Buyer Fraud.

[thecoinhunterca]

I currently have a case pending that I will shortly escalate. A buyer in Finland with 2 Feedbacks (one mine and one from another Canadian coin dealer) opened a non delivery case with both of us. Both of us shipped the items around the same time. As many Canadians, items were shipped light packet due to cost. I also specifically stated in the sales record (and also do so in my terms & conditions of every listing) that I would ship this particular item at the buyer's risk. Both items (mine and the other seller's) were in the $28.00 dollar range. After 20 days, the buyer opened a non receipt case stating he did not receive the coin (without prior contact). I responded to the buyer that the coin might be in customs so I'd like to wait 30 days and reminded him of my terms and conditions. He responded to me basically telling me good luck with that and to read EBay's terms and conditions and demanded a refund within a few days or he will escalate. At that point I decided to contact the other Canadian seller (got the name through the buyer feedback) and asked if this particular buyer also opened a case for his item. And what do you know. He did. So the buyer is obviously scamming. When I confronted him with the fact that he also did the same thing to another seller, he left me negative feedback. I called Ebay and they basically told me to take a hike and escalate the case when it's time. Are you saying Ebay should rule in the buyer's favour? I'll update this thread with the results of that exercise. I hope the Ebay staff has some common sense left.

[rose-dee]

I'm not convinced you can conclude the buyer is scamming, just an impatient person.  EBay unfortunately says he's entitled to open a case. 

I agree with you that there's a big chasm in the middle of eBay's INR policy that sellers will fall into every time.  However until eBay has some way (other than Delivery Confirmation) to validate a seller's position on delivery of an item, it has no choice but to side with the buyer and force a refund. 

My guess is that if you bite your tongue, act really friendly, and refund this buyer immediately, he might just agree to let you re-invoice him through Paypal so you can get paid if the item does finally show up (which I suspect it will).  It's worth a try, and is really your only recourse at this point.  Escalating this claim will unfortunately only result in your seller status being affected, for the sake of attempting to prove a point.  If you don't have DC, eBay doesn't care what the explanation for the buyer's claim might be.

[thecoinhunterca]

Did you even read above? The buyer has TWO feedbacks. He bought only TWO items with this account with in a day of each other. He opened TWO cases for non delivery. With TWO separate sellers.  What are the chances of that huh? I'll also repost what I posted in the other thread in response to Elmwood.

----------------------------

 If at least some of the sellers don't stand up to buyer fraud, nothing will ever change. For the very few items that I have lost shipping over the many years, I've usually provided refunds. I'm well versed in Ebay's policies and intricacies. This is an obvious exception. Secondly, the other seller that is involved with this buyer (also a case) has successfully won a case against this same buyer using a different account with similar circumstances. To assume and ALLOW automatic outcomes in cases and to just "write off" such as these without some sort of common sense prevailing is irresponsible and ultimately makes this market place come under even more criticism. Be it you or any other buyer or seller shouldn't take an attitude of "oh well" when being blatantly defrauded. Should we allow the practise of people stealing from a store while the security personnel watch on a camera and say "oh well"? Ebay has fiduciary responsibility to it's customers (that would be us) to make every effort in making the environment a safe one for both the buyers and the sellers. Automatic closing of cases based on a criteria of "buyer paid so we take his word" when there is evidence to the contrary breaches that responsibility. 

[therealco709]

I'm with you on this one, coinhunter.  I've had a number of problems with eBay & PayPal and the way they handle cases.  I had a case open against me stating that the buyer had not received the item, although he had sent me messages over eBay saying he did not want the item anymore.  He did not complain that the item was misrepresented in the auction (probably because it most definitely was not), but instead decided to claim through PayPal that he had not received the item.  At which point, I lost my item and my money even though I had provided the proof that he admitted he received the item.  I contacted PayPal after this fact, and they eventually gave me back my money.  It felt like a case of stupidity for whoever handled that case initially.

I feel like there is definitely an automatic assumption that the buyer is correct.  While it can be true in many cases, I don't think it should be automatic.  I would like to think that I am fair and represent my items exactly as they are.  If a buyer purchases an item, then gets buyers remorse, I don't think I should have to be responsible for that.

