I have been a eBay/paypal user in Canada since 04 first a seller then after I closed my business in 08 I now use eBay as a buyer.
Over the years I have seen many changes to eBay most of them bad as they now dictate to the seller many things such as selling practices which are opposite to what they tought in the early days, although some of these changes have been positive they continue to ignore the BS buyer/seller protection scam.
In the early days it was cut & dry a simple set of rules would determine if paypal would screw the buyer or the seller, but today with their shortened time lines & proof requirements in the most they are now in favor of the seller.
Ebay is quite aware that many sellers use eBay to dump garbage or defective items that are not as listed, thus by continuously refusing to address this issue eBay / paypal are aiding & abetting the committing of fraud.
The problem has been mentioned on this board back as far as 2006 yet they continue to aid those who profit from scamming buyers.
I have been ripped off by paypal several times as a buyer, once for $400. For a generator I bought from a Canadian web site offering paypal, I bought a generator that was listed as north American safety approved (which it was not ) it also arrived with broken parts & the seller had under insured it @ $100.00, the seller did not want to refund me or cover the cost to repair it & paypal told me to go blow because it was not an eBay purchase & I also made the mistake of paying for it from my bank account so I had no recourse.
Next was a eBay purchase of a spice rack with spices I bought from a US seller, first the seller shipped it then told me the shipping came to $17.00 more I paid it being the honest person I am, then the Item arrived dented & damaged because the seller shipped it in its original shelf display box just wrapped in brown paper. After contacting the seller he called me a scammer, paypal offered me my money back but only after I paid to return his damaged goods at my expense $60.00 return shipping to get $80.00 back, I kept the spices & threw the rack in the garbage. Why should the buyer have to pay when the seller screws up ?
This it a deterrent bad sellers count on to profit.
Back in June of this year I bought a power inverter from a china seller, I buy from china a lot of the time with out problems & most sellers will remedy the situation by sending out another items if one is defective.
I receive the power inverter after 6 weeks a little long but not excessively long for regular mail registered parcel, so the item does not work, I contacted the seller & got the run around for 2 weeks I then opened a paypal dispute because it was near the time limit so I stated that I was currently in the process of trying to resolve it with the seller(I did not escalate it to a claim & was told I would receive a notice from paypal before the case closed) then the seller sent out a replacement unit to which I paid the additional shipping of $10.00 another 4 weeks to arrive & the replacement is defective also doing the same thing as the first one, the seller is trying to sluff me off now, I checked the status of the dispute & it now said " differed" I check it a couple days later it now says "closed" yet I received no prior notice to it closing as paypal indicated I would.
The issues are these #1 implementing a buyer protection policy that will not require the buyer to pay for the return of the goods when the seller is in the wrong while protecting the seller from scamming buyers making false claims to get free goods.
#2 allowing longer time lines for international purchase disputes.
For #1 paypal will need to hire forwarding services like DHL or UPS in each country to collect items & ship them to a central location @ paypal so when a buyer wins a claim paypal issues a pre paid return shipping label for the buyer to ship the goods along with an explanation of the problem to paypal, once the goods arrive @ paypal the buyer receives a full refund, then paypal asks the seller if they would like to pay to have the goods returned or abandon the goods. Abandoned goods are collected & auctioned off as is with a description of the complaint about the item, this money pays for the cost to implement the program, it will take away any advantage a buyer may gain by making a false claim as the buyer does not keep the goods & it will weed out bad sellers as they will loose money if they don't check & properly package orders before shipping them out.
#2 eBay/paypal needs to extend the time to file a dispute to 90 days for international purchases & 6 months to escalate to a claim
Now that they have the answers lets see if they will ever do anything about it, my guess is it will take a few more law suits to motivate them, as their is more to profit cutting the grass on both sides of the fence when you sell the gas for the lawn mower.
Thanks, Roger
