eBay Sellers Beware - This Scam Happened to me
The eBay Buyers Protection Policy is allowing dishonest buyers to get a refund on your item without returning it. Always insist on 'cash on collection' for large items that are 'buyer collect only'.
The Scam.......Your buyer pays by PayPal for a large item which they collect. At anytime up to 30 days after receipt they can request to return the item for the reason 'it is not as described'.
Their aim is not to actually return the item but to have the item and to have their payment too. Once they have requested to return the item your PayPal payment will be frozen and will eventually be refunded to the buyer (if you have already withdrawn the PayPal payment it will be debited from your affiliated bank account, or if you have no affiliated bank account, eBay will refund the buyer and the amount will sit as a debt on your PayPal account).
EBay will then give you a period of time to resolve the buyers problem, but at no time will they expect the buyer to produce any evidence of their issue and if there has been no progress regarding the return request by the end of the period they will arbitrarily rule in the buyers favour regardless of how unreasonable it may be. As eBay have found in the buyers favour they will insist that the cost of the return must be born by you, the seller.
At the time of the Returns Request the buyer will have ticked a box requesting 'Courier Collection only' (even if it was sold as a buyer collect only item), making the collection so prohibitively expensive that most sellers will 'write off the item' meaning that the buyer will get the item and a refund.
If you decide to 'suck up' the cost of collecting the item, it will need to be done within a time frame stipulated by eBay and if it is not collected in that time, the refund is issued by eBay automatically to the buyer and they have no obligation to return the item. So, buyers planning on getting the item for free will just obstruct any collection attempts by the seller. Ebay are not interested in how hard you have worked to try to collect the item or how obstructive the buyer has been. When the collection time frame has expired it is 'game over'. You have no money and no returned item. To add insult to injury, eBay will slap you with an eBay charge because the buyer has used the eBay resolution centre to enforce this scam.
Please pass this on to any potential eBay sellers!
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*eBay Sellers Beware*
10 replies
ShazzyLouise · 13/02/2016 09:00
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