[fernsevern]

 "The buyer has TWO feedbacks. He bought only TWO items with this account with in a day of each other. He opened TWO cases for non delivery. With TWO separate sellers.  What are the chances of that huh?"

Unfortunately it does not matter what the odds are. eBay and Paypal will side with the buyer. They are obliged to by the terms of service plus if they did not the buyer if he paid via a credit card could do a charge back.

He could also easily argue, even though he does not have to, that both items which would have been delivered close in time may have gone missing at the same time...for example both being stolen by a dishonest postal employee or misplaced in the postal system. No disclaimer gets you around that. The seller is responsible for delivery. Altering those terms is not allowed.

I am not saying it is fair. I am just saying that is how it works.

[froogal_electronic_parts_and_overstock]

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@fernsevern wrote:

 "The buyer has TWO feedbacks. He bought only TWO items with this account with in a day of each other. He opened TWO cases for non delivery. With TWO separate sellers.  What are the chances of that huh?"

Unfortunately it does not matter what the odds are. eBay and Paypal will side with the buyer. They are obliged to by the terms of service plus if they did not the buyer if he paid via a credit card could do a charge back.

---

true. the only good news is the OP and the other may have 'taken one for the team'. If ebay deems this person is fraudulent and not impatient, they wlll ban that person. 

I personally know a buyer who is an honest buyer but was suspended on ebay due to too many ebay claims. 

The only issue I have is that with ebay's new  changes sellers are further penalized if they force an ebay claim when the ebay claim seems is a key factor in eliminating scammers. 

[pjcdn2005]

Do not escalate the claim. You will lose as you don't have tracking to prove the item was delivered, ebay will rule in the buyer's favour, refund their money and the claim will be considered unresolved by ebay and a defect on your account. If you have more than .3% of unresolved claims, you can lose your selling privileges on ebay.  If you refund on your own, you will still receive a defect because the claim was opened but it will not be an unresolved claim.

Both you and the other seller should use the report the buyer link as ebay may ban the buyer if they have to many claims.

http://pages.ebay.ca/sellerinformation/news/springupdate2014/sellerstandards.html

• Starting with the August 20 evaluation, to meet eBay's minimum standard, sellers can have up to a maximum 5% of transactions with one or more transaction defects over the most recent evaluation period. A maximum 2% will allow a seller to qualify as an eBay Top Rated Seller. The same requirements apply both to your Global and US seller performance standards.
• The defect rate won't affect your status until you have transactions with defects with at least 8 different buyers (at least 5 different buyers to impact Top Rated status) within your evaluation period.
• Just as today, sellers can have a maximum of 0.3% of eBay Money Back Guarantee or PayPal Purchase Protection closed cases without seller resolution over the most recent evaluation period. That means the buyer opened the case, you weren't able to resolve it, the buyer reached out to eBay or PayPal to review it, and eBay found you responsible.
• Just as today, sellers with 400 or more transactions over the past 3 months will be evaluated based on the past 3 months and sellers with fewer than 400 transactions will be evaluated based on the past 12 months.

[therealco709]

I don't understand this attitude.  Don't escalate the claim when the buyer is at fault.  Refunding automatically seems wrong.  It's like buying their positive feedback.  I try my hardest to earn my positive feedbacks.  But, I don't want to start handing out freebies and eating up shipping costs because people are taking advantage of the online sale system.  I think sellers should stand up to customers.  Most likely sellers are listing their products genuinely.  I don't know for sure.  I guess it depends on the scale of sales.  I don't generally sell large large quantities, so it doesn't happen too often to me, but on the occasions it did, I felt a buyer was trying to scam me by saying he didn't receive the item.  In the end, after PayPal sided with him, they eventually sided with me.  Which seems stupid. I think they refunded his money, then afterwards they refunded my money.  This tells me there are many discrepancies...  Most of which are the fault of PayPal or eBay for allowing buyers to abuse their services.

[therealco709]

One more thing that is terrible about this.  Sellers can't leave negative feedback.  Which makes no sense to me.  If someone doesn't pay, or if it takes them a long time to pay (ten days), or no communication.  The only option is to report them.  This does not let other sellers know that they rip people off.  Why would someone buy an item, then not pay for it?  Makes no sense to me, but happens from time to time.

