When does a Big Box store get the 'boot' from eBay?

[iaintdoingit]

During the past few days I have been following a big box eBay store and am shocked – simply shocked. In my opinion, this store 'is' giving eBay and all sellers a horrible name due the lack shipping orders, refunding outside of eBay and 'no' customer service at all.

It appears this company is refunding customers through PayPal outside of the original payment.

This morning the overall feed back was:

Positives = 3,647------

Neutrals = 155                   88.9%

Negatives = 8,931-----

This big box has had a store since September 22, 2016 and have, as of this post, 8,341 items for sale.

A few minutes ago I check to what had transpired since early this morning and the numbers changed again, they are:

Positives = 3,686------

Neutrals = 159                       88.7%

Negatives = 9,151-----

Here are few the negatives:

~Seller is bad and cancellled the order

~Didn’t shipped the item.Paasa

~Item still has not shipped. Invoice paid no shipping info 7 days later

~Not sent and refunded without asking. Contacted seller and they never reply back

~Dissapointed! Item not received, no communication whatsoever!

~Buyer beware: seller never shipped items amd no communication. SCAM

~Bought, waited a week for 3 items to ship, then cancelled without cause.

~I bought item on sale. Seller refunded paypal with no communication. I want item

~Bad seller, should be banned from selling.

~they cancelled and send my payment on paypal even i dont used pypl

~Seller sent refund in PayPal. No message or email through Ebay.

~Did not fulfill order and cancelled though PayPal to avoid eBay NO REFUND GIVEN

~Ebay told me open case after ship date they have no records of any refunds! 🙂

~Canceled order via PayPal, not Ebay. I did NOT request to cancel.

When I first started keeping an eye on this seller the overall FB percentage was 92% which was 4 days ago. It will be interesting to see of eBay does anything.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

[iaintdoingit]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

I can't either. Somebody please give us a clue (or a PM!).

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Just sent you a PM with the link.

[iaintdoingit]

What about all the canceled order -- they "will" hit the sellers metrics.  Will keep check on the 20th for significant changes.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

I doubt the big boys actually HAVE any "metrics" to worry about. That's just for us plebes at the bottom of the heap.

[iaintdoingit]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

Here's a story on this particular issue that affected Hasbro and Reebok.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2019/6/1561944603.html

It's a question about how eBay will handle this.

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Love the last paragraph of the article:

However, tweets from the brands indicate they may have been leaving it to eBay to manage their stores; if that was the case, how would (or should) eBay handle those stores' seller performance standards?

eBay to manage - my stomach hurts!

Also, if memory serves me right, hasn't there been sellers that have posted that eBay changed some of the pricing?

Got to get another cup of coffee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[craigsdieselrepair]

I was thinking the same thing. These buyers are terrible people. They have to know that there was a mistake in the price. Most of these buyers only paid a buck or two for the item. The KNOW it was a mistake and attempted to capitalize on it. Then when they were refunded (as they should have been for a colossal mistake of this size- which could really hurt a company if they followed through with the sales) they all left negative feedback. Shows what a sorry state of affairs the world is in. People are so dishonest now. 
I would have messaged the seller and told them of the mistake in pricing. I actually just had this happen with a seller recently. Her item was priced so low, so I messaged and asked her if she meant to price the item low. She messaged back and said it was a mistake, and thanked me. Honest people do not take advantage of an unfortunate mistake on the seller's part. And then neg them for not just giving their product away! 

[penguins_dont_fly]

Just tagging on the end here ...

According to the ecommerce-bytes article, RB was TRS before this meltdown.

As of this morning, they no longer show Top Rated on their profile  ... which means the cancels have started to hit their metrics.

This whole thing looks like a product upload error with the prices off by a decimal point (3.50 instead of 35.00) ... and the vultures jumped on it and compounded the damage by broadcasting the glitch to a wider audience than it would have gotten.

On any other retail site, the orders would have been cancelled, an apology issued and a coupon offered .... just like they did here. The only difference between a private retail site and here is the "pile on" effect of feedback. The absolute damage that this did to a normally well respected seller is sad 😞

I'm willing to bet that the same vulture resellers that broadcasted the glitch also broadcasted "neg  'em!!!!" When the orders were cancelled 😞

I don't blame the resellers for trying to get a deal ... I would have done the same if I saw something like that in my wheelhouse ... but I would have just shrugged it off and gone on with my life when the inevitable happened.

[iaintdoingit]

I think there is more going on with this Big Box then has been mentioned here.

This negative I just saw tells maybe another story:

~ Paid w/card but neither shipped or cancelled but issued PP refund

I have seen a bunch of these types of negatives the last few days.  Maybe the folks running this store are overwhelmed or don't know what they are doing.

Current:

Positives = 3,690------

Neutrals = 166                         87.9%

Negatives = 10,020-----

What do you folk think?

[nobody*s_perfect]

If you look at the Sold records for the items that they got negged for, you can see that the selling prices were about 10% of what they should have been.  

So the bit about "overwhelmed" or "didn't know what they were doing" does apply, but it applies to the way they set up the listing (with wrong prices) or their very delayed response in correcting the error. And it also applies to the way they responded -- by canceling the transactions rather than honoring the erroneous prices, which admittedly was a huge number of transactions (more than 9K negs about it so far) due to media publicity about this opportunity.

