I'm a mostly-seller but also frequent-buyer on Ebay, a true devotee; I would rather pay a little more here than for the same item cheaper on Amazon. Sunday night I shopped for a quickly-needed item, and for literally the first time ever, I paid the extra for Priority Express --the item was offered with free First Class shipping, but with an up-charge option for Express, and an expected delivery of today, Tuesday.
Now, Tuesday morning, I check to make sure the item is on track to arrive today, and it hasn't even left Los Angles (I live in Mobile, AL). Thinking maybe they just skipped scans, I look at the expected delivery and it has changed to FRIDAY. To the right I see the seller actually shipped First Class, not even regular Priority!
Of course I immediately messaged the seller to ask about this, but right afterward I realized, what's the point of asking for what would have to be a made-up excuse. Like I said I'm a seller so I know they had to make special effort to include an upgrade shipping option when they created the listing, and then had to mindfully override the shipping tier I selected and paid extra for, when they bought the label. Even if the upgrade was somehow a listing accident, they would HAVE TO realize it when it came time to buy the label, and the right thing to do would be to contact the buyer, explain, apologize, and offer a choice between an immediate full refund, or a refund of the upgrade. OR (as I would likely do in such an event) eat the mistake and buy the Express label, so as not to inconvenience the buyer. This seller did none of those, just proceeded as if the Express lure not only snagged them a sale but resulted in extra money to just POCKET!
So I called Ebay, and the CSR told me to request a refund--not for the whole amount, since the item WILL eventually reach me, but just the extra for the shipping upgrade. Had I known this would be the case, I would have bought the item from one of the many other listings which were actually cheaper but only offered F.C.
So I said, "Ah, so if I want to increase my own sales of items with wide availability, I can just include a fake Express shipping offer to get an edge on other sellers, knowing I will only have to refund the fake upcharge and not actually have any kind of loss? Is that okay?" He said no it's not okay, but the only remedy he offered was leaving negative feedback. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I would suspect that the seller could just have a neg removed if they refund the upcharge, like it never happened, and just keep using this trick.