[pjcdn2005]

I don't understand this attitude.  Don't escalate the claim when the buyer is at fault.  Refunding automatically seems wrong.

That is the way that ebay works.  If the item does not show as having being delivered the seller can escalate but they are going to lose the claim regardless. What point is there to escalating if the seller is still going to be out the money PLUS now with the spring updates, they are taking a chance that they may lose their selling privileges?  Loss is a part of business. I am sure that a brick and mortar store has more losses due to shoplifting and staff theft than the average ebayer has because of fraud.

Regarding your situation with Paypal refunding the buyer and then refunding you...I don't know the circumstances but generally if there is no delivery confirmation, the buyer wins.

[mr.elmwood]

AGAIN, I agree with PJ.

Loss is a very tiny, miniscule, part of business. Far less than B&M. It is not worth the fight simply to lose. Save your energies for a winable battle.

It is not about giving in, it is about not wasting your time and effort, to lose.

I give up. Ya wanna fight and lose, go ahead, fight and lose. Just, please, do not take your frustrations out on us because we choose not to fight.

[femmefan1946]

 I also specifically stated in the sales record (and also do so in my terms & conditions of every listing) that I would ship this particular item at the buyer's risk

So you specifically tell your customers that you have no protection against unwarranted claims of non-delivery? Sounds like an interesting business model.

Drop it. Honest buyers won't care and dishonest one will lick their chops.

And do work out how many bad transactions you have had in the past year or so. And what was the total value of those failed transactions including postage costs.

Then start self-insuring. This just means that you add a few pennies (based on that loss calculation) to every single listing as a premium against possible claims. You can do this for a lot less than a third party insurer, including Canada Post, because you know exactly how much loss you have had in the past and because you don't need to make a profit on insurance.

In my own auctions, these self-insurance premiums are very tiny. Literally a few pennies because my customers are readers, seamstresses, philatelists, postcard collectors and eBay merchants. A pretty honest bunch all of whom tend to read and understand listings. Other categories are much more dangerous/hostile/ entitled. 

[therealco709]

I still think sellers should be able to leave negative feedback for this type of situation.  I believe communication is key on eBay.  I communicate before I buy if there are any questions.  I communicate when I pay to confirm things, and I communicate afterwards, even if it is to tell them I loved the item.  I don't buy things, and not pay for them, or open non receipt claims, and not communicate with the seller beforehand.  These are general policies of life, not just eBay.  People are some ignorant, b'y.

[thecoinhunterca]

How exactly is the position of rolling and shutting up over obvious fraud ever going to improve the trading environment on Ebay? Be it a buyer or a seller. Would you give a buyer that got stiffed the same advice? "Oh suck it up Joey, keep buying until they ship". Seriously. Secondly, every case is different. I may win, I may lose, but at least I've objected to something that is clearly against policy and clearly a practise that should at least be investigated more closely by Ebay when warranted not dealt with through an "automatic decision". Ebay doesn't do it because of staffing cost so it plays the percentage game but that doesn't make it right. Similar ignorance of facts can be said for the rarely functional and/or enforced item complaint system (in my example related to coin copies which are forbidden to be listed under Ebay policy and the law, however they are rarely removed and the counterfeit coin market thrives on Ebay). Responsible corporate citizen????To come on here and provide advice in line with "you'll never win" is just false and irresponsible. Many sellers have won their fraud cases outside of the norm and that's because they said something. Ebay is a good market place that reaches many people, but it's legitimate users need to continue to speak up to make it better. Be it buyers or sellers.

[thecoinhunterca]

I think many of you miss the point here. I've been on Ebay for over 10 years. I'm well versed in it's processes. I've dealt with both Ebay and Paypal on numerous occasions and I've won and lost cases as a buyer and a seller. I'm well aware of the concept of losses in retail as I own a brick and mortar location and Ebay is just an extension of that (one of them). The concept of losses be it here or anywhere is an obvious one and a clearly understood by anyone in retail so no need reinvent it. But none of that is the point,  is it now? The point is that although loses are a part of business but one should  also deter those where possible. I don't dispute the fact that there are times that one must take a loss by virtue of no choice (maybe involuntarily is a better choice of words).. IMO, I don't believe that this would be one of those times. Even more so, I don't believe that the approach a few of you take here make one bit of sense. You participate in this market place, you should participate making it better and safer as well. Be it with Ebay or life in general.