[autopiacarcare]

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@iaintdoingit wrote:

I think there is more going on with this Big Box then has been mentioned here.

This negative I just saw tells maybe another story:

~ Paid w/card but neither shipped or cancelled but issued PP refund

I have seen a bunch of these types of negatives the last few days.  Maybe the folks running this store are overwhelmed or don't know what they are doing.

Current:

Positives = 3,690------

Neutrals = 166                         87.9%

Negatives = 10,020-----

What do you folk think?

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My guess would be they have chosen to process refunds outside of the original transactions to avoid defects.  If they refunded the original transactions, that would link back to eBay and be automatically counted as a defect.  The downside would be that sending a refund outside of the original transaction risks the kind of negative feedback they are seeing.

Considering how eBay currently looks at defects vs negative feedback, thousands of defects for canceling orders would be way worse than thousands of negative feedback.  I'm also pretty sure since they are one of the big players, they won't have too many issues getting eBay to clean up the feedback for them once the dust settles.

I'm betting this was just considered the least bad option for getting money back to the buyers while trying not to completely crash their eBay account.

[threshold.sales.group]

The large brands obviously operate with a different set of rules.  The advice usually given here to small sellers when they make any sort of mistake is to swallow hard ship and take the loss.  

[autopiacarcare]

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@threshold.sales.group wrote:

The large brands obviously operate with a different set of rules.  The advice usually given here to small sellers when they make any sort of mistake is to swallow hard ship and take the loss.  

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I'm sure we won't ever find out details, but it would be interesting to know who actually manages that account - the brand themselves or eBay?

Some of the brand's posts on social media about this issue make it sound like eBay manages the account for them and they have no control over it and don't even see the orders.  Either they are in full blown CYA mode and deflecting blame back to eBay or they really do have some deal where they are hands off and eBay manages the actual operations of that account. That could make a big difference as far as how things are being handled.

[frenzy.finds]

Aren't credit card payments processed through PayPal? Is it possible the refunds are processed through PayPal and back to the cards?

I don't see how a seller would know the buyer's PayPal account info if they paid by card.

[trukur_0]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Could you define a Big Box store?

Because for a seller who has had an account since 2016 (a little under three years) to have only 13,000 sales doesn't say Big Box to me.

I think of the Big Boxes either as those sellers with hundrends of thousands of sales, or as large stores (like WalMart and GoodWill).

Keep in mind that eBay does not consider feedback (and wow, that is some terrible feedback!) in assessing accounts.

There are some FB that indicate a Dispute was opened, and the buyer was refunded.  EBay accepts these as properly completed, I believe.

 The ones that indicate the buyer did not get any refund, seem to be from members who did not use the Resolution Centre to get the refund. Technically eBay didn't know there was a problem.

The PP refunds indicate a problem eBay should be looking at.  The weakness in the new eBay/PP dynamic shows here.

There's also a weakness in the Defects policy, because if a seller is prompt about refunding a disappointed buyer, the seller is not getting a Defect.

Except,

We keep seeing reports from sellers who are seeing Defects and restrictions from settled Disputes, including INRs for delayed shipments.

I wonder if this Bad Seller also is working with restrictions abd higher fees.

But I suspect that the Bad Seller has a formal contract specially designed for them and vetted by legal teams on both sides.  And that contract may have different terms concerning Defects and restrictions than ours.

We'll never know.

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I have had employees, which is how I know... With one employee if something goes wrong I know whodunit, no question.  With two there's still a pretty good chance I can figure it out mostly because of patterning, but once we get into three or more I  can no longer be 100% certain where the fault lies and that qualifies for my definition of "big box store" however there's another issue today:

I am now part of managed payments, as such IF a buyer steps outside the process when returning an item I may be unable to issue a refund at all, Paypal is outside of the equation and if ebay has no records of the return then I can not simply issue a refund for no reason.

It's worse if the case is opened, the buyer ships it back using some alternate label and never enters a tracking number and then the case closes.  As far as payments and refunds go that transaction is sealed.

I suppose I could send the buyer a handwritten business check but in my experience there aren't too many sellers who would do that.

[autopiacarcare]

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@frenzy.finds wrote:

Aren't credit card payments processed through PayPal? Is it possible the refunds are processed through PayPal and back to the cards?

I don't see how a seller would know the buyer's PayPal account info if they paid by card.

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That's certainly possible too.  The feedback I've seen makes it sound like the refunds are being done as a completely separate transaction, outside of the original payment, and that the orders are not actually being "canceled" on eBay.  That's what made me think they are doing this to avoid defects, but I could be wrong.

[iaintdoingit]

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@autopiacarcare wrote:

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@frenzy.finds wrote:

Aren't credit card payments processed through PayPal? Is it possible the refunds are processed through PayPal and back to the cards?

I don't see how a seller would know the buyer's PayPal account info if they paid by card.

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That's certainly possible too.  The feedback I've seen makes it sound like the refunds are being done as a completely separate transaction, outside of the original payment, and that the orders are not actually being "canceled" on eBay.  That's what made me think they are doing this to avoid defects, but I could be wrong.

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The payment outside of eBay or the order itself makes me wonder how many INRs are being filed by the buyer(s).  I don't think that all buyers are honest and would do their best to double-dip!