E-Bay............provide a free for all for the scammers.

right can i ask what happens if you do this.

I buy a used tool with free shipping, say a drill, i do the drilling i want clean it up again so it looks how it was, i say "hey this is faulty" and send it back at the sellers cost and get my money back.

seller gets it and goes "hey this works!!"


will ebay make me pay the postage or the cost of the item or, given sellers cant leave negative feedback iirc have i just discovered a free one week rental service?

will ebay
 
F ebay give up years ago. :rolleyes:

One example :-

Sold an item and the buyer returned it and got full refund 6 months later. The item had been clearly used for 6 months and the buyers excuse? Not as discribed, I gave up after then. Used to make good money too on the bay 10 years ago. ;)
 
Tefal said:
right can i ask what happens if you do this.

I buy a used tool with free shipping, say a drill, i do the drilling i want clean it up again so it looks how it was, i say "hey this is faulty" and send it back at the sellers cost and get my money back.

seller gets it and goes "hey this works!!"


will ebay make me pay the postage or the cost of the item or, given sellers cant leave negative feedback iirc have i just discovered a free one week rental service?

will ebay
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Yes its a free 1 week rental. All that happens is a black mark gets put against your account apparently.

Buy I can tell you the same happens if you open too many item not received cases, they just stop you from being able to open item not received cases. Leaving you free to still buy things and message sellers saying items have not arrived.

So I guess if too many sellers say you are lieing then you'll just be banned from managed returns.
 
horrorwood said:
Oh yeah this isnt the biggest problem for larger sellers... its the new defect system. It will come into effect on the 20th of August.

You are allowed 2% defects on your sales. What is considered a defect you ask?

ANY COMPLAINT AT ALL. Even if its beyond your control or incorrect.

Any return managed return which the customer says is faulty = defect.
Customer asks where an item is which automatically opens a case = defect.
Customer opens a case for any reason even if its resolved or the customers mistake = defect.
Customer leaves 1, 2 or 3 star rating = defect.
Neutral / Negative feedback (even if left in error and revised) = defect.

There is no appeal process and you lose top rated seller if you have more than 2% defects = 15% discount in fee's gone and lower search ranking.

I am sure the failure rate on new hard drives within the first year is more than 2%.
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Didn't know about this one. What happened between me and a seller recently would have been not good for the seller. I bought a Item on the bay and the seller stated 1st class delivery. Got a email the same day saying it had been dispatched. No tracking of course. I gave it a week and it still had not turned up. Clicked on the item I bought in my buying history down the bottom of the page, clicked on contact seller and then you have to choose what category you want to contact him under. I selected "I haven't received my item yet" and Ebay instantly opened a case!! That was not what I wanted. All I wanted was to contact the seller to let him know my item had not arrived. Apparrently that's what Ebay do now if it's over a certain time between buying and contacting the seller. This would have given him a black mark against him under these new rules which is not really fair. He sent me a replacement which I recieved two days later.
 
Since when do sellers pay returns?

No online retailer really does that....

Some do but vast majority you have to post it back yourself then retailer sends you replacement and covers that postage.

Ebay just keep taking a dump on sellers heads.... it's unbelievable. That is also going to cost sellers even more money on top of extortionate fees. I Really wish ebay would go bankrupt... **** company.
 
Seems like eBay are becoming more like Amazon, as in, a place for stores to sell through.

Most regular sellers aren't going to know or even realise that they should take high quality photos from all angles & writes down serial numbers in order to prevent being scammed.
 
I've experienced both sides of the coin recently so I have mixed feelings but I think they had to change and improve this rule.

As a buyer this is welcome becuase I've received goods that are nowhere near the condition described. I recently had an example of a very poor transaction where I won an auction for £13 (old console) described as 'mint' where what I received was covered in dirt, dents, scratches and didn't even power on at first. This was on top of the seller taking 3 weeks to get the item to me. There's little I can do and have lost out becuase it would cost me £6+ to return by signed-for delivery or if I attempt to sell on the item a future buyer might object to it no matter how honest I am in the advert description. Under the new rules I could have rightly returned the item at no cost to me. For these situations that is right.

But recently as a seller I've sold a limited edition videogame where the buyer asked for a refund becuase the included figurine had a broken arm (caused in transit). I had to suck up the £6.55 to get it back to me simply in the event the Royal Mail asked for the item in the subsequence compensation claim (which they did, although I received the price plus postage (£53.55) back as successful compensation from RM). The buyer didn't want to pay those costs to return the item and would clearly would have been difficult if I hadn't paid them, even if there was little he could do. The current rules in these circumstances encourage people to claim they never received the item simply to get their money back which is a dishonest option I could have used in my first example above.

I suspect sellers will try and build these costs into their prices but that's not always going to be successful. For me there's some things eBay should be doing ASAP about the listing to help:

1. Mandate a minimum number of words in the advert template, including suggestions for what to include: reason for selling, detailed descriptions of condition etc. A huge number of times I see adverts with barely any text or none at all, and whilst I might ignore you risk passing up a bargain. A lot of sellers don't actual know or bother to list items correctly.
2. Make the maximum postage limits realistic or remove them, i.e. a maximum limit of £3 for ALL video games is too vague and doesn't help those using signed-for delivery services. RM prices have really increased in the last few years and the limits aren't taking this into account and staying relevant. Again this is causing sellers to on-purposely list the item in the wrong category or choose a courier delivery option whilst sending the item the cheapest route. If you now pay a percentage of fees on postages now why don't eBay simply remove the limits?
3. The fees are far too high and I expect a managed service for the fees amounts. Including stepping in and actually paying for buyers to return items. They won't do this of course so the selling fees need to be drastically reduced. As most have already stated they are far, far too high for what service you receive.

