Unauthorized Transaction

[sunflowers652016]

Hi all, just looking for some advice, or even opinions on this. I sold an item, and shipped the same day. The next day I get a notice from ebay that the transaction was unauthorized and it has been cancelled.  I was told not to complete the transaction and if I shipped the item already to try to stop shipment. I attempted to and was charged $14 to do that. I still do not have my item and not only did my buyer send me an angry message telling me she wants her item, but she also opened a case against me.

I just refunded her.

I am now out of the item (not sure where it is, tracking shows nothing), I'm out the money For the item, I'm out $14 for the intercept (usps charged my card), I spent an hour of my time on the phone with ebay to get No answers, and I'm told that the angry buyer will be able to leave me bad feedback.

What just happened here and what did I do wrong? 

[ittybitnot]

 as unauthorized use of a buyer's account or financial information would be unrelated to the seller's payment processor. 

@Anonymous   Perhaps it is confusion on my part.  I have been here more than 20 years, and notice of "unauthorized use" always came from the payment processor, be it my own merchant services or PayPal.  In the old days, the PayPal notice would even say instead of unauthorized use... "you have been paid with potentially fraudulent funds."   In this present case, and in others recently cited, these were all PayPal transactions.   

Simply put, why are these notices being sent from eBay and not PayPal?  This is different from the norm and becoming more frequently referenced here.  The only change I see in regard to unauthorized use is the ebay notices coinciding with the transition to managed payments, thus the suggestion that this change may be a function of that process. 

[myangelandmyprincess]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@mam98031 wrote:

@Anonymous 

The OP has reported that the buyer was able to file an INR in Ebay on this transaction?  How or why was that even allowed when Ebay instructed the seller to retrieve the package, not to mention Ebay cancelled the transaction??

---

Hi @mam98031, sorry I was trying to edit one of my recent post before any other replies occurred. I have added an edit to a previous post that addresses this and I will copy the contents below:

"Edit: I wanted to add that if no dispute has been filed with PayPal or the financial institution, the buyer is still able to file an item not received request to have the seller resolve this issue for them. If we prevented the buyer from pursuing a resolution on eBay, it could lead them to resort to a CC Chargeback, which would still result in a refund from the seller but typically also incurs additional fees for the seller as well."

---

If th buyer file with the cc the seller would be protected by PayPal protection for unauthorized as long as they show shipped to the address on file.  

[ke-884577]

I recently had a very transaction happen. I have always been reluctant to buy or sell on eBay, however my wife and I have outgrown the small apartment we live in so we turned to eBay to sell off some of our collections. I am a disabled AF Veteran and have need for room to store alot of necessary Medical equipment. The 1st week went well and then all hell broke loose. I have many hobbies one of them is making jewelry out of vintage silverware which I buy in lots. We purchased what was described as 12 Sterling Silver Spoons for approximately 29.00 . We live on a very limited income and gave much consideration to this purchase and thinking we could make money completed the purchase only to receive 1 spoon, which was lovely, however would have never agreed to make a puchase of 1 spoon for that price. So we tried to resolve our issue with eBay to no avail. I have issued several refunds to customers who were not happy with their purchase and eBay's Money Back Guarantee is a lie as far as I'm concerned. I will no longer purchase anything from eBay, I have been unhappy as a Buyer and a Seller

[ke-884577]

You Are Sooo Right. I have only been selling and buying on eBay for a short time, and everything you are saying is very true. I think I have learned some valuable lessons in a short time, and I'll take my experience elsewhere

[ke-884577]

I'm with you I have been buying and selling here and it is'nt about eighther of us... It's all abut eBay they are not on the side of the buyer or the seller,

[ke-884577]

My experience has been the same, although even as a buyer I have not received the same respect or refund even though the purchases I made were not received as described

[grapplingmonkey]

Your paying paypal a fee to collect and manage payments its there job todo it correctly . I got one of these messages ,  I already shipped to buyers address that came up thru PayPal , but at that point I did nothing because  its not my problem its PayPal's. As long as you ship to confirmed address with tracking your covered.  Let eBay or PayPal deal with it. 

[mam98031]

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Trinton, I've had a dozen or more of these over the years, always got the memo after the item shipped, never had a request for a refund or anything further done about it.......  I've seen many posters says the same thing......  Paypal has always "required" that we ship to the address they've given us, which presumes it is the actual address of the cc holder and as long as we haven't changed it, we were covered.

