Stuck in Italian Purgatory

[sandmansales]

First time this happened after almost 20 years.

Buyer buys watch through GSP to Italy. Files SNAD on Feb 10 but does it on ebay.it. It manages to find it's way to ebay.com but that's it. No refund date, no nothing.

Messaged buyer to send watch back and I would refund + return shipping. He gets angry and tells me to send him Italian post label. I tell him I'm not in Italy. He doesn't believe me.  I reiterate I will give him full refund and assure him I am in the US. He says ok and will return.

I call ebay about 2 weeks later to get the case closed as he hadn't shipped yet. She tries but can't because case was filed on ebay.it. She transfers me to Italy. They don't speak English. I hang up. 

I write to ebay Italy. They tell me if I don't send the buyer a label or refund him that I will get a defect on my Italian account. After I stopped laughing, I just gave up.

Something must have kicked in here because now it says I must refund him by March 20 IF the  item shows returned. All it shows is the buyer started a return and hasn't shipped.  And yes the emails are in Italian.

I called ebay.com one more time and he transferred me again to Italy. No English. I'm pretty sure the buyer blew it off and the case will eventually fall off but this is ridiculous.

[tofu107]

It happens to me last year when an Aussie buyer filed INAD ,altho he bought on Ebay USA,he filed INAD ON eBAY -AU.
Ebay-USA told me I have to call Ebay AU,somehow I managed to talk to someone in PH and she understands well and close the case.
There is a way to get someone in customer service who speak English to handle your case,I dont recall I managed to get her to call me,may be I keep calling ebay-USA and they relayed it to PH customer service?

[missjen831]

I heard the same thing happen many times before but usually the buyer bought the item on eBay.de

i think it’s stupid that you have to deal with the site the buyer bought the item

on.

[bigdeals.etc]

Yea I had to do that once with eBay.de. It was lame. I forgot the details but I'm sure it was something they could've handled easily if it was ebay.com. And the clock was ticking on this. So I had to wake up early (or stay up late) to call eBay.de because of Germany time. I finally get thru and they all speak German!! Not one person there spoke English. So that was a totally waste.

[gramophone-georg]

This nonsense is ridiculous... just another very obvious eBay stonewall tactic.

eBay is the master of creating problems and then forcing the seller to pay for it. To me, where you pay the fee is where the sale took place. If you were billed from .com the sale took place on .com. Period. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it on purpose.

[lovtaco0]

@Anonymous With international sales sellers have to follow the rules of the site where the buyer purchased the item like ebay.it, ebay.de, etc. What do you suggest sellers do when they need assistance from CS to resolve an issue? The .com CS will forward the seller to the international site's CS, but the international site's CS does not have reps that speak english.

[berserkerplanet]

That is one of the 3 main reasons many sellers (including myself) said no to international sales a few years back.

1. High cost of shipping, long delivery times, customs issues, higher loss rate depending on destination.
2. High cost of return shipping for SNAD
3. Having to deal with a dispute on a foreign site in a foreign language.

Too bad. International buyers will just have to soldier on without my items. They can take it up with eBay if that's a problem.

[Anonymous]

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@sandmansales wrote:

First time this happened after almost 20 years.

Buyer buys watch through GSP to Italy. Files SNAD on Feb 10 but does it on ebay.it. It manages to find it's way to ebay.com but that's it. No refund date, no nothing.

Messaged buyer to send watch back and I would refund + return shipping. He gets angry and tells me to send him Italian post label. I tell him I'm not in Italy. He doesn't believe me.  I reiterate I will give him full refund and assure him I am in the US. He says ok and will return.

I call ebay about 2 weeks later to get the case closed as he hadn't shipped yet. She tries but can't because case was filed on ebay.it. She transfers me to Italy. They don't speak English. I hang up. 

I write to ebay Italy. They tell me if I don't send the buyer a label or refund him that I will get a defect on my Italian account. After I stopped laughing, I just gave up.

Something must have kicked in here because now it says I must refund him by March 20 IF the  item shows returned. All it shows is the buyer started a return and hasn't shipped.  And yes the emails are in Italian.

I called ebay.com one more time and he transferred me again to Italy. No English. I'm pretty sure the buyer blew it off and the case will eventually fall off but this is ridiculous.

