shame to file a NPB case against him and put a strike on his account when it is the seller that refuses to allow him to buy it.

thatsallfolks · ‎07-05-2017

@kattinsanity wrote:
It was an auction with the BIN option. The buyer chose the BIN option and then the OP cancelled the listing after the buyer had already won it.

I think we're not following what you meant by "take the listing down". A BIN purchase ends the listing; there's nothing to take down.

If you're talking about a transaction cancellation, maybe you could use those terms, instead of a phrase that implies that the OP ended an active auction that had bids.

kattinsanity · ‎07-05-2017

"I have since then removed the item from ebay"? Did the OP relist the item after refusing to sell to the USA buyer? Now they have removed the item from ebay due to too many "suspicious" messages? OP isn't being clear on exactly what happened besides the fact they told the buyer they won't ship to the USA and telling the buyer to cancel the transaction. Since the buyer can't cancel the transaction OP owes the fees unless they can find a way to get ebay to "drop the charges".