Advice from ebay sellers please!

[philmassive]

I have sold a few bits and pieces on ebay over the years, just things that I have had that I thought I could make a little bit on - no major business or anything like that.

Anyway before Christmas I sold a few old ornaments that I had had and posted them all off wrapped in copious amounts of bubble wrap. To cut a long story short I had one buyer come back to me to say that his item was damaged (a leg had broken off) and it was due to my poor wrapping and he wanted a refund.

I replied to say that my wrapping had not been poor but of course I would give a refund to him if he sent the broken item back. This was agreed - so far no item and this was well before Christmas but he has now put in a complaint about me to ebay and they are trying to take the refund out of my paypal account to give to him!

Is this normal or indeed legal? I have replied to a standard email from ebay saying that I'm waiting for the item to be returned before issuing the refund.

I feel a bit like I smell a rat about this too, as the buyer made out the item was for a Christmas present for a friend but when I looked at his 'for sale' items it looked like he was a ceramics dealer. Although I'll admit I could be reading too much into this!

Please let me know what you would do about this.

[lia66]

this happened to me too, sold a dolls house, buyer came back saying it was damaged it in transit, courier wouldn't take responsibility so ebay took the refund out if my paypal. Buyer never did send house back so she got the house for nothing with the tiniest piece missing that could easily be replaced.

Sellers don't have a leg to stand on these days it seems, sorry you're finding out the hard way.

If it happened again, I would empty my paypal account tbh so they couldn't just help themselves, especially if as in your case he's trying to pull a fast one.

[jacquiel]

Hopefully as you responded through the ebay complaint channel that he opened, he will have to return the item before they take the money.
However paypal and ebay are always on the side of the buyer.
I had an issue last christmas when I sent a package with 3 items in it. They said one was missing because the packaging was damaged and admitted they had received the other two. - Paypal took the money for all 3 out of my account...

[philmassive]

Wow, I am really shocked that they can do this - this could be a nice little money making scam for any fraudster.

My paypal account has no money in it and so is showing a minus figure. The problem I also have is that somewhere down the line dh's bank account has been associated with my paypal account and so they have taken money out of his account in the past too - when I search on my paypal account to remove his account details they are not on display anywhere.

This is making me think it would be alot easier to just not ebay.

[sarjw]

Im a very keen ebayer seller/buyer so I know how it feels when you get people trying to pull a fast one & rip you off lol.

What I would suggest is that you can make a claim with Royal mail so you can claim back your money through them as technically its there fault the items broken, as you say you wrapped the item really well. All you need to do is pop to your post office & ask them for a claim form, its quite straight forward to fill out, all you need is the certificate of posting that you get when you post items.

That way you wont lose out to much money.

Hth & Good luck :)

[classydiva]

Always ask for pictures of the damaged item, and ensure you actually pay your buyers the return postage via send money through PayPal.

However, why after seeing pictures you would want them to send back a broken item I am unsure.

Ceramics/breakables have to be sent special delivery if you want to be able to claim for damage in transit from Royal Mail. Sending via normal post is not sufficient as your item is not insured.