[pjcdn2005]

In what way do you think that escalating the case will make ebay a safer place for sellers as compared to reporting the buyer through the user link and by phone?

[thecoinhunterca]

Excellent question PJ! So let me let you in on our experience (and by "our" I mean me and the other seller that's involved in this scenario).  We both complained about the buyer ( via the automated process), we both phoned Ebay and were told that they wouldn't do ANYTHING until the case was escalated. The offending account is still active, and the cases are still open. With respect to the latter comment, if things are objected to by enough people, believe it or not, things do change (agreeably much more slowly in the Ebay world). The objection here is that Ebay should be more diligently looking at cases that merit it rather than applying a cookie cutter formula which results in the "roll over" mentality exhibited by a few in this thread. I have a few ideas with respect to the shipping responsibility problem. Especially in Canada since it is currently the MOST expensive G20 country to ship in and out of. By a long shot at that.

[treasure.hunter.d]

Just my 2 cents worth but there were two too many flags to feel comfortable making this sale in the first place. The guy basically had no feedback and was overseas. You then further opened the door to get stung by shipping via a means with no tracking or confirmation of delivery. 

For what it's worth, i put my terms and conditions at the bottom of every one of my listings and basically no one every reads them and they are worth absolutely nothing. You can write whatever you want for terms and conditions and they aren't worth a hill of spit. It makes me feel like I'm doing my best to cover my butt by writing them there even though I know that in 99.9% of cases they won't help for squat.

My philosophy is that if you give someone, anyone, the chance they will burn you. All you can do is go by their past behavior, in this case feedback, and make a judgement call. In this case I think you chose poorly and got stung, really no offense intended as it happens to all of us at some point.

Hopefully you have learned from this experience and won't make the same mistakes again because, as time after time has shown, and the many posts on this forum have verified, you can't count on Ebay or PayPal to pull your behind out of the fire. EVER!

thD

[bb_cool_stuff]

Can understand the frustration & I know its no consolation, but it has happened to all of us.

I would encourage you & the other seller to Report The Buyer, just to let eBay know that a pattern, in regards to the buyer, could be forming.

eBay does take this behaviour very seriously.

[thecoinhunterca]

Look Treasure, h. It's not my first time at the rodeo. Nor is it the first time where I was faced with a refund scenario. I work hard to earn 100% feedback with over 130K of sales last year with only 1 neutral feedback to show for it.  I agree with you that it was a risky call, and to clarify I was the second seller so one good feedback from a Canadian buyer was already there (most reputable sellers will leave auto feedback on payment). It was a Scandinavian country where you rarely see delivery issues. If it was Russia I probably wouldn't have done it. The issue here isn't only about taking risk. Most Canadian sellers ship items under $30 not tracked (be it within Canada or Internationally). We all take risk and we all incorporate that into our profit margins as cost of doing business. Even active advice givers such as Ms. Dee also ship untracked internationally. A practise we may all have to rethink after August 20th. Especially that cancelled transactions will now count as a defect. Such is life in Canada. The point being made here is that EBAY (Paypal less so) REFUSES to be diligent in looking at some of the more obvious cases by applying the "dumb and dumber" cookie approach to problem resolution. It's obvious that this case will likely be lost. Even if I did provide a refund to this buyer,  if the buyer is found fraudulent through the "buyer complaint" system (which I have 0 faith in) it still won't effect the outcome, the case status will remain as will the feedback and the buyer will still likely be refunded and walks away with a few of items only to begin the process with another account. What Ebay should be doing is looking at collective evidence when investigating a case and not BLINDLY follow policy. That's the RESPONSIBLE thing to do. So instead of "rolling over" to policy, more of you should take the approach of identifying problem areas and pushing those upwards.