There are many articles scattered around the interweb with regards to eBay's policies favoring buyers rather than sellers. From personal experience, I have experienced the grasp of eBay's inequitable eBay Money Back Guarantee and the laughable Seller Protection Policy many times. terms like: Return Requested, Payment Reversal, New Significantly Not as Described Dispute, Your Dispute Has Been Escalated to a Claim are all part of another crappy day in the office.
This article was inspired when recently a buyer purchased a phone from me. The phone had a value of around $85. I shipped the phone to the buyer with valid USPS tracking. The USPS tracking stated the package arrived at the buyers address. The buyer then opened a dispute with eBay stated they did not receive the item. Under eBay's eBay Money Back Guarantee, the buyer did not get the item they purchased, so the balance was removed from my PayPal account as a result and the buyer was refunded. I lost not only the amount for the phone, but also the phone itself. Crazy right? As USPS stated the package arrived, I could not file a dispute with them to claim my money back. All was lost!
The tips in this article will enable you to protect yourself better on eBay. These are things I have put together from hours of frustrating support calls, hundreds of returns and thousands of messages with "buyers".
NOTE: Most of this article assumes that the buyer is being unjust. It is assumed you have analysed them and pegged them for somebody trying to pull the wool over your eyes. I don't want to have to write this in every paragraph, so I will put it here. Your judgement is yours an yours alone.
Handling an unjust dispute
PRO TIP: An eBay dispute from a buyer cannot exist in eBay AND PayPal. If the buyer opens a case in Paypal, ALL eBays cases will automatically close-out (Even if the case has already been opened in the eBay Resolution Center - not matter what the status is!). PayPal will ALWAYS have the final say in this instance. If somehow the case exists in both places (There is a slight bug where this can happen), PayPal will process ALL refunds and returns. eBay may tell you that YOU issued a refund, however, it is really PayPal doing this on your behalf.
Avoid paying for return shipping
- Try and get the buyer to open a dispute via PayPal. This way, the buyer will HAVE to pay for the return shipping as part of the PayPal Purchase Protection for Buyers policy. If the return is handled through eBay, you will be lumped with the cost of the buyer returning the item to you. You'll find that scammers, nonchalant-greedy-folk and generic assholes get impatient very fast when multiple message exchanges. Offering them to open a dispute in PayPal is usually quite easy to do. The entire dispute will then be MOVED over to PayPal.
Didn't get your item back?
If the wrong item is returned, or, an empty box is returned:
- You will either need to go to the police station and get an incident report within 10 days. Expect to wait a long time to see your compensation.
OR
- Print out an affidavit and get it notorized by a notary. Within 10 days. Most banks offer a free notary service. Expect to wait a long time to see your compensation.
Getting negative feedback removed
Over a decade ago, it used to be fairy easily to get feedback removed. You would just have to call eBay Customer Service, whine at them for 5-10 minutes, then the feedback magically disappears! Hooray! Today, however, it is very hard to achieve this. Any negative feedback MUST fall inside the rules of the eBay Feedback Extortion Policy. Also introduced around the same time, sellers could no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. This gives the buyer a notion that they -almost- have nothing to lose (In terms of feedback reputation on eBay). A buyer can call you names in messages, tell you everything they apparently did with your mother last night, use profane language and still leave VALID negative feedback. This doesn't leave us much wiggle room to get feedback removed, but we will cover everything we can here...
PRO TIP: eBay secretly keeps track of 'user behaviour' patterns for many things. The list includes and is not limited to: Unreasonable demands, inappropriate feedback, abused a buyer protection program, misused returns and foul and offensive language. Example: If a buyer opens 3 returns sequentially, they will receive an email stating that they are conducting irregular buying habits (Basically, eBay thinks they are trying to rip people off and puts them on close watch). We can use this to our advantage in this section.
Let's be honest, the Feedback extortion policy is crap. If there is something seriously wrong with what the buyer is doing, yes, the feedback can be removed. (I.e. The buyer is threatening to leave negative feedback if you do not ship them extra things not included in the listing). I will not cover these circumstances here.
Profanity - eBay will remove ALL negative feedback that CONTAINS profanity. The profanity HAS to be within the feedback itself. If you know the buyer will soon leave negative feedback, get them to use profane language in message exchanges. I recommend waiting hours to reply and being short with your messages. I cannot teach you to be a pain in the ass, but imagine what might be annoying. If the user has been flagged for profanity previously (See PRO TIP above), use the "Report a buyer" feature and report them for profane language.
Threats - It used to be that if the buyer threatened to leave negative feedback, then this was grounds to get the feedback removed. It's a little more intricate these days because to get feedback removed, they have to threaten you in a -certain- way (The feedback removal qualifying way they threaten you depends on the person you speak to when you call eBay and ask them to remove the feedback - It really does! - It's worth hanging up and calling back sometimes). A good way to get a buyer to make negative feedback threats is to end your messages with "I hope you leave me good feedback" after giving them no help at all.
Report a Buyer - You can report a buyer for many things. The "Report a buyer" page allows you to report a buyer for each of the following categories: Unreasonable demands, inappropriate feedback, abused a buyer protection program, misused returns and foul and offensive language. Reading the PRO TIP above, it's a good idea to report them for each and every category. eBay allows you to do this. If they have a prior flag with eBay, your report may lead to feedback removal. It had happened to me twice so far.
Requesting a Feedback revision - This one involves a lot of butt licking, and to be honest, rarely works. It involves grovelling to the buyer, selling your soul to them, then submitting a "Requesting a Feedback revision". Only do this if you have no morals and no pride.
How to get buyers to change their tune
You all know that feeling when a buyer messages you and you get a good idea of where the road will lead after this. The message may read something simple like this: "Item doesn't work, I demand a refund! NOT HAPPY!". A few messages later, you're on a slippery road to negative feedback and a lighter wallet. It seems like you cannot change the attitude of some people. Let's look at some tips to prevent this!
The ol' "I know your friend/neighbour!" - Recently, somebody bought an item from me and was probably one of the rudest, bigoted crap-fests I've ever had to deal with. People get away with this behaviour because they are using the internet. They do not see it as the real world. Of course, it's good idea is to send them a friendly reminder! It's very easy to place their address into Google. Websites like: zillow, redfin and spokeo provide home owner information. Pick somebody that lives down the street and say that you know them. A good conversation changer may start with something like: "I didn't realize, but do you know Bob Smith? I just noticed when handling this request that you live in Billingstown. He's my brother and he lives down the road from you. He says he knows you. Small world eh!?". 9 times out of 10, this will avoid negative feedback and get them to calm down. You can even make this more intricate and use Google Street View to describe things in their area and reminisce of good times!
Summary
Again, most of this article assumes that the buyer is being unjust. Take from it what you will. It's a not a bible nor a manifesto. I hope that it will help eBay sellers who have been treated unfairly under the eBay Seller Protection Policy.
If you would like a last laugh, read the eBay Seller Protection Policy and try to keep a straight face! :)
Good tidings to all!