Personally I think twice now about using eBay as a seller and for low value items don't bother using their service (instead using charity shops or forum sales etc.). I think this might further erode one of eBay original strength's and something they still advertise, namely the ability to land a bargain. Whilst I always think this has been far harder than claimed it's certainly going to become even harder.

Still I understand why it's critical for them not to ever lose the confidence of buyers.

Sorry for the long post!
 
Tephnos said:
Seems like eBay are becoming more like Amazon, as in, a place for stores to sell through.
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Exactly this, although Amazon is worse. Even as a private seller you have to accept returns for 30 days just because the buyer changed their minds, and you're heavily discouraged from making them pay to return it.
 
The bottom line is the risk of buyers playing silly buggers is a risk you take if you sell online, if you don't want to risk it put an ad in Gumtree or the local rag and take cash from the buyer when he comes to your door, or sell it at the local car boot. 99% of buyers are fine in my experience. Obviously some things are hot properties for the scammers, lightweight, portable, valuable items, smartphones are classic example. But not everything attracts scammers. Other things have a high return rate, clothes being one example, people buy them, try them on, find they don't fit, and want a refund.

MichaelAwkward said:
If people return items that aren't faulty/not as described, is there any way of charging them for the return postage? Or could you simply have a system of reimbursing postage if the items are indeed faulty/not as described?

If so, this seems like a good policy? :confused:
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In the past Business sellers have to pay for return post but private sellers were exempt, it sounds like they're extending it to private sellers as well.

kaka4200 said:
Thats why I always do my stuff with amazon :<
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How is Amazon any different? As far as I'm aware all sellers have to pay for return postage, always have. :confused:

Tephnos said:
Seems like eBay are becoming more like Amazon, as in, a place for stores to sell through.
Click to expand...

Thats basically it, yes. They would love to be just like any other online retailer and lose their "fleabay" image.
 
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diamount said:
But they will still be out of pocket until the item is returned, sounds like an expensive rental service.
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How is 0 cost (other than the effort of going to the PO) expensive?

If I rent a car I have to put a £250 deposit down until the car is returned, that doesn't mean the rental has cost me £250 ;)
 
From business perspective I understand why eBay system is skewed towards buyer not seller, there are more buyers than sellers and it's the buyer who provides money for the final fees. Additionally the sellers that eBay want are powersellers, volume sellers - not only because they sell a lot and often, thus generating income for the site, but they are able to swallow occasional unfair return or loss. So the system has to be geared towards majority of users leaving money on the site.

eBay has been very clear for years now that they no longer welcome the casual used item auction sellers and prefer high volume tat vendors. I used to be very against it, but with a business as large as eBay it is inevitable - small sellers with used items served as a single line description is not viable long term growing business model. From that perspective slowly becoming Amazon with better search options is the only way forward. Ultimately though, both formats are flawed and doomed, and it will take large enough entity to finish off both trading models. We will need something like
Yahoo Auctions to be reinstated before we are provided with proper used/second hand items trading platform and new management at Amazon to finally make that site properly searchable and taggable, cause at the moment you can't find anything in there, it's easier to use google to find amazon items than amazon's inbuilt search, so despite best delivery and often attractive price their profits will keep going down until that's fixed.
 
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Great, now I can buy stuff, decide I don't want it, break it, and post it back for free.

(I am infact not a scumbag and wouldn't do this, but wouldn't put it past some people)
 
Haggisman said:
How is 0 cost (other than the effort of going to the PO) expensive?

If I rent a car I have to put a £250 deposit down until the car is returned, that doesn't mean the rental has cost me £250 ;)
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My point is you will still be X amount down the hole until the item was arrived and the refund is processed.
 
I think the short answer is no, at least not at the amounts you can sell for on eBay.

Private Forums & Facebook groups are two other options.
 
As a seller, gulp! Can imagine scammers laughing at this.

As a buyer, great! I had to pay £6 to return a pair of fake sunglasses once which I didn't get reimbursed for - paypal just forced him to refund my payment and not any extra for return postage. Ridiculous that I had to foot the bill when he sold me fake goods (and described as real!)
 
pastymuncher said:
Didn't know about this one. What happened between me and a seller recently would have been not good for the seller. I bought a Item on the bay and the seller stated 1st class delivery. Got a email the same day saying it had been dispatched. No tracking of course. I gave it a week and it still had not turned up. Clicked on the item I bought in my buying history down the bottom of the page, clicked on contact seller and then you have to choose what category you want to contact him under. I selected "I haven't received my item yet" and Ebay instantly opened a case!! That was not what I wanted. All I wanted was to contact the seller to let him know my item had not arrived. Apparrently that's what Ebay do now if it's over a certain time between buying and contacting the seller. This would have given him a black mark against him under these new rules which is not really fair. He sent me a replacement which I recieved two days later.
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Yep that is exactly what happens. Most things you click when contacting a seller open's a case.

But now as a seller I have to say when a case has been opened I really do not feel like bending over backwards to help customers as the damage has already been done. Although I obviously still do help the customer as much as possible. But as you can only get 1 defect per transaction then once the case has been opened there really is no incentive to be nice to the customer.

Quite a few sellers on the ebay forums pointed this out too.

Maybe eBay's solution will be to just give us more defects, thanks!

There are also low volume sellers that get their last 12 months transactions (instead of the last 3 months) looked at when being rated. Previously eBay told you to tell customers to open item not received cases so that they could keep track of them, now they are counted against the low volume sellers as defects. Nice!
 
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