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I sell a lot of used vintage electronics and rarely have a problem. I sell probably a third of my electronics items as either untested or partially tested (powers on). There is demand for old electronics and some can sell for high dollar amounts.
Every once in a while, you will have an issue where something doesn’t work correctly. It could be damaged in transit. It might be user error. If it is a heavy item and/or I don’t have much invested in it, I just give a full refund and move on. If I suspect that the buyer is trying to scam me, then I’ll pay for return shipping and try to call their bluff. In either case, it’s a price of doing business. The profit I make on the other 95% of my electronics sales more than makes up for it.
Basically, I’m saying don’t give up on electronics just because you’ve had a return or two.
I had a similar situation. I listed a trucker hat for $25 and it sold in just a few minutes. Turned out it was worth around $250.
I was tempted to cancel the sale, but decided to honor the original transaction. If it had been worth $1000 or more, then I probably would have canceled the sale. I do thousands in sales a month, and 90% of the time I’m the one getting something for a dollar or two when it is worth 50 times as much. It is not worth the negative feedback and risking future sales for only $200 additional profit. If it had cost me a $1000 or more, then that’s a major error and I would feel compelled to cancel it.
On the bright side, that error made me realize that trucker hats could be worth much more than I originally realized. Since that time, I have doubled down on trucker hats and that category is now one of my biggest seller.
Update: I won. Well, technically, the buyer cancelled the case.
During its investigation, PayPal requested additional information on the transaction from the buyer, probably to verify his bogus story that he works at the international freight forwarding company where the item was delivered.
Of course, this could just be a temporary victory. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a credit card chargeback in the next few days. Hopefully, I’m more trouble than it’s worth and he will move on to an easier target to scam.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback. I probably could learn a lot from listing these, although I don’t really run into paper currency very often, so I’m not sure how often that knowledge would be useful. I do like the idea of tiered commission.
I’ve been amateur “appraising” items in the estate using my ebay app looking at sold listings, but they don’t really want to just sell things to me outright. They would rather do commission on the valuable stuff, and sell the rest in an estate sale. The old paper currency does have decent value, so it might be worth my time, but most of the other stuff doesn’t. For example, there were some 1980s gold-plated eyeglass readers. I guessed they are worth around $30. I had to explain that I would buy that at an estate sale if it was a dollar or two, but I’m not interested in selling it on commission, even at 50%.
Because it is family, and several heirs will split any proceeds, it definitely makes the arrangement more stressful. I’ll probably be guilted into selling stuff for a lower commission, though.
Yeah, I checked and am able to promote everything in my store. Must be a slow rollout.
The name on the shipping address is for the owner of the freight forwarding company and it included a reference number at the end which indicated who the item was being shipped to. The buyer is located in Korea and has a different name.
Normally with eBay, I would agree and just offer a return for a refund, but my understanding of PayPal policies is that they will still require the item to be returned before issuing the refund, even if I lose the case. If they just give a refund without forcing the customer to return the item, then I should be able to call and get refunded myself. From what I have read from others scammed by this company, they will return the item, but damage it.
Anyway, I called a PayPal rep the other day when this case was opened and explained the situation of the freight forwarding, and she advised that I have a good chance to win the case.
I guess this gives me a chance to better learn the PayPal dispute process and its policies in general.
I agree that parting it out is probably your best bet. Most people aren’t going to want to pay for shipping an old monitor, even if they want the computer and keyboard.
Well, as I suspected, the buyer opened a case. He entirely skipped any attempt at resolution with eBay and instead went straight to PayPal. He filed a case of “Item not as described – Missing items.”
We’ve sent some messages back and forth. The guy even had the gall to call me a scammer. Anyway, I’m basing my defense basically on the fact that this was clearly sent to an international freight forwarding company, which I proved with a link to the company’s website showing that is their address. The guy filing the claim also has a different name than the one that I shipped to. I talked to PayPal, and they confirmed the buyer is located in Korea. He is claiming he lives in the US and had the package delivered to his work address.
It’s been about a week and he keeps sending messages via the resolution center in PayPal, but so far he has not escalated the claim. It will close after 20 days automatically if he neither of us escalates it. Maybe he’s just trying to intimidate me into capitulating without a fight. I don’t know. I think I have a good case, but I realize these things are always heavily weighted in favor of the buyer. I sent a final message a few minutes ago, but now I’m going dark and going to see what happens from here.
I had a similar experience. The buyer opened a return case outside the return period. Whatever you do, DO NOT PRESS THE DECLINE RETURN BUTTON. I made that mistake and immediately the buyer left negative feedback, which I could not get removed. The rep told me as follows for future instances: You need to call eBay and ask them to close out the return because it is outside the return window. The buyer then will not be allowed to leave any feedback. Sounds like you had a bad eBay rep on the first call. Try again and gently tell them you want this return closed out because it is outside the 30 day window.
Hope that helps.
I for one have never searched someone’s ebay store using the categories they created. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve ever searched a specific eBay category for all the listings that show up. I imagine most people search ebay like they would on Google, just by entering the key search terms.
In my store, I don’t bother with store categories. It seems like a waste of time. Does anyone feel that the store categories are helpful?
The item was purchased by an individual (with a REF# after the name), but the address is for the freight forwarding company. So the person who contacted me is the actual “buyer,” although further research indicates he is the CEO of the company that does the freight forwarding.
I’ve had no problem with freight forwarding companies in the past, but my alarm bells started going off when I saw all the online threads describing very similar eBay scam situations. I don’t normally jump to call a company a scammer, but I think it looks likely in this situation. I could post the name of the company so others could research it and/or be aware if they see it on an order, but I wasn’t sure if that was okay on these threads or not.
Anyway, I doubt they want to keep the camera only. It looks like they normally bully sellers with the specter of negative feedback and then get a partial or full refund. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what they demand.
I’ll probably call their bluff and tell them to return the item. It was only in a padded flat rate, so I’d be willing to eat that cost just to see if they will actually return the charger, box, and cords. I have 99% positive feedback, so I suppose I can eat a negative, too, and maybe fight to have it removed.
If the shoes fit in a padded flat rate envelope, I always ship that method. Haven’t had a problem thus far. For nicer shoes such as those you linked to, I put one shoe in a plastic bag before putting it into the envelope to prevent the shoes from scuffing each other.
