I wish ebay would send out this kind of email to buyers.

[musicyouneed]

On another website, a very popular one, a buyer received this email.  I wish they would send out that to ebay buyer who either return a lot of items or never seem to receive them in the mail.

We're writing to apologize for the number of issues you've experienced with your shipments. Your correspondences with us indicate you've required refunds on a majority of orders for a number of reasons.

Through the normal course of business, the occasional problem is inevitable. However, you seem to have had an unusually high rate of problems in your account history.

When unusual account activity such as this comes to our attention, we'll evaluate each account on a case-by-case basis to determine if additional action is necessary, including closing the account. We’d prefer to work with you to avoid that inconvenience, as we do value your business.

If you have any questions in the future regarding your account, please write to us directly at 

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding.

Best regards,

Account Specialist.

[recped]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

On another website, a very popular one, a buyer received this email.  I wish they would send out that to ebay buyer who either return a lot of items or never seem to receive them in the mail.

We're writing to apologize for the number of issues you've experienced with your shipments. Your correspondences with us indicate you've required refunds on a majority of orders for a number of reasons.

Through the normal course of business, the occasional problem is inevitable. However, you seem to have had an unusually high rate of problems in your account history.

When unusual account activity such as this comes to our attention, we'll evaluate each account on a case-by-case basis to determine if additional action is necessary, including closing the account. We’d prefer to work with you to avoid that inconvenience, as we do value your business.

If you have any questions in the future regarding your account, please write to us directly at 

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding.

Best regards,

Account Specialist.

---

They do! Thousands of buyers have been removed from the MBG, PayPal have a similar policy.

[cumos55]

It is called ... Report a Buyer...

I once talked to someone on eBay  with respect to a buyer  .. and the statement by the eBay person was

One more situation like this  and this buyer is gone.....

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

Buyer had paid full postage for shipping to the US.... postage amount was correct...

Once the purchase was  received  the statement  by the buyer was ...

Should receive a refund of $6.50

Evidently buyer  did this several times....... that is asking for a refund  after purchase received.....  and nothing more said...

[hlmacdon]

Unfortunately buyers do get a lot of rope with ebay, but eventually they do shut accounts down once enough complaints have been registered (they won't tell you what the threshold is). Don't bother with the online report a buyer function as only a portion of those get reviewed. Follow the help & contact links to the report a buyer section to get to the right department via phone and notify them of the problem. Company policy forbids them from telling you what, if any, action will be taken but it does get noted on the account.

I had the misfortune of receiving a death threat from another member (probably just someone waisting their time, but can't take chances when they can access your personal information), and unfortunately had to call in multiple times before action was taken. Keep in mind that if a buyer has initiated a transaction, whether through their account or a guest checkout attempt, they have the ability to request your personal contact information while their account information remains active. In general this an area ebay needs to tighten up policy. The main thing is to take time to make a call when you come across a particularly problematic buyer as your call helps get them shut down, even if takes several subsequent complaints. Point out any linked accounts you may be aware of, as these get acted on much faster.

[wkndshop]

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@hlmacdon wrote:

I had the misfortune of receiving a death threat from another member and unfortunately had to call in multiple times before action was taken.

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Hmmmm .... !

[momcqueen]

I too have a history with a particular member who has wished ill on me and my family, as well as threatened my enterprise here, a number of times throughout the past few years. (Language is a barrier and the person may also be ill.) While sympathetic to my plight, it was difficult to find a Customer Service Rep who would take the time to read the messages as translated by Google Translate and none could speculate on what would be done to prevent the continued harassment.

Prevalent advice from other community members at the time was that I wasn't obligated to read any message being sent to me and they should be ignored. While that is true, when in the arena of 'I will rain hell and all fury down on you, little girl" I thought forewarned is forearmed. My next step would be police involvement but the harasser vanished again for a period of time, as per the normal trend.

Adding to the frustration, the member seems to have me confused with someone else. I honestly do not understand what he is talking about. Long blocked and never a previous customer, he is still able to circumvent the 'Don't allow blocked buyers to contact me' requirement as checked in my Seller Account Preferences.  

Puzzling all around. 

As to the original message posted, I once received a similar message that appeared to be from paypal. It was, however, a phishing attempt to get my goat. Because after reading it, most people would freak-out and think, 'What?!? Not likely!" and then click on the embedded links. Instead, I called paypal who had no idea of what message I was asking them about. Forwarded to spoof and confirmed as fake. Just as a head's up. 

[hlmacdon]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

I too have a history with a particular member who has wished ill on me and my family, as well as threatened my enterprise here, a number of times throughout the past few years. (Language is a barrier and the person may also be ill.) While sympathetic to my plight, it was difficult to find a Customer Service Rep who would take the time to read the messages as translated by Google Translate and none could speculate on what would be done to prevent the continued harassment.

