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Mail Fraud

 5 times this year I have had buyers wait until the day I leave them positive feedback to open return request. I leave feedback 2-4 weeks after they have received the item. Even though I clearly state that I have a no retern unless damaged or not as described I get these request for returns.  Some people claim damage or just dont like the item. I know if I get a damaged item I contact the seller right away not 3 weeks later on the day they leave me positive feedback... This just happened again today and I am tired of it. Is there anything that can be done to stop this? 

 

I wish eBay had a policy that if an item is damaged they must notify you within a couple days. None of the buyers wanted to return the items either. I believe it is just mail fraud and eBay is an accesory to it.

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Mail Fraud


@baltic_ave_store wrote:

 5 times this year I have had buyers wait until the day I leave them positive feedback to open return request. ... This just happened again today and I am tired of it. Is there anything that can be done to stop this? ....


Well ... stop leaving feedback.  Or leave it after the 30-day deadline for returns and SNAD caims.  

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Mail Fraud

 

None of the buyers wanted to return the items either.

 

 

Then what did they want?

Message 3 of 33
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Mail Fraud

 wanted full refunds

Message 4 of 33
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Mail Fraud

 

You aren't refunding them are you? 

Message 5 of 33
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Mail Fraud

eBay has forced me to refund in every case.

My point is people are stealing perfectly good items from me and eBay permits it.

 

In another case a buyer installed a New underwater pool light and claimed it did not work. He sent me back a pool light that was clearly the one that was replaced, I could tell by the amount of corrosion and wear on the seal. I was forced to refund $160 so that he could replace his light for free... plus i was out my cost and shipping.

 

Mail Fraud is illegal and eBay permits it!

Message 6 of 33
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Mail Fraud

 

 

eBay has forced me to refund in every case.

 

I can understand doing that if you don't want the item back, but for remorse return (just didn't like?) you shouldn't be refunding.   Or if you want the item back, I'd require a return before refund. 

Message 7 of 33
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Mail Fraud



Well ... stop leaving feedback.  Or leave it after the 30-day deadline for returns and SNAD caims.  



Exactly.

Since sellers can leave positives only - I leave feedback AFTER I received Positive from the buyer

 

Write in your policy/Listings something like:

 

"If you are happy with purchase, your feedback is appreciated

I leave feedback after positive feedback has been received"

Message 8 of 33
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Mail Fraud


@baltic_ave_store wrote:

eBay has forced me to refund in every case.

My point is people are stealing perfectly good items from me and eBay permits it.

 

Mail Fraud is illegal and eBay permits it!


The short answer is YES!

 

At this moment nothing you can do!!!!!

 

I just stop selling on eBay last week because of that!

Message 9 of 33
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Mail Fraud

 Extortion and mail fraud are both illegal, apparently the laws are different on Ebay. Just had the same problem, left positive and almost immeadiately got message with request for huge refund (85.00 on a 99.00 purchase) to keep my merchandise as though this would be a favor.   Politely ignored the request for huge refund and offered return specifying to open return, state found for less money. (her problem with my fragile vintage item). Next message from buyer, I can prove I found it for less and IF YOU want it back you will have to pay return shipping. I have a no returns policy so I think I am being quite fair and encouraging a happy buyer experience by asking her to just pay the 10.00 insured return shipping because she found it for less AFTER she bought AND recieved mine. 

 

Return opened, reason Not as decribed, does not match photo's. REALLY that wasn't your problem when you trying to get a 85.00 refund. Of course Ebay has my back as I was told by not 1 , but 2 CS reps. who have supposedly read all messages. Don't accept return, do nothing and in 3 days we will step in and customer will pay return shipping. Question asked of both CS , will I get a defect for not resolving myself,,,,,,oh no, no, no. 

 

Tomorrow I am supposed to be recieving a package of my possibly well packed vintage item AT MY EXPENSE. I have no idea what will be in it and what condition it will be in. Then Ebay will cheerfully issue the buyer a full refund (my money) the second it hits my mailbox to reward the buyer for CLEARLY VIOLATING THEIR POLICY. For my efforts to keep the customer happy , I get a defect, loss of close to 40.00 in fees, shipping and packing materials. Plus hours of my time and untold aggravation and stress.  

 

Here is the saddest part. When looking at this buyers public feedback, this has been going on for A LONG TIME. Why is it still going on? I reported it for extortion ,  misuse of returns and then again for misuse of MBG program. I started refusing most requests for additional discounts unless there was at least a shred of some POSSIBLY valid reason. Buyers attitude, demeanor and a check of feedback, Recd and left (you have to read them for any insight) factor in.  I offer returns instead, most don't bother because they just wanted to see if they could get an extra discount. Any valid issue is handled immeadiately to the customers satisfaction. I have very few VALID issues. 

 

Can Ebay not see which customers are CONSTANTLY recieving refunds? To me this is the best way to find the problem buyers. This has gotten so far out of hand. 

 

99 percent of my buyers are just such pleasurable people to deal with. Every now and then I get a nice note about how tickled they were to find an item, why they wanted it and so on. The enjoyable part of Ebay to me. 

 

Now I need advice on appeal, Any advice appreciated. I have times of CS calls and name of CS 2. All messages from buyer and vice versa. All thru the system. Any advice appreciated. 

