Auditing eBay

[aberwine]

I have two stores. The first one everything is fine. The other one has been a huge issue every month. To solve this issue they said I had to cancel the store and reopen. The cancelling of the store was an issue that still hasn’t been resolved 5 months later.

With the cancelling of the store I got “fined” $350.00. I called to have this removed as I did it on the phone, with customer service, under their direction and they guaranteed me I would not be fined. They agreed and told me to wait a few days and it would be refunded. After quite some time and having to call back a few times I finally get a credit of $280.00. I call back, a few days later the $280.00 is gone and replaced with $275.00. I call back, the $275.00 is replaced with $290.00. This keeps on going and going with us never crossing the $300.00 barrier, let alone getting to what is actually owed. I am not using exact numbers for the sake of simplicity.

Eventually, I gave up. At that time I was out just over $70.00 and decided I was so frustrated and angry with this every single day for months that it was worth it to let it slide. Now I am having the issues again. They charged me in February for March and in March for March. In January they overcharged me $80.45. I have called and emailed them about it repeatedly and they always say “give us a couple of days” and I never hear back. I am so frustrated. I just want to close this store and start over. Something is intrinsically wrong with it and with customer service. I use to think customer service was great, up until 6 months ago and since then it has just be absolutely appalling, for me at least.

Has anyone had any success getting a full accounting review of their invoices? Any ideas or suggestions?

I am premium, not anchor.

[sonia]

Wow – that sounds awful! The only small thing I can suggest is perhaps contacting the “ebay for business” folks on facebook. Sometimes they help with things that don’t get resolved via regular support.

[Jay]

We just get the invoices eBay sends. As Sonia says, the “ebay for business” folks on facebook are not the fastest but seem to give a good deep look at issues.

I also would stop cancelling and restarting stores. Sounds like you’re subscribing to the yearly subscription because its cheaper each month, so there will be a cancellation fee. eBay accounting wont change store to store.

–How do you know you’ve been overcharged? Curious specifically what numbers you’re comparing them against.
–What is the overcharge? Selling fees? Subscription level?
–What is “a full accounting review of their invoices”? The eBay invoice is very comprehensive listing every single charge for the month. What would you want it to look like?

[Ryanne]

What were the issues you were having that ebay would suggest canceling and then starting a store again?

[aberwine]

Hi everyone, thanks for the advice. Hopefully what I have written below will clarify.

To clarify, the issue seems to be with me being Canadian. So I have a yearly subscription, which I bought on ebay.com. I figured why not, my income in is USD, I sell only in USD, I have a USD bank account, I buy my gas groceries, etc, in the US. It is just easier. However, as a Canadian you are not supposed to do this. So basically, what they told me they were doing was and this is confusing, converting the amount that the fees would be into the Canadian amount, then charging that amount in USD and then converting it back to CAD. It is all terribly confusing and hard to figure out. For example, for a premium store in August they charged me $91.91CAD. After much complaining they reimbursed $23.38CAD on my September bill, but it was just listed as “invoice credit.” Aside: at this time they were not willing to bill me in USD, even though I am in my other store. This has since been corrected, but was, again, listed as a cancellation, though it was not.

So every invoice has a different “invoice credit” because all of my invoices from day one have been wrong. I just want someone to go back and review and correct my invoices so I have accounting that makes sense. I want it stated exactly what these “invoice credits” are for.

I will try facebook. It never occurred to me because I do not use facebook. Hopefully that will get me somewhere.

Thanks again!

[Jay]

So then issue is the conversion rate from USD to Canadian dollars? Do you know what conversion they use (there are several).

Can you give an example of what they’re charging and what you expect?

[aberwine]

I am going to use some fake math to try to explain this. It is so convoluted.

For some reason ebay.ca does not have set fees in Canadian. They are always converted from US fees. So in my case they were doing this thing where the US store fee of $50USD was converted to the Canadian equivalent of $60CAD. They would then mix them up and that would become $60USD, which they would again convert into CAD, so I would actually be charged $70USD for the store. I know it is hard to follow because it makes no sense.

The other issue is that Canadians are charged 15% tax on their invoices. I can never get this reimbursed because it is so hard to explain this concept to customer service. So with that $350.00 fine I have never been able to recoup the full amount or the $52.50 tax.

Seeing how convoluted this all is may explain why I want my past invoices fixed. I may be losing even more money than I originally thought.

[Ryanne]

ah, i see. that would be cause for me to cancel if they told me to as well. how annoying!

[Author]

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