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I had a return on a vintage desktop calculator ($200). INAD, but probably more buyer’s remorse than anything else. Of course, they barely wrap it in bubbles and it gets cracked and broken in the mail.
I call eBay and I ask what I should do. Rep says I can give partial refund up to 50%, but I ask if there is any way eBay can reimburse me for the whole thing since this was not my fault, I’m a longtime good seller, and the item is not worth even $100 now. I know eBay steps in sometimes to fix these types of things.
The rep eventually agrees with me and tells me that eBay will refund me the whole amount, but only if I first give the buyer a full refund. Then, I am supposed to submit proof of the damage via pictures and appeal the return. She said after that, eBay will refund me for the full amount. I verified several times with the rep that I will for sure get the refund if I follow her instructions. She said she was writing detailed notes on my account and I would get the money back as long as I provided the pictures as evidence.
You can guess where this is going now. I issue the full refund. I call eBay to file the appeal. I am immediately rejected. I call eBay again. This time, the new rep looks at the first rep’s notes and seems a bit angry and says the other rep should not have promised anything, but she also agreed that this wasn’t my fault and eBay should refund me. She wrote more detailed notes and took the “very rare” step of granting me a second appeal (but she couldn’t promise anything). And again, repeal rejected immediately. I’m pretty angry now. I decide to try eBay for Business on Facebook. Never tried that before. And at least this time it appears a human looked at it, but their policies will not help me in this circumstance since I already freely gave a full refund. And then the eBay for Business person gives sends me a the lecture about how all businesses need to account for returns and take occasional losses. And I’m like, well, I only gave that refund because I was following the exact instructions given by an eBay customer service rep. If an eBay rep messes up, it should be on eBay to make it right. SO IRRITATING!
Sorry, needed to vent somewhere. I have many more good experiences than bad on eBay, but this one was especially frustrating. Anyone else followed blatantly wrong advice given to them by an eBay rep?
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I am SO Sorry to hear that this happened to you. I’ve had similar experiences with $30-$60 items, but at that price it really does sting. They’re not wrong that any business needs to expect some “spillage”, but the fact that they directly told you to do something, and told you that you’d be refunded only to take it back just seems so wrong.
I’ll definitely keep your story in mind next time something similar comes up. Thanks for helping the community out though through your experience. Hope things turn around for you for future sales!
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Been there, done that, have the T-shirt.
One time I actually got them to follow through with their promise and I got my money back. It was a two month ordeal and it was NOT worth the effort or stress in the end – it was a principle thing. I documented it all here in a thread somewhere.
Now I’ll try once or twice, but I’m used to the constant lying and misrepresenting. I just move on if they pull their usual crap. It is wrong and I hate it and what I’d really like to do is go to my state attorney general and get a class action suit going, but I have more important things to spend my time and worry on. -
Here ya go:
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On the other side of things, my husband bought something from eBay for the first time towards the end of last year. It was shipped from Texas and got stuck in USPS hell. In the meantime, he was able to get something else instead. He contacted the seller and said that he didn’t want the item anymore. The buyer said to ship it back when it arrived, and he would refund.
When it did arrive, about a month late, my husband opened a return, and the buyer refused it. He called eBay help, and the customer rep said that even though the buyer promised to take it back, they couldn’t force him to. So, the rep said that my husband would get a $30 credit to buy something else on eBay.
Guess what? That credit never appeared even though my husband called three or four times to fix the issue. I think that if the customer rep just said that this was a no-return item and that the buyer didn’t have to take the return, that would have been that. But, there was a promise by the rep, and it was unfulfilled.
I don’t think that my husband will be buying anything from eBay any day soon. I have to say, as much as I do like eBay, their customer service is about the worse of any company I’ve had to deal with.
Hum, come to think of it, I did have an issue with AAA recently that took about six or seven phone calls to resolve. So, maybe not?
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Here’s the worst part – it WAS getting better there for a bit. Especially with the chat logs. It was a temporary improvement. Once the CSR’s realized that there are no consequences for not following through with anything, they went back to going through the motions.
I’d rather believe that then the alternative – that ebay’s CS plan is to intentionally not follow through in order to get people to accept poor customer service and still do business there. This is a real thing!
https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-is-customer-service-so-bad-because-its-profitable
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I think the funniest things CSRs do is tell you they can’t fix issues until you’re off the phone/chat. It just makes me laugh for some reason. Like, I know from experience they’re just going to wait until I log off/hang up and then immediately do the opposite with zero consequences. “Sir, we can see the buyer isn’t cooperating – we can close the case and refund you the money right after this call”, then you hang up and immediately the case is sided with the buyer and the option to chat with eBay gets removed. Now that’s awesome. I guess the CSRs can also click a button that says “Block this seller from contacting help for X hours” and it just removes the button entire to get help. Even if you have the direct link to start a chat it immediately errors out and says help is offline.
By far, the best lie I was told is that a CSR couldn’t close a return because it had to be done on a special computer at eBay HQ in the last 10 seconds the return was open.
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I have never heard a customer representative from any other company tell me that other representatives at that same company were wrong and gave me false information. With ebay it is routine. About half the issues I call about more than once I am told I got bad information from them.
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