Those experiences to me mean that the majority of these unauthorized use claims are valid purchases by the unauthorized use claimant, otherwise they would be asking for a refund.......... Now.....just because it may be a majority, doesn't mean there won't be claims. 

But to get to your request.....the notice to recall the package can be pretty expensive on a low dollar item.  That notice almost sounds like one is obligated to do it.  I would reword it to say something like ......if this item is valuable, you may want to pay a fee and try to recall it it thru your shipping carrier.  

just my idea

---

My experience has been the same as yours.  I've never refunded, had a claim or even an email from the buyer.  They apparently received the item and no issues resulted from it.  I've always assumed the same thing.  Whatever flag was raised to make Ebay think there was an issues, wasn't an issue after all.  

[mam98031]

---

@ke-884577 wrote:
You Are Sooo Right. I have only been selling and buying on eBay for a short time, and everything you are saying is very true. I think I have learned some valuable lessons in a short time, and I'll take my experience elsewhere

---

I understand you had some bad experiences on Ebay, but the grass is not always greener elsewhere.  If I were you, I'd fire up a new selling account and start over.  Your feedback may prevent some buyers in giving you a try as a new seller.  So just set up a new account and start over.

You can start a thread and ask for some help.  I can see several things on your listings that would help you.

Also just in case you didn't know.  You have a duplicate listing posted.  You should fix that before the Ebay bot finds it and you get a listing violation for a duplicate listing.  You have the Orange shirt posted twice.

I did notice that you had pics of an orange shirt and a green shirt in the listing.  I don't know if you intended one listing to be for the green shirt and one for the orange.  But both are for the orange.  If you intended one to be for the green shirt, then that listing should ONLY have pics of the green shirt in it.  Same for the orange.  The pics of the green shirt don't belong in the listing for the orange shirt.

[pjcdn2005]

---

@mam98031 wrote:

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Trinton, I've had a dozen or more of these over the years, always got the memo after the item shipped, never had a request for a refund or anything further done about it.......  I've seen many posters says the same thing......  Paypal has always "required" that we ship to the address they've given us, which presumes it is the actual address of the cc holder and as long as we haven't changed it, we were covered.

Those experiences to me mean that the majority of these unauthorized use claims are valid purchases by the unauthorized use claimant, otherwise they would be asking for a refund.......... Now.....just because it may be a majority, doesn't mean there won't be claims. 

But to get to your request.....the notice to recall the package can be pretty expensive on a low dollar item.  That notice almost sounds like one is obligated to do it.  I would reword it to say something like ......if this item is valuable, you may want to pay a fee and try to recall it it thru your shipping carrier.  

just my idea

---

My experience has been the same as yours.  I've never refunded, had a claim or even an email from the buyer.  They apparently received the item and no issues resulted from it.  I've always assumed the same thing.  Whatever flag was raised to make Ebay think there was an issues, wasn't an issue after all.  

---

I’ve had the same experiences as you and Dhbookds.  I don’t know why or when eBay sends out these messages but since many of them don’t appear to turn out to be an actual unauthorized transaction they should be more cautious about the advice they give when they do send them out.

I always wonder why ebay does suggest that the package be recalled as I don’t see how that benefits the seller.  Even if it turns out that the account owner didn’t order the item, wouldn’t ebay cover the seller as long as the item was sent to the payment address?  

[pjcdn2005]

---

@myangelandmyprincess wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@mam98031 wrote:

@Anonymous 

The OP has reported that the buyer was able to file an INR in Ebay on this transaction?  How or why was that even allowed when Ebay instructed the seller to retrieve the package, not to mention Ebay cancelled the transaction??

---

Hi @mam98031, sorry I was trying to edit one of my recent post before any other replies occurred. I have added an edit to a previous post that addresses this and I will copy the contents below:

"Edit: I wanted to add that if no dispute has been filed with PayPal or the financial institution, the buyer is still able to file an item not received request to have the seller resolve this issue for them. If we prevented the buyer from pursuing a resolution on eBay, it could lead them to resort to a CC Chargeback, which would still result in a refund from the seller but typically also incurs additional fees for the seller as well."

---

If th buyer file with the cc the seller would be protected by PayPal protection for unauthorized as long as they show shipped to the address on file.  

---

Unless of course the seller recalled the package because they were following ebays suggestion. 

