SCAMMED BY EBAY --- CHARGED "sellers fees" for protecting myself on a Disputed payment from buyer?

[lilwin2088]

I recently sold an iphone on ebay -- only to have the purchaser open an fraud ticket on their payment and have everything backed out on their end. luckily I was able to stop the shipment from going out right in time.. 

(Item ID: 134754052543)

Thank goodness I protected myself I had thought. I immediately went into ebay and reported what had happened into the ticket and filed an appeal explaining the situation. I waited and waited almost a month. Nothing took place.

I eventually relisted the phone after about a month and sold it --- FINALLY -- Everything went well and the not fraudulent purchaser ended up with a phone. I log into ebay to find I'm being billed the original seller fee along with a $20 dispute fee. 

I'm not paying it. I'm making a youtube video detailing how much of a scam this website is unless they resolve the issue and credit back their fraud fees. It should be illegal to charge people for services not rendered, used or tendered. This is an absolute scam.

[dentalsales4u]

If I understand correctly, you sold the phone and got it back before it shipped due to a credit card charge back?

If that is the case, you should have just said refund the buyer instead of fighting it and saved the $20 dispute fee.

You got your phone back and resold it, so you wouldn't have been out anything.

It really could have been a stolen credit card, you never know, but why did you fight it?

Did you expect to keep the funds from the first time it sold and then get the funds again for selling it again?

I'm not understanding.

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

If someone disputed the transaction through their bank card and you responded to that "Chargeback" you are assessed a $20 fee.  That's not eBay, thats the card processor and by the way, $20 is cheap.

Have you ever disputed a charge on you're card?  Works like this:  Immediately the business who charged the card is assessed a $25 fee from the card processor, the total amount charged is reserved in the business bank account and another $25 fee is assessed by that bank.  That's $50 right from word go in fee's even if the charge amount was $5.  If the merchant responds by snail mail to the dispute every single mailing is assessed another $25 fee.  Many card processors now have the ability for the merchant to explain their position online which costs nothing albeit some will still charge that $25 fee for every reply to the customers replies. 

So, you do a charge back against xxx company instantly costs them $50 in fees.  XXX company responds to you're claim costs them another $25.  You the customer write back to you're bank again and XXX company responds to that, another $25 fee assessed.  If a merchant ignores replying to chargebacks there is a risk assessment unit, every major bank card has them...  Ignoring chargebacks makes the card processing rates go up... So, say you're paying 2.5% for every transaction total.  Get chargebacks, dont respond now it's upped to say 3% of every single transaction.  $20 is dirt cheap.  Macy's would kill for a one time $20 fee to respond to chargebacks versus the $50 minimum fee without even having said a word yet about their position.

[lakefor94]

Sounds like the complaint is for FVFs on the original transaction and then the $20 for losing the contested chargeback.

Since the seller had the item back, if a full refund had been issued and without the chargeback being contested, those fees would not exist.

[lilwin2088]

NO -- you are missing the point they SCAMMED ME $20 for the dispute fee + the original cost associated with the transaction all in all my account is now negative -$97 with ebay... After escalating it walking through how the buyer scammed me and luckily I DID NOT SEND THEM THE PHONE, but they will not reverse the charges for their scam customer buying my listing.. Im so upset this is absolutely rediculous. I received NOTHING from that transaction besides wasted time, heartache and now $100? for what? I didn't even get anything accomplished with that listing.. ebays customer service people even admitted that this is in no way my fault. but they still wont credit back my money. Im furious.

[lilwin2088]

I dont understand what I could have done differently? the buyer contested the listing for no reason --- ebay gives you a few days to mail the item out --- I waited a day or two and finally dropped it off.. glad I did too! because according to customer care at ebay who told me that it is a good thing that I didn't send the phone because I would have been out the money and the phone. 

nobody is understanding.. ----- EBAY charged me the full cost as if I had in fact sold that phone for the $500 the auction went for --- in addition to this (me simply just trying to explain what was going on by commenting gon the case --- they charged me $20? for what? telling them their customer is a scammer?) WHAT A JOKE ---- again acting like this is somehow my fault is absolutely not going to work here. I did everything I could as soon as I got an email from ebay customer service.. The least they could do is own up to this just being part of having a business online and --- instead of screwing me over and charging me $100 for something I didn't use (the listing ended up getting trashed and I relisted as a completely separate listing after ebay NEVER got back to me almost a month later, they never got back to me UNTIL I RELISTED the phone and sold it.... I didn't know what else to do I needed to recoup the cost of the phone and wanted to get this over with.. So the day after the phone makes it to the new real buyer who had a successful purchase of the device etc ebay FINALLY responds to the escalation and lets me know that they wont be helping me out and that confusingly I owe $96 and they want me to update the payment method on the account? --- They should be charged with a crime, this is fraud.  Frauding customers out of money like this is absolutely ridiculous. Im going to make YT video that documents the story a bit more clear because it seems like people are confused. Again, I've sold many times on ebay with no problem the only thing I don't like is that they do generally charge a lot for a sold listing --- but I do like the fact that items will generally sell for what the market will bear on them and that I don't have to haggle with folks --- I just let the platform do its thing.. and I like that --- so paying a little bit extra as in a premium price to use their platform instead of an alternative one makes sense. 