Prevalent advice from other community members at the time was that I wasn't obligated to read any message being sent to me and they should be ignored. While that is true, when in the arena of 'I will rain hell and all fury down on you, little girl" I thought forewarned is forearmed. My next step would be police involvement but the harasser vanished again for a period of time, as per the normal trend.

Adding to the frustration, the member seems to have me confused with someone else. I honestly do not understand what he is talking about. Long blocked and never a previous customer, he is still able to circumvent the 'Don't allow blocked buyers to contact me' requirement as checked in my Seller Account Preferences.  

Puzzling all around. 

---

I had to lose my patience and be extremely firm with the third or fourth rep. The first call in the CS person was sympathetic, advised filing a police report and assured me action would be taken. Several days later the individual still had an active account while another linked account had been disabled, despite clearly showing the two accounts were linked, exhibiting the same behavior and ebay having the IP information from the individual.

I was quoted "we give buyers a lot of rope" to which I responded surely a buyer hangs themselves with said rope when they make a death threat, regardless of how likely it is to be acted upon. That someone can get away with such behavior and abuse account creation to hide behind it is a major flaw in the system. As is your situation, where a blocked buyer can continue to communicate with you. If a buyer has been blocked, that should be the end of it. If there is a situation which needs to be resolved ebay/paypal can jump in to assist the buyer without further interaction between the buyer and seller. If an IP address has accounts banned or has a sufficient number of blocks, that IP address should be blocked from creating a guest account which requires no verification of personal details. The guest checkout feature overall is a debacle, as ebay readily admits they have no way in place today to prevent banned or blocked buyers from using it, they could certainly start by putting IP address blocks in place and verifying personal details against a database of banned or blocked buyers.   

Overall from previous interactions I do find ebay does step in and deal with disabling buyer accounts, but buyers get way too much leeway, as their staff will readily admit. It is also clear there is an insufficient internal escalation path for staff. Some issues they seem to be able to get an account shut down near immediately, while puzzlingly a death threat they can not. My impression is they rely far too much on the number of complaints from unique parties before they will take action. Hence it is important to call in and report the situation if you have a buyer abusing the system. Pay very close attention to newly created guest checkout accounts, which will have a randomized 0 feedback username which is typically some variation on part of their actual name. You will eventually encounter previously blocked buyers using this to circumvent your block.

[pocomocomputing]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

As to the original message posted, I once received a similar message that appeared to be from PayPal. It was, however, a phishing attempt to get my goat. Because after reading it, most people would freak-out and think, 'What?!? Not likely!" and then click on the embedded links. Instead, I called PayPal who had no idea of what message I was asking them about. Forwarded to spoof and confirmed as fake. Just as a head's up.

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I would take the confirmed as a fake not seriously. I have received emails from eBay or PayPal that I thought were not from them and attempts to get info from me. I sent them to spoof and got a reply saying it is a fake usually quickly. Then I get the same info by eBay messages later the same or next day. So receiving a confirmation that it is fake is meaningless to me.

I am not saying do not report them. I am just saying that confirmed as a fake may not be true. Never click on a link in an email.

(I seem to have a 1-2+ day lag between eBay emails and eBay messages. Messages take forever to arrive for promos versus email. Of course, I see the promos in My ebay or Selling Manager promotions first when active or most likely read it here in the forums.)

[momcqueen]

Good point.

The one from paypal that time was a fake, though. I had just won a case against a seller who was less-than-ethical and also sold my email address to any junk mail list that would take it. They don't exist on ebay any more. 

[recped]

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@hlmacdon wrote:

Unfortunately buyers do get a lot of rope with ebay, but eventually they do shut accounts down once enough complaints have been registered (they won't tell you what the threshold is). Don't bother with the online report a buyer function as only a portion of those get reviewed. Follow the help & contact links to the report a buyer section to get to the right department via phone and notify them of the problem. Company policy forbids them from telling you what, if any, action will be taken but it does get noted on the account.

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People don't seem to understand what the function of the purpose of "report a buyer". It's not and never was intended to result in any sort of immediate action. When you report a user id the report is attached to the users internal file, when a serious situation arises those reports help eBay identify serial trouble makers and separate the chronic abusers from the simply unlucky or confused.

Pretty much the same as all those sellers who leave false positives for non-payers but never file UPI's while at the same time complaining that these users continually get away with non-payment and eBay "does nothing". How does anyone expect eBay to do "something" if they can't be bothered to properly inform eBay of what has happened.

The other function of the "report a buyer" and the way I have used it successfully is that it gives you an opportunity to clearly give a detailed explanation of a situation in print that a csr can read when you phone them. Much of the issues with customer service (not specific to eBay) is that many callers have a lot of trouble clearly stating their issue on the phone.