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Hi @sandmansales, when you need assistance with a return that was opened on another site where the dedicated Customer Service does not speak English, our Customer Service teams can generally pass along your request for assistance and someone will reach back out to you.

Alternatively, and my personal recommendation, you can contact our Social Media Customer Service teams to have this reviewed. Our Social Media teams provide support in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and a few other languages when available. Specifically, you can contact https://www.facebook.com/ebay.it/ or https://twitter.com/eBay_Italia to have this transaction reviewed specifically.

[sandmansales]

Thanks Trinton. I'll reach out via Twitter.

[sandmansales]

trinton@ebay

I just went to the links you provided and they are all in Italy. I would have to open a twitter.it or facebook.it to post my concern.

I'm not going to open Italian accounts only to be bombarded with Italian SPAM and announcements. Nor do I want to be have to rely on Google translate to converse back and forth.

So today I finally escalated the case on ebay.com, thinking maybe someone would see it's been open for 41 days and the buyer has not shipped the item back despite the fact that I offered to reimburse his return shipping, and close it in my favor as ebay.com tried to do 2 weeks ago.

So what do I get, another reply in Italian telling me if I don't refund this buyer within 5 days they are going to refund him with my money.  I click on the details of the case and it takes me to ebay.it.

When I signed up for GSP,  never in my wildest dreams did I think even ebay could have a program this mis-managed and absurdly impossible to navigate.

Honestly, this could be a sitcom. I guess my only choice now is to draft an email to all ebay board members and executives to see if maybe someone there can help me. Obviously it will never reach that level but it's very likely that a VPs secretary will take notice and do something. Good material for Ina too.

I am not beholding to ebay.it, it's UA or it's policies and am outraged that this case was allowed to be open on ebay.it to begin with much less where it's at now.

[ted_200]

Hi @sandmansales, when you need assistance with a return that was opened on another site where the dedicated Customer Service does not speak English, our Customer Service teams can generally pass along your request for assistance and someone will reach back out to you.

Alternatively, and my personal recommendation, you can contact our Social Media Customer Service teams to have this reviewed. Our Social Media teams provide support in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and a few other languages when available. Specifically, you can contact https://www.facebook.com/ebay.it/ or https://twitter.com/eBay_Italia to have this transaction reviewed specifically.

IMO, this is totally unacceptable. 

"...The dedicated Customer Service does not speak English, our Customer Service teams can generally pass along your request for assistance..." doesn't cut it, and no one should have to sign up on another site (let alone a foreign language one) to get Customer Service.

[sin-n-dex]

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@sandmansaleswrote:

First time this happened after almost 20 years.

Buyer buys watch through GSP to Italy. Files SNAD on Feb 10 but does it on ebay.it. It manages to find it's way to ebay.com but that's it. No refund date, no nothing.

Messaged buyer to send watch back and I would refund + return shipping. He gets angry and tells me to send him Italian post label. I tell him I'm not in Italy. He doesn't believe me.  I reiterate I will give him full refund and assure him I am in the US. He says ok and will return.

I call ebay about 2 weeks later to get the case closed as he hadn't shipped yet. She tries but can't because case was filed on ebay.it. She transfers me to Italy. They don't speak English. I hang up. 

I write to ebay Italy. They tell me if I don't send the buyer a label or refund him that I will get a defect on my Italian account. After I stopped laughing, I just gave up.

Something must have kicked in here because now it says I must refund him by March 20 IF the  item shows returned. All it shows is the buyer started a return and hasn't shipped.  And yes the emails are in Italian.

I called ebay.com one more time and he transferred me again to Italy. No English. I'm pretty sure the buyer blew it off and the case will eventually fall off but this is ridiculous.

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I had this sort of thing happen last month on the German eBay site. the CSRS on the dot com site sent a message to eBay Germany for someone to respond to me. I got an email a day later with reference to a case number. After several emails with them, they finally closed it in my favour because he didn't ship anything back.

Cheers, C.

[lovtaco0]

Great info, thanks for sharing C.

[dtexley3]

Is it worth the cost of using ATT translation services?  

Or find someone at the local college or university that will help for a few $$?

[ted_200]

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@dtexley3wrote:

Is it worth the cost of using ATT translation services?  

Or find someone at the local college or university that will help for a few $$?

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If eBay would allow users to talk to foreign CS via email they could translate it themselves easily and for free.