[mam98031]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

---

@mam98031 wrote:

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Trinton, I've had a dozen or more of these over the years, always got the memo after the item shipped, never had a request for a refund or anything further done about it.......  I've seen many posters says the same thing......  Paypal has always "required" that we ship to the address they've given us, which presumes it is the actual address of the cc holder and as long as we haven't changed it, we were covered.

Those experiences to me mean that the majority of these unauthorized use claims are valid purchases by the unauthorized use claimant, otherwise they would be asking for a refund.......... Now.....just because it may be a majority, doesn't mean there won't be claims. 

But to get to your request.....the notice to recall the package can be pretty expensive on a low dollar item.  That notice almost sounds like one is obligated to do it.  I would reword it to say something like ......if this item is valuable, you may want to pay a fee and try to recall it it thru your shipping carrier.  

just my idea

---

My experience has been the same as yours.  I've never refunded, had a claim or even an email from the buyer.  They apparently received the item and no issues resulted from it.  I've always assumed the same thing.  Whatever flag was raised to make Ebay think there was an issues, wasn't an issue after all.  

---

I’ve had the same experiences as you and Dhbookds.  I don’t know why or when eBay sends out these messages but since many of them don’t appear to turn out to be an actual unauthorized transaction they should be more cautious about the advice they give when they do send them out.

I always wonder why ebay does suggest that the package be recalled as I don’t see how that benefits the seller.  Even if it turns out that the account owner didn’t order the item, wouldn’t ebay cover the seller as long as the item was sent to the payment address?  

---

It seems from what Trinton explained that the seller would be covered under PPs seller protection.  So Ebay wouldn't be out any money, but PP would.

[pjcdn2005]

I think that would be the case if it was an unauthorized credit card claim or if a claim was filed through PP.  But I don’t  think that these emails eBay sends out are because there is an actual credit card chargeback.

[myangelandmyprincess]

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

---

@myangelandmyprincess wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@mam98031 wrote:

@Anonymous 

The OP has reported that the buyer was able to file an INR in Ebay on this transaction?  How or why was that even allowed when Ebay instructed the seller to retrieve the package, not to mention Ebay cancelled the transaction??

---

Hi @mam98031, sorry I was trying to edit one of my recent post before any other replies occurred. I have added an edit to a previous post that addresses this and I will copy the contents below:

"Edit: I wanted to add that if no dispute has been filed with PayPal or the financial institution, the buyer is still able to file an item not received request to have the seller resolve this issue for them. If we prevented the buyer from pursuing a resolution on eBay, it could lead them to resort to a CC Chargeback, which would still result in a refund from the seller but typically also incurs additional fees for the seller as well."

---

If th buyer file with the cc the seller would be protected by PayPal protection for unauthorized as long as they show shipped to the address on file.  

---

Unless of course the seller recalled the package because they were following ebays suggestion. 

---

Exactly which is why the reasoning of trying to keep th buyer from filing a cc chargeback makes zero sense 

[Anonymous]

---

@ittybitnot wrote:

 as unauthorized use of a buyer's account or financial information would be unrelated to the seller's payment processor. 

@Anonymous   Perhaps it is confusion on my part.  I have been here more than 20 years, and notice of "unauthorized use" always came from the payment processor, be it my own merchant services or PayPal.  In the old days, the PayPal notice would even say instead of unauthorized use... "you have been paid with potentially fraudulent funds."   In this present case, and in others recently cited, these were all PayPal transactions.   

Simply put, why are these notices being sent from eBay and not PayPal?  This is different from the norm and becoming more frequently referenced here.  The only change I see in regard to unauthorized use is the ebay notices coinciding with the transition to managed payments, thus the suggestion that this change may be a function of that process. 

---

Hi @ittybitnot, both eBay and PayPal are capable of identifying unauthorized account access and we will notify all parties involved when this is discovered. We have entire departments dedicated to identifying account theft and addressing any related transactions or account issues that arose from it. This is not a new process and in fact, is one of the earliest forms of protection we developed for our Community. Additionally, this is one of the topics where members can call in and speak to a Customer Service representative 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 

You may not have run into this before simply because it is a rare occurrence - in increase in reports on our Community Discussion boards does not correlate to an increase in this situation happening, but instead may be due to an increase in traffic within our Community as more members come to the boards to share their experiences.

If a buyer or seller has been notified of unauthorized access of an account or that a purchase/sale was fraudulent in some way and they have questions on how to proceed, I recommend they contact Customer Service to receive the best advice for their specific situation.