mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@castlemagicmemories wrote:
Sorry, there just isn't much out there on this. I just saw that one post; I have never seen anything else on this. It's not widely known.
I know. I've seen the lonely post every few months from a buyer and that is about it. This is something ebay can say pretty much whatever they want, say they are looking out for us and we can't tell one way or the other. Personally I don't think Ebay is doing much about it. Their thresholds are just too high IMHO. Whatever they are, they are too high.
@ted_200 wrote:That is an over-simplification of what Amazon is doing. They are banning buyers that they have deemed have abused the return system, NOT all buyers that have done a return.
But you certainly have a point about those banned buyers might just come to Ebay.
I've looked over the reporting on this, and like eBay, Amazon isn't very forthcoming about what they are doing or why. Customers complained they were banned without any prior warnings or notifications, and the reporting just generalizes that the reason was "too many" returns.
In my mind "too many" returns isn't the same as "abused" returns. Picky and fraud isn't the same thing, and frankly most of the complaints we see here are about fraud - scams. I don't think it's fair, or very good business practice, to constantly tout your liberal return policy, and then start banning customers for using it, unless they are engaged in some sort of fraudulent activity.
But it's not just the banned Amazon users who may be a problem here. The "picky" ones may decide they don't want their Amazon account banned in the future, and start buying more here. I'm sure eBay would think that's swell, since eBay isn't going to eat any of the expense of having these "picky" buyers like Amazon does.
The bigger problem is buyers know they can engage in outright fraud here and get away with it, and the knowledge that this situation exists is growing rapidly, and the ease of doing it - thanks to eBay policy and automation - is increasing as well.
I believe Ebay restricts the buying of those who have abused returns and have an excessive number.
I am aware that some people believe this, but I've seen little actual evidence of it... mostly it's just cryptic statements by eBay employees that eBay will "take action when appropriate". The Buying Board is a pretty busy place, this very rarely comes up there. And I've looked over enough feedback profiles - both before eBay rendered them nearly useless, and after - and it's not hard to find ones that indicate some buyers have "issues" very frequently, are getting refunds very frequently, etc.
I believe Amazon isn't going to issue a refund to a buyer who mails back a brick, and will probably ban them after even one such incident. Unlike eBay, Amazon does know exactly what the buyer returned, and knows full well that isn't what they sent out.
Soon everyone will be someone else.
Yeah. Different twist on "eBay wants to be Amazon", pretty soon most eBay purchases will come in a smiling box from an Amazon warehouse, with eBay and the eBay seller being just a couple of more unnecessary middlemen to the deal. Sometimes, eBay IS Amazon!
Many would just slink away, and the Buying Board is much less frequented anyway.
Presumably there are more buyers than sellers on the site. But even if were because the Board is less frequented, I would think the percentage of complaint posts would be reflective of the percentage of buyers affected by a ban. We see a LOT of posts about banned sellers on this Board, only one on the Buyer Board suggests a buyer ban is a fairly rare occurrence.
Buyers cannot get negs, only sellers.
Feedback is not part of eBay's measurement of sellers (any more).
So that would not lead to restrictions on a buyer.
Yeah, that was a bad idea too. But even so, you can spot problem buyers still, if you read the feedback they receive (because some sellers ignore eBay's "false positive" rules), and more importantly by the feedback they leave (seller is "easy to work with", "seller took care of problem", "I got a refund", etc.).
Actually, it would be better if eBay still used seller f/b in evaluating sellers too. Sellers get banned based on post office performance, because they fought back on obvious and expensive scams, because they sell products prone to issues no matter who sold it, or sell products that have buyers who are prone to complain unfairly. Yet there are sellers with many neg.s for counterfeit items, seller non-performance, etc., who somehow never get banned. It's much the same problem as banning buyers simply for "too many" returns - that's not necessarily an indication of fraud or abuse. Buyers who "only" mailed back a brick three times are still NOT acceptable buyers.
Cancellations don't show anywhere.
They should.
Bid retractions do.
But bid retractions, while annoying, should be a Good Thing, since they get the seller out of what would be a failed transaction.
If the bidder asks to have the bid cancelled, and it is cancelled, that is one thing. But bid retractions (unless they re-bid with the correct amount, which they basically NEVER do) are a policy violation and potentially auction fraud. They could be a shill bidder, they could be bid shielding, they could be fraudulently manipulating the proxy bidding system. Not only is this an abuse of the seller, it's an abuse of the other bidders on the listing. Every single buyer with excessive bid retractions (the ones with dozens, and even hundreds of them) should be banned forever.
I've seen the lonely post every few months from a buyer and that is about it. This is something ebay can say pretty much whatever they want, say they are looking out for us and we can't tell one way or the other. Personally I don't think Ebay is doing much about it.
I agree, the evidence suggests they do approximately zero.
All these quotes above are not from my posts. Some are and some aren't. Some are incomplete / out of context so they appear to mean something not intended. But of course your comments are welcomed.
@freeshipusa1 wrote:ebay does have a policy of restricting a member of his/her buying privilege on Ebay,eg,a buyer living in rural Mexico buys low price trinklets from Ebay sellers who ship with no tracking,she filed too many INR and Ebay banned her from buying as she is a hazard to the seller community.
Paypal does the same with some buyers who file too many UA,INR,INAD.
I did not say that Ebay did NOT have a policy on this. I said the opposite. But what I did say is there is very little proof that Ebay actually enforces it on a regular basis or even what the guidelines are.
It use to be that if a buyer had 3 unpaid strikes within a 60 or 90 day period from 3 different sellers that the buyer was sanctioned. That hasn't been true for years. Ebay allows far more than 3 now, but won't tell us how many it is.
Same hold trues for other parts of whatever their policy is. Yes, Ebay does sanction some buyers for misbehaving. But IMHO it is not as often as it should be or that is affectively putting a dent in the problem sellers have with cronic buying abuses.
@gegeomc.9d1ixjpvb wrote:Wait! What?!
Are you saying that, in September, a buyer can open a case and the seller is guilty literally immediately? There is absolutely no chance for the seller to contact the buyer and try to work it out?
Also, another poster said returns are going to get even worse in June. What is happening in June?
NO I did not say that. Well not in the way you are stating it. What I said was in Sept. Ebay is going to be counting RRs of all kinds against sellers in their monthly stat evals.
As to talking with your buyer regarding a RR they filed. Since October of last year, you haven't been able to converse with your buyer inside of any RR filed. You can outside the RR through Ebay M2M, but by design, Ebay isn't allowing chat between the buyer and seller inside the RR anymore.
And we have gone to Auto Returns now. So if you aren't familiar with that, I suggest for the health of your account that you read the updates and get very intimate with what they are saying. Lots of changes and we all need to be aware of them.
As for the changes in June and for September. I strongly suggest you READ the Summer Seller Update and get familiar with the changes if you are an active seller on Ebay.
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2018-summer/index.html
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/timeline.html
