Abusive Buyer

[newlook87]

My wife is pretty shaken from an interaction with an extremely abusive buyer.

I had heard that we should never sell any items of value on eBay, but we took the chance and here's what happened...

We accepted an offer for a new luxury item. Two days after the buyer received the base, sent my wife a PM, stating she was scared of losing her job and could she return the bag? 

We don't accept returns, particularly for items where scams are known to be common, so we politely responded, stating that we sympathize with the buyer, but could not accept a return. We upheld our end of the bargain, delivered exactly as promised, have a 100% rating, etc.

Within minutes, the buyer launched a series of verbally abusive messages, threats, attacks and lastly, a pornographic image of herself. The messages are far too vulgar for me to post here. And within 5 minutes of our message, we also had our first negative review, which we've been trying to get overturned. 

So far, eBay's response direct quote is:

"I know that sometimes some buyers we have on eBay can be upset and use hurtful language. As part of this business we should always know how to understand and make sure we resolve our issues with our buyers. We appreciate your effort on doing the best that you can as a seller. And I hope you get this resolved without the buyer asking eBay to step in."

I've provided direct transcripts of the conversation, where we kept our cool the whole time, despite an immediate barrage of abusive language, review extortion and personal attacks.

eBay actually told us to stop communicating with the buyer and just deny the return, so we thought eBay was seeing our side and would remove the review. Nope.

I thought eBay would be sympathetic, but such has not been the case.

Is this pretty much normal for what sellers should have to endure to sell on this platform? 

I'm hoping someone from eBay will see this message and help us out. So far, I've lost a lot of confidence that this is a safe environment to conduct commerce.

[snoopwiz]

I am sorry you had to endure that.  There is not a neg showing on this account of yours now.  Is it from a different sellers account or was it removed?

[femmefan1946]

The buyer was a little over the top. To be as polite as possible.

First.

No returns does NOT mean no refunds.

In a way, her nutty response was a Good Thing, because it means she was too hysterical to open a Dispute.

Keep those messages. If she takes her meds and manages to open a Dispute, you may find them useful.

Now I'm going to assume you have Blocked her and since you have her email from her Paypal payment (look under the refund link) Block that too. Neither of you need the stress.

Because there was a transaction, you can Block future transactions, but you can't Block future messages.

Ugh.

This is where the Delete button comes in.

Every time you see her ID, you Delete the message.

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

Eventually she will give in and go away.

Oh.

The Block is supposed to also block other IDs at the same address. It doesn't work perfectly. But if one gets through, you can report it to eBay as an attempt to get through the existing Block.

Best wishes.

[newlook87]

Different account (my wife's)

[newlook87]

She did open a case and based, which we won. But, eBay customer service left a lot to be desired and effectively told us that we should have worked it out with the buyer, instead of bothering them.

We received one message (bot?) after another effectively blaming us for letting the situation get so out of hand.

I'd have to assume we were "speaking" with a bot, because it's hard to imagine an actual human could be so dense.

In short, learned lots about eBay "customer service". Very wary of this platform after the interaction. Had been gradually ramping up activities here the past few months, but this experience was a stark reminder that I need to commit more efforts to other selling channels. 

Out of the whole experience, I'd rate eBay's response worse than the customer's abuse. Simply deplorable and demonstrated a complete lack of ethics.

[retroman_studios]

I realize that your first response might be to delete any further messages, but if such messages are abusive etc., they are best reported to eBay. I can't speak to eBay's requirements, but if enough evidence mounts they may consider revoking membership for that member.

As far as feedback goes, feedback is merely an "opinion". Although, one exception to that rule is if the feedback itself contains graphic language, racial connotations etc. So that's another avenue you can go down if you feel that the feedback doesn't meet with community guidelines.

If you feel like you want to, you could leave a calm reply to her negative feedback. But be careful to be very calm, keep it to the point and factual.

One other thing, since she has been denied an eBay return, she may try and open a PayPal case for a refund. In which case she will be required to return the item at her expense. So keep an eye out for that. Technically she has 180 days to open a PayPal case. I'm not trying to further upset you, just inform you so you are prepared if she makes trouble again.

I would hold off selling anything too high value at the moment, people's emotions can get quite intense.

On the positive side of things, you can be glad you aren't that poor retailer in the USA who had to throw away $35,000 worth of foodstuffs after a customer deliberately coughed on several areas in the store, possibly infecting/rendering them unclean.

[a52split]

---

@femmefan1946 wrote:

 and since you have her email from her Paypal payment (look under the refund link) Block that too.

---

Can you elaborate on this?  I'm aware of blocking in ebay.  Is there a way to double block in Paypal too?

PS. you had another question in a topic that was just locked.

I had two very fast shipments recently during the current plague.

The first was one I sent from Blaine WA on Mar 9.  It was delivered in Missouri 49 hours later.

I dropped a package in a red box in the Vancouver area on Mar 20 (pm). It was delivered to a city outside Portland OR in a total of 5 days.  The normal time is 10 days, the previous record was 7 days.

I think the volume of mail arriving in SF from the far east has likely dropped to a trickle, so anything that arrives from here gets tossed into the system without delay.

[pjcdn2005]

Can you elaborate on this? I'm aware of blocking in ebay. Is there a way to double block in Paypal too?

Femme was referring to blocking the email address. That wouldn't block PP transactions, it would only affect someone who wanted to send a message directly from their email to yours.