EBay advice: what if buyer fails to return item after you give a refund?

[LKSC]

Thought to ask what people think. About 2 months ago I sold a spare Rolleiflex door on ebay. Buyer, in China, pointed out a defect with it I had not noticed. It came as a surprise, but I promptly gave a full refund, apologized for missing it in the description, and asked that item be returned. Buyer has not replied in 7 weeks to follow up messages about returning the item. He does not appear active on ebay now. What can be done/ what would you do? Because it's more than a month since the transaction i can't open a case with ebay.

 

[p.giannakis]

Typical scamming behaviour. Others might give you a more valid opinion but I don't think there is much you can do now. In the future avoid these markets. Unfortunately eBay supports more the buyers than the sellers. If you can contact eBay and speak to someone in person rather than chatting you might get somewhere. On the other hand the seller might send you back a brick and there is nothing you can do.

 

[steveyork]

Don't refund until you get the return in hand. I doubt you'll ever get the item back. Treat it as a life lesson.

And always ship with tracking number, especially overseas. W/o a tracking number unscrupulous buyers will claim they never received it and you will have to refund. It has happened to me.

Both unscrupulous buyers and sellers on Ebay, many of them now, but policy favors the buyer.

 

[sepiareverb]

Agree with the above, you’re SOL.

 

[enasniearth]

You are being a good and honest person which is how eBay should work
Unfortunately not everyone deals in that manner.
I’m not sure what the Rollie door sold for however it could have been a much more valuable item.

 

[JeffS7444]

I don’t think you can do anything now, but next time, make sure you follow eBay guidelines carefully.

 

[twvancamp]

Echoing Pan, I would try calling eBay--they have been helpful resolving some issues for me in the past. That said, appealing, calling, appealing, etc. can eat up a bit of time so balance that against the cost of your loss.

 

[wjlapier]

Don't think eBay will never work for the seller. Even though in this case you as the seller should have required the buyer to start a return process. Once the door was in your hands you then would send the refund. I had a situation where I felt the buyer was trying to scam me. I contacted ebay and told them about the situation. They read through the communication I had with the buyer ( through ebay's system ) and sided with me. I was kinda stunned at first because I've read so much about how ebay is only there for buyers and not the sellers. Anyway, the buyer never responded to the last message when I told them that ebay had read our messages back and forth.

Lesson to learn--as a seller ask that the buyer return the "defect" product. If they ask for a partial refund make sure it's through ebay's system if you don't mind giving a partial refund. If you don't think you should give a partial refund the require the item be sent back to you ( through ebay's return system ) and THEN issue the refund.

 

[Viktor Sebastian]

This also just happened to me. eBay refunded the buyer as they complained and I didn’t get the messages as I was abroad. After 4 days they just refund the buyer no matter what. eBay doesn’t help at all. I have filed a police report but I am doubtful that anything will happen. Basically eBay enables theft and will never side with the seller.

Be prepared to loose anything you sell on eBay as the buyers have all the power. My advice is don’t sell anything that you arnt prepared to give away for free.

 

[taemo]

was the payment made through paypal?
if yes, you could try open a dispute with them.
if all through ebay, worth a shot and call them, else be prepared to accept losing that item.

and yes, dont refund until you have received the item back, hopefully your mistake wasnt too expensive

 

[B-9]

Have had a string of bad buyers on eBay in the past few months.

To my surprise. eBay sided with me (the seller).

Always best to wait for a return before refund.

Sorry you got ripped 🙁 seems like a trend these days.

Who is gonna give us a new auction platform! eBay is long in the tooth.

 

[LKSC]

Thanks for the shared experiences and suggestions. Yeah, will likely have to take this as a lesson. I had never needed to refund anyone on ebay before, and did not know the usual procedure was to wait for the item to be returned first. The buyer was quite aggressive in his messages, but I should have taken pause to consider the correct process, and not act out of goodwill. Payment and refund were all handled through paypal. I've been meaning to try and call ebay but I am in a different time zone, which makes it awkward.

 

[Emile de Leon]

Seems to me Ebay would side with you..as the "buyer" didn't provide tracking # w/signature confirm..
Opps..just noticed..time limit expired..

 

[Godfrey]

I had only one experience similar to this: I sold a camera to a buyer in TW and a week or two after they received it, they complained the lens wasn't the f/2.8 I mentioned, it was the f/2.9 version which they didn't want. It was a typo on my part ... however, right above the listing where I specified that, I had a picture of the lens with the information quite large and clear so it was pretty obvious that I just mistyped it.

I apologized for the mistake and offered to refund the purchase, but since they'd had the camera for a couple of weeks already and hadn't reported the issue already, I told them they had to pay the (rather expensive) return shipping. And that I would wait for the item to appear and be sure it was the same camera AND in the condition I sent it (I always document my sales with photos and such the same day I package them for a sale). They balked at that, wanted an IMMEDIATE refund, wanted me to pay for the return shipping too. I refused. They said they'd report me to EBay; I said go ahead. I then wrote to EBay with a transcript of the entire encounter appended, telling them I had the feeling this was a subtle scammer. EBay agreed and said they'd deal with the buyer if they made a report. I also reported it to PayPal so as to forestall a dispute ... they also agreed it was fishy and would stay on the lookout for it.

The camera was never returned, the buyer was blocked from EBay permanently, my account was never dinged, etc. Good ending for me, at least. Could have gone otherwise if I'd sent a refund too fast.

Always receive a return item before making the refund. I don't know of any business that would issue me a refund before receiving the return item, with the possible exception of a couple of businesses where I've done repeated transactions with the same person for years and years. Even then, I don't expect it.

G

 

[goamules]

The percentage of scamming buyers has gone from almost none 10 years ago, to about 1 in 4 today on Ebay, at least in the camera world. I had to quit selling, got tired of people saying a sparkling clear Leica lens had "fungus", or that something didn't work, when it did. It happened with 5 of my last 7 sales even when I write "not guaranteed to work". People still would say "I shipped it to my technician, and he says it has fungus" (I live in Arizona, no fungus here), or one guy with a Minolta 500mm mirror lens, "I opened it up and the dooflocky inside had been scratched....somebody has obviously been inside it". I answered, Yeah, you. I said send it back for a full refund. Then he whined that that cost too much, it wasn't worth it, why don't you give me $50 refund...blah. This on a lens that sold for about half the going rate already because I had to say "for parts, not guaranteed to work". Why did he win? Because I said "lens appears to be in excellent cosmetic condition". So he knew he had me, he could open it up, pull out a hidden part, scratch it or replace it with a worn one, and say "see! It's not as described!" After I refunded, I looked at his past purchases, he's an expert at that type of lens, and bought many of them over the months....

 

[taemo]

Thanks for the shared experiences and suggestions. Yeah, will likely have to take this as a lesson. I had never needed to refund anyone on ebay before, and did not know the usual procedure was to wait for the item to be returned first. The buyer was quite aggressive in his messages, but I should have taken pause to consider the correct process, and not act out of goodwill. Payment and refund were all handled through paypal. I've been meaning to try and call ebay but I am in a different time zone, which makes it awkward.

have you contacted paypal already?
ebay might still be worth a shot, even if it has been 7 weeks, from what I recall you have 45 days to open a dispute with paypal.

either way you should still call both ebay and paypal as you did your diligence on refunding the buyer but they failed on providing you a tracking # for the return item and have tried contacting the buyer multiple times.

to make you feel better, 10 years+ ago I accidentally mailed an xbox360 to someone for free as I failed to specify the courier for cash on delivery