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Hi Fred, thanks for your comments. My wife and I are currently very small Ebay sellers and I’m putting this “experience” in the rear view mirror. I generally take the approach you describe (i.e. refund immediately and pay the shipping). That seems to work pretty well. Our combined sales on Amazon/Ebay are about 2500 units and we have (or had until this ‘person’ dings us) a 100% rating on both platforms.
This one sucked because we are just getting our toes back in the Ebay waters (less than 100 listings, originally joined in 1998) and this scam cost us $208 (yes Ebay did force us to pay the shipping to Japan) so it wiped out almost 50% of our Ebay sales for the month.
Last, I stand by all my findings in my above posts regarding Ebay’s relationship with the selling community. Perhaps a good thrashing in Federal court will make Ebay become more seller friendly. Time will tell.
Fair enough…’tearing the bandaid off’. Did I survive… still typing … conclusion ‘Yes’.
Why did this one bother me so much… fear. My wife and I spent a tremendous amount of time and money on Amazon over the last two years, reinventing our business plan as Amazon continually shifted. Finally along came the LTSF and no single item storage exemption and our Amazon FBA plan got trashed.
Next step… Plan G (Plans A-F were used on Amazon)… try selling on Ebay only to have the above issue happen within our first two dozen sales.
Next next step… research is this just a one off case … hmmm 2700+ official consumer complaints and multiple Federal judges siding against Ebay … nope, not just me. Ebay has a real problem. Is Ebay’s problem a game ender for our business plan… no.
Result… Plan H… continue selling on Ebay but do not sell higher ticket items to new buyers or those with a 0 rating even if it means my account gets dingged for occasionally cancelling a sale.
Really, Jay !?!… “Take your toys and go home” is not really a productive comment… that said…
When companies like Amazon/Ebay change their policies it can have a dramatic impact on sellers. Take FBA LTSF as an example. The LTSF was a killer for people who specialize in single long tail items. Lots of Amazon sellers (especially media sellers) left Amazon (or at least FBA) simply because of that single policy change.
So has something changed at Ebay since I was last involved with Ebay a few years ago. Yes. Ebay has clearly changed their INAD policy. This is having an impact. Check out the Consumer Affairs website, over 2700 complaints against Ebay, Ebay is rated a lowly 1 out of 5 stars, and many/most of the recent cases are the exact issue I’m reporting. In short, the complaints are pouring in from Ebay sellers. Also on the Ebay website there are numerous threads with plenty of Ebay sellers all complaining about this same issue. So this isn’t just me complaining, this is thousands of sellers who are tired of being taken advantage of by predatory buyers and ebay policies that make sellers 100% responsible for the cost of the buyer’s mistake/crime.
Need more proof, multiple federal judges have now sided with sellers against Ebay and are allowing class action lawsuits to proceed. In short, even though Ebay policy prevents sellers from joining a class action lawsuit, the judges in multiple cases have found enough evidence to set aside Ebay’s Seller Agreement and proceed with the cases. Don’t believe me, google it for yourself. Ebay really needs to wake up. Why do they think OfferUp, Letgo, Bonanza, Swap, etc. are all springing up at the same time? Why have some categories seen their listings per week decline by as much as 50%? Clearly some buyers are “picking up their toys and going home.”
So what can be done to protect yourself? Unfortunately not much. My comments/learnings from this would be if a “0” rated buyer suddenly joins Ebay just to buy one of your more expensive items (especially something easily translatable into cash) I would consider cancelling the order.
P.S. Last, snarkiness aside (or perhaps sometimes because of it) my wife and I love your podcast.
Here’s the update… Ebay is taking the word of the “0” rated buyer over a seller with a 100% positive rating and 463 transactions. It was suggested that Ebay will at least pay for the shipping because we can’t do a label in Japan unfortunately is not true… Ebay is insisting we must provide the shipping label (cost of $65). Regarding it being possible to win a INAD case… maybe if you’re paying for a store… but for the small seller it’s in the 2016 Ebay policies. I’ve spoke to five different agents and they all say the same thing.
I surfed and found a lot of recent sellers complaining that they used to have a fraction of their returns being called INAD. Now they say most of their returns specify INAD because it is a “get out of jail” free card for buyers. I went looking and found websites where “consumer advocates” were advising people to always use INAD when returning an item to Ebay. In short, the word is out, and I think this is something Ebay should address because this is completely unbalanced in favor of the buyer.
So with respect, I still feel the same way. Ebay does not offer any real seller protection given their current policies. I’m not allowed to block sellers with a low rating (say 5 or less) because, once again, Ebay is more interested in promoting new buyers than protecting established sellers.
I did find a website in England where sellers with blatant cases (like mine) were reported to the local paper. In each case after the press called Ebay and asked why they were siding against the seller Ebay reversed their decision. In short, Ebay knows they are screwing over the sellers but they won’t do anything about it unless it is made public.
I offered… they declined. It is clear they don’t want to resolve the issue. But again, Ebay says that does not factor into their decision.
The primary set in the listing sells for about $50-$70 on ebay and around $100 on Amazon. There were other partial sets in the lot which boosted the asking price of the listing to $125 pre shipping to Japan.
The problem is really with Ebay’s policy. If you Google “Ebay does not protect Sellers” there’s plenty of seller’s complaining. Lots of horror stories of people getting their merchandise swapped out during the return, or shady buyers removing a key item from a set and then returning it as “incomplete, not as described”.
The only way to stop this sort of thing is for Ebay to make reasonable changes to their policy and weight their judgements by all the facts. Otherwise they’ll keep losing sellers to other platforms where they are protected from predatory buyers.
