Customer Support says to ship pay returnshipping yourself then ebay will refund you - but they won't

[burpingjellyfish]

So I had a terrible case of ebay customer support gone wrong.

I purchased an item from a seller which turned out to be defective.

The seller refused to refund unless the item was shipped back, and the seller refused to pay for return postage.

Upon calling ebay support, they said "pay for the shipping, keep a copy of the receipt and ebay will refund you the cost from the sellers acount". I asked, "are you sure? the cost of shipping is more than the cost of the item". They said "yes, just keep a copy of the receipt as proof".

Later when the seller finally refunded me the original item cost, they did not refund me the return shipping cost. I called ebay support and this time the answer was "they shouldn't have told you to pay for return shipping, sorry we made the mistake but you're stuck with the bill now and there's nothing we can do about it, even though we told you to do that and our customer support staff made the mistake, ebay will not compensate you for our mistake, there's no way for us to compensate you for our mistake". How is it possible in this day and age that a company has no way to escalate the issue and no way to compensate some one for their mistakes?

How is a company able to take no responsibility what so ever for the actions of their employees?

[femmefan1946]

The seller refused to refund unless the item was shipped back, and the seller refused to pay for return postage.

Because the customer service clerks are not their employees? Is it possible that these calls are not just outsourced to Utah and to the Phillippines, but also to third party companies?

Just a guess on my part.

FWIW- sorta in defense of the seller, if he was not in Canada, he cannot send you a return shipping label. EBay seems unaware that the MBG 'seller pays return shipping' policy can only work in the USA, since no one in the USA can buy return postal  labels for another country's postal service*.

What it comes down to is that anyone buying outside Canada should have a Plan B in mind for unusable goods. Whether it is a sweater that is green instead of red as ordered or a counterfeit thumbdrive or a broken vase, the buyer has to decide whether to return, taking a chance on the seller reimbursing the return shipping cost, or keep for resale, or leave negative feedback and move on.

The first step is always to contact the seller and try for an amicable settlement.

*Nor for couriers like UPS or FedEx.

[sylviebee]

I think that this is a good lesson for buyers who want to return items not as described.

Thank you for posting.

The current deal is that sellers pay return shipping.

The lesson:  Make sure that you have the funds for return shipping from the seller or eBay before shipping back.

[burpingjellyfish]

actually the lesson learned is

1) always pay by creditcard and just do creditcard charge backs and don't involve ebay as they won't do anything.

2) don't believe anything ebay customer support says because it can be wrong and wildly wrong and they won't stand behind what they say and tell you to do. Ebay won't have your back no matter what, even if ebay screws up.

[dmil8030]

Hello 'burpingjellyfish', 

<< always pay by creditcard and just do creditcard charge backs . . .>>

Are you suggesting that a credit card company will simply refund your money for the asking?  That is not my understanding 

of it but your experience may be different from mine.  Card companies are generally much sticker than ebay/paypal, and 

will require proof of return postage  if the seller wants the item back, -- and card companies, to my knowledge, do not have 

any type of "seller pays return shipping" policy.  Meaning that you would be exactly where you are now anyway had you 

gone that route.  

<< don't believe anything ebay customer support says because it can be wrong and wildly wrong and they won't stand

behind what they say >>

*laffs*    You are not the first person to point this out.  Around the boards it seems to be pretty much accepted that 

ebay's telephone 'Customer Service' staff tell people what they want to hear and then move on to the next call.  

When we hear of the $Billions that ebay makes, it has me think that some of the $$ would be wisely spent on better 

training for the telephone workers.   Just about every day there is someone on the boards describing the appalling 

misinformation received over the phone from ebay.  The cynical part of me suspects this is one of the reasons that ebay 

cut the email to Customer Service option.  If you'd had that story in writing you could more freely waive it around.

The way it stands now, you have only your burning indignation.  

As the others have stated, when shopping on ebay the buyer needs to carefully consider what the real options might be 

if there is a problem.  Currently, since there really seems to be no way to extact an international shipping fee from a 

seller, buyers need to ask themselves how much they are willing to gamble.  Anyone who does much buying on ebay 

has lost money for one reason or other.  

I am sorry this happened to you, especially as the company who claimed to protect you -- didn't.