Message 10 of 33
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Mail Fraud

ME TOO!
Message 11 of 33
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Mail Fraud

Ebay will not care what you have to offer as proof, it is not in their best interest to ever change any decisions. Why would they ever admit doing anything wrong or making a mistake? They are making much more by making sure you lose every case opened, they make money off of their own decisions. seems strange how a party that has a vested interest in the outcome and yet stands to make a direct profit off of those decisions on cases that they fully admit to having no insight or any way of actually knowing anything about each and every case that they decide upon, still thinks that it's OK to continue doing so.

 

It's plain to see that ebay has no interest in accepting any evidence you have since having you fight the case is only going to provide ebay with even more income, they will always say the seller is to blame no matter what and once you challenge it, they then stand to make money in seller fees, they also make money off of the provided shipping labels, and if they get enough defects chalked up on you they will limit your account so you are paying for you store and getting no benefits of the store as you had originally agreed to when you signed on. Then to show you that you are a valued servant of ebay you will be allowed to pay an extra higher level of fees on every sale after that and if you are a small seller you are put in a position where you have no chance of ever getting out of the grip of ebays death spiral that they have made for you.

 

Once you are labeled below standard you are guaranteed to make less sales than you did prior to being below standard, (it's a simple fact that cannot be argued) so what happens as time passes is you will end up with you problems actually compounding with each passing day. Your defect rates will rise no matter what happens since you are limited on how much you can list and also how much you can make each month, you will have no chance of making more sales per month than you did the year prior which means that if you have 4 defects and had 200 sales per month, then you are limited to 120 sales per month, figure that you have a 60% sales through rate on what you list. meaning that you listed 500 items to get 200 sales, and with only 120 items listed you will end up with 70 sales and as each month rolls off the total sales for the year your defect rate will go up dramatically each passing month.

 

I know how this works since I once had a seller limit of 10K items and $75K per month and ended up with limits set at 120 items and $3200 per month but was still being charged for my store which I was supposed to get 500 listings per month but couldn't use 380 of those I was paying for. Plus if your items have a shipping cost that is equal to or more than the items you are selling you are actually paying around 48% in seller fees. i checked out my sales and added in the missing shipping costs and figured out that my actual fees i was paying on my sales were equal to 48% of my actual money i saw as profit.\

 

I used the total money paid to me for each sale, then subtracted the amount i paid for shipping each item, then I took that total and looked at my total fees I paid for those sales and ended up with my actual corrected fees being 48% of the total money I made per month. If you do this you will see that even if you are not paying the extra high fees you are still paying around 35% with pay pal fees figured in on the totals. Since you make nothing off of the shipping fees buyers pay you, your fees will double on sales where shipping is equal to the price of the items you sell. many hot wheels cars sales are made with the shipping being 3 times the price paid for the cars and i don't see how those sellers can afford to continue selling here, i know i was losing money on every sale until i decided that it was not in my best interest to continue doing any shipping on my items. (then finally realized that selling anything here simply came with a high risk of loosing much more that the few $ I could make) I figured I'd make the buyers buy the shipping labels and email them to you so your not stuck paying fees on them for reason other than ebays greed. plus if you don't ship your will never have a case opened against you, sales that have no shipping are not eligible for ebays buyer or seller (ha ha! like there is any seller protection) and cases cannot be opened on those sales. There's no reason that a buyer can't send you a shipping label, they will never be able to complain about you charging extra for shipping either.

 

Best thing to do is just not sell here, ebay will not honor any terms of transactions you have posted unless you are a best buy or similar big box store, there's distinct rules for each class of seller here, if you're not a nationally known brand name company you will end up being used and discarded.

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Mail Fraud

I gave you a helpful and I came back and saw it was removed!
one more thing I wanted to say is this is how it works on ebay and you better get used to it fast or stop selling because it's just going to get worse as more sellers leave this will make the problem buyers have less to choose from, ebay keeps these buyers around on purpose, they make ebay money! Plus they will use them selectively as a way to target sellers and generate defects. I plotted all my ales on map of the US and then made an overlay map that showed my shipping zones based on my zip as the origin and found that I had 113 total sales that shipped to zones 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. 35 were large items that could not be shipped using a flat rate box and weighed over 6 lbs. Also had cases opened 7/113 sales had problems (4.5%)

by contrast zones 6, 7 & 8 had 255 total sales with 135 large items and had 5 cases opened. 5/255 sales had problems. Not only is ebay making sure to only show my items to the farthest possible shipping but if they did let buyers who lived closer see them , they made sure that those buyers had a higher chance of being problem buyers. ( 1.9%)
Message 13 of 33
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Mail Fraud


@baltic_ave_store wrote:

 wanted full refunds


Of course the do, you do after all have a No Returns policy.

 


@baltic_ave_store wrote:

None of the buyers wanted to return the items either.


 Why would they, your sales auctions all clearly state No Returns.

 

Message 14 of 33
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Mail Fraud


@baltic_ave_store wrote:

eBay has forced me to refund in every case.

My point is people are stealing perfectly good items from me and eBay permits it.

 

In another case a buyer installed a New underwater pool light and claimed it did not work. He sent me back a pool light that was clearly the one that was replaced, I could tell by the amount of corrosion and wear on the seal. I was forced to refund $160 so that he could replace his light for free... plus i was out my cost and shipping.

 

Mail Fraud is illegal and eBay permits it!


eBay doesn't force refunds without return unless you refuse to accept the return.  So if you're doing that stop.  If a buyer files snad accept the return.  The buyer will have to return for a refund 

“Birth certificates show that you were born. Death certificates show that you died. Photographs show that you have lived.” -Unknown
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