Non-Paying bidder asks for refund
File this one under “It Shouldn’t happen”. A Tamebay reader who has taken a short break from selling reports logging into their eBay account to find an opened buyer resolution case. The only problem being that the buyer had never actually paid for the item and the seller had previously received a Final Value Fee credit for the transaction.
I’m not sure how this one came about – a fee credit should surely preclude the possibility of the buyer opening a case? Even worse there is no option in the Resolution Centre to respond to a case with “The buyer never paid and I received my FVF credit”.
Thankfully a telephone call to Customer Support resolved the matter and our reader is resting comfortably in the knowledge that Customer Support has reviewed the case and made a final decision; “We’ve decided not to issue the buyer with a refund. You don’t need to do anything else for this case“. Even better the case won’t be counted when eBay evaluates seller performance and their seller dashboard will be updated.
I guess all’s well that ends well, but how can a buyer open a case wanting a refund when they never paid to start with?
ebuyerfb says
8:34 am on 15/03/2012
This has been happening for years. I know I heard of such a case at least two years ago where the seller was complaining that the opened case counted against them. That was back when it was impossible to get such strikes removed.
st georges dragon says
8:43 am on 15/03/2012
whats new ebay has allowed buyers to abuse the system for years
Gary says
9:11 am on 15/03/2012
An item is lost in the post and a dispute is opened and subsequently closed.
Why should a buyer be able to score DSR’s for accuracy of description, despatch and shipping costs?
Chris says
9:48 am on 15/03/2012
Its all very well CS dealing with this case in this way. But do they then carry out an audit into the buyers previous history? Is this the first time that they have tried this trick? Have they a track record of other stupidities? I have long felt that there are a small number of “clowns” who regularly try it on. If these can be identified and CS can deal with them then we might all be able to sleep more soundly in our beds knowing that the following day is much less likely to disclose a Minefield.
Chris says
11:22 am on March 15th, 2012
If you listen to the Police they will regularly report that “In such and such a neighbourhood 2 people have been responsible for 85% of the reported Crimes.” Then they catch and the Courts imprison them and the Police have a very happy Neighbourhood.
I would submit that ebay(if they followed up on the clowns) would find similar statistics. The clown has found out how to “beat” the system and keeps on trying it. As long as nobody in CS follows up when obvious stupidities occur and just deal with that one then the clown will continue to try it on.
They will expect to be caught occassionally but if there is no effective sanction they will just shrug their shoulders and try it on with some other Seller.
Richard says
10:20 am on 15/03/2012
Yes I have had this. I have also had non paying bidders leaving a neutral and one poor rating. I have also had a dispute for item not as described with the customer demanding a black skirt when in fact it was clear even on the dispute page she had ordered white, and I couldn’t get the subsequent negative removed. It’s a terrible strain on us sellers.
st georges dragon says
11:29 am on March 15th, 2012
we have had buyers receive a non payment reminder from ebay ,,then pay for the item ,and leave negative then claim as not received in the space of a few seconds,
when contacted customer support they came out with some dribble .
suggesting we try working it out with the Buyer , and that we should send a feedback withdrawal request,
Gary says
11:35 am on March 15th, 2012
I have had a buyer make a purchase at midnight on a Saturday who then left negative feedback 1 hour later at 1am on the Sunday morning. No payment of course.
ebay would not remove the negative and asked me to send the buyer a feedback review appeal request.
Beat that!!!
st georges dragon says
1:02 pm on March 15th, 2012
how long to you have 1
we have hundreds of TALES, where ebay support may have as well said !!!if your daft enough to sell on ebay! you get what you deserve like it or lump it ,or sod off and stop bothering us
Jason says
11:28 am on 15/03/2012
Yup – this has happened to me twice before – both times the customer had selected “Credit Card” as the method of payment and so was 100% convinced that ebay had taken payment from his Card and that we were trying to “scam” him by not sending the goods out and opened a case against us.
At the time I didn’t have a direct customer manager so I just had to ride it out and take the negative feedback etc – one of the customers did eventually come back and apologise but it was months later and way too late to do anything about it (or compensate for the 80 million emails I had sent trying to explain the situation to him).
Admiral_Kang says
7:41 pm on 15/03/2012
It’s detestable, and unfortunately an unavoidable part of the eBay/PayPal unholy alliance, that eBay can simply dip in to your PayPal balance and award a refund unilaterally. It’s analogous to the ‘setting-off’ theft that banks can do when you forget to pay your credit card bill. There should be a law against it; eBay are not the retailer, it’s not their money, and it is not up to them to send a refund. B@stards.
Admiral_Kang says
7:42 pm on 15/03/2012
Btw, Jason, how do you go about getting a ‘direct customer manager’, and is it an eBay thing? I’m a TRS; should I be entitled to one? Cheers
Chris says
10:50 am on 20/03/2012
Re 4.1 “When is an ebay Top Rated Seller not a Top Rated Seller” January 13th 2012(sorry all the Comments boxes have gone-Probably as its in the Archive).
Had an interesting one today. I was relisting some Books. One did not have the ISBN details on it so I went and found a copy and entered them. After relisting the original in “Unsold” was not shown as having been relisted. So in theory if I had not been awake(and at this time in the morning I am sometimes only half awake), I could have not noticed and relisted.
I seem to remember that previously when I have altered a listing while relisting it the original in “Unsold” has shown as having been Relisted. Does this mean that either somebody within ebay has been fiddling and changed something or does a proportion of my duplicates in the past mean that this has been a fault (even an intermitent fault) for a while?