This has completely destroyed any reasoning for me to ever use this platform again to sell anything. the one great thing they did offer apparently comes at a cost of complete and utter nonsense and incompetence on their behalf.. It would take any supervisor with a lick of sense to go .. "oh I see what happened here, credit back our good customer and ban the scammer.." but nope.. Not these shiesters --- they think they have an opportunity to take advantage of a good paying customer and I'm almost 100% there has been no action taken against the scammer.. Who knows ebay probably somehow hires these folks to mess up peoples transactions so they can bill extra nonsensical fees that really are just made up and random.

[lakefor94]

That was really a long read.

Simply put, the $20 is a fair price to contest a bank chargeback. It is part of the online ecommerce game. Same here as everywhere that uses a payment processor. 

You were held to the fees because you were unable to handle the transaction alone and process the transaction. Scam or not, that is the way the system works.  Buyer wins a chargeback, seller does not get a pass on the fees. EBay grades this as they had to step in.

That stinks and I agree you were screwed around by the system. It is nothing personal, it is the system they have in place. You got caught in a weird circumstance. Glad you got the phone recalled from the carrier. Most sellers are not that lucky.

If I am reading you correctly.....

Can't believe you came back and resold the phone. Phones are a rough go selling online. Hope your most recent transaction holds. Best of luck.

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

---

@lakefor94 wrote:

That was really a long read.

Simply put, the $20 is a fair price to contest a bank chargeback. It is part of the online ecommerce game. Same here as everywhere that uses a payment processor. 

You were held to the fees because you were unable to handle the transaction alone and process the transaction. Scam or not, that is the way the system works.  Buyer wins a chargeback, seller does not get a pass on the fees. EBay grades this as they had to step in.

That stinks and I agree you were screwed around by the system. It is nothing personal, it is the system they have in place. You got caught in a weird circumstance. Glad you got the phone recalled from the carrier. Most sellers are not that lucky.

If I am reading you correctly.....

Can't believe you came back and resold the phone. Phones are a rough go selling online. Hope your most recent transaction holds. Best of luck.

---

And... By the way...  Having one's own business merchant account works as I described above.  That said even if the merchant WINS the chargeback claim the fee's associated with the claim are NOT returned.  The funds in reserve at the bank are released, but the fee's (a minimum of $50) are not.

If someone happens to pay with say stolen credit card, merchant is out the funds immediately and whatever was sold and pretty much the merchant banks care less.  Consumer banks are very good about taking care of their customers... Merchant accounts and I don't care which ones, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Card Service International set down the rules.  If one wants take credit cards and one QUALIFIES to do so which is not exactly simple either then one abides by the rules fair or not.

If one cares to read about payments here it clearly says $20 fee is assessed in responding to a chargeback.  Amazon is no different, they assess a $20 fee if a seller wants dispute a chargeback.  PayPal, same thing, $20 fee if the merchant disputes a chargeback...

[slati_2013]

---

@dentalsales4u wrote:

If I understand correctly, you sold the phone and got it back before it shipped due to a credit card charge back?

If that is the case, you should have just said refund the buyer instead of fighting it and saved the $20 dispute fee.

You got your phone back and resold it, so you wouldn't have been out anything.

It really could have been a stolen credit card, you never know, but why did you fight it?

Did you expect to keep the funds from the first time it sold and then get the funds again for selling it again?

I'm not understanding.

---

Once there is a dispute in a case as this one, there is nothing the seller can do. All actions are frozen. It should have been up to eBay to refund any payment made. Once eBay refunds the credit card company  it closes the case and informs the buyer that the seller has issued a refund.  It seems to me if eBay was informed that the phone was never sent, they  should have refunded the payment right away.

I think the issue here is if CS ever escalated  this to let eBay know that since the phone was never sent, they should issue a refund to the buyer. Again, once there is an open case, there is nothing the seller can do including issuing a refund. It seems due to not being on the same page, this was allowed to play out, the seller lost the dispute and thus become responsible for the chargeback loss fee plus the FVF fees. I can see why the seller is upset. 

[annadryl]

"the buyer contested the listing for no reason"

The listing states both pre-owned then empty-box (which is new), which is it? Maybe they noticed the discrepancy after buying? Also there is no description (and only two stock pics) but condition mentions face ID doesn't work. Maybe they bid too fast and noticed after the fact.

[albertabrightalberta]

---

@lilwin2088 wrote:

EBAY charged me the full cost as if I had in fact sold that phone for the $500 the auction went for --- in addition to this (me simply just trying to explain what was going on by commenting gon the case --- they charged me $20? for what? telling them their customer is a scammer?) 

---

@lilwin2088 

If I'm reading and understanding your long posts correctly, I'm thinking that you sensed a scam and didn't ship the phone. 

Is that correct? 

But here's where I think your problem happened. When you didn't send the phone, you should have canceled the order, at which point the buyer would have been automatically refunded and there would have been no reason for the buyer to do a chargeback. 

But instead of refunding, you simply kept the phone and resold it PLUS, you kept the payment from the first buyer (who you claim is a scammer). 

The fact that the money was there for ebay to claw back from you is proof that you hadn't refunded the buyer! 

Scammer or not, when a sale is canceled, a refund has to be issued or you find yourself in the predicament you're in now.