Scamming My Soap Box

[traditonalproducts]

Over the last months I read numerous feeds where people were scammed. It appears to be more prevalent than years past. Some of the issues roll back to the sellers for not reading policies and a lot are the actual scammers themselves. 

So, what happens to a seller; refund the item & a possibility of never receiving the item back, if one does not follow Ebay policies one will get hit with defects and a possibility of never selling again on this platform. 

Case in point, sending a 9lb item out and buyer sends back an 8oz item that is not related to the actual purchase and from a different address. I am sure there are 100's of examples that can be drawn up. 

There are scammers on both side of the aisle. How is this issue better patrolled in the future? There has to be some common sense/ground used to deal with all of this. Is it the seller's responsibility to fight for their lives trying to rectify a bad situation? B&M's have a better opportunity than these platforms thus a lot of these situations they will never encounter. Most people on platforms cannot afford a B&M. 

I understand what the policies are and right or wrong & deal with it. I believe as we move forward more people are going to reduce the higher priced items which then has a ripple effect on Ebay's overall profit numbers and possibly the loss of more sellers. 

These high-priced items just seem to be a magnet for scammers. I for one have limited my listings to under $300 and have very few if any due to this horrible issue. 

It's sad to see sellers leave, get restrictions, & suspensions over one situation that might not be their fault. I'm not paid to figure this out but it's hard to believe with the technology today coupled with the qualified people that are hired that this situation cannot be better. 

This is my soap box this month. 

[mam98031]

You actually answered some of your concerns yourself.  

"Some of the issues roll back to the sellers for not reading policies..."  For some sellers they just don't take selling seriously enough.  Selling here is  J-O-B and needs to be treated as such.  Like any other job you need to learn the rules and how to handle things and situations.  Some seller simply don't do that.  Some have never looked up and read a policy in their life.  Some of this can be resolved if sellers just did their job and learned the rules, does and don'ts.

In doing that, they can spot many of the buyers that are going to try and scam them BEFORE they lose any money or product.  Certainly they can't catch them all, but they can reduce their success in stealing from them if the seller is informed.

There is real power with information.

There are high priced items all over Ebay and I suspect there will continue to do so.  Now for casual and small sellers high $$ items may not be a good idea, but clearly there are many sellers that do just fine selling them.

It isn't a matter of affording a B&M, but one more of they simply can't support one with staff not to mention inventory.  For example, when I started my journey of selling here my children were small.  I had a well paying high powered job that took me away from them far more hours a day than I was willing to give up.  I did not want someone else raising my kids.  I really wanted to do that job.  So my husband and I discussed it, knowing it was going to be a huge financial hit and decided that me leaving the corporate world was really the best answer for our family, so we bit the bullet so to speak.

I now have two young adults that are fantastic people with very good jobs and college educations.  They are also seeking higher educations too, so they can advance their careers.  

Enough about me.  Sometimes policies don't work well in application and Ebay is slow, very slow to correct or improve anything to do with Seller Protection.  We all just need to keep reminding Ebay we need more help from them.  A good place to do that is at the Ebay Open.  There is still a virtual version so we can all attend.  Come and make your voices heard.

https://hopin.com/events/ebay-open-2023/registration

It should be noted that we have very good Seller protection regarding INRs yet some sellers simply don't know or understand that.  Again this goes back to knowing the policies.