eBay

vip-marketplace · ‎07-10-2016

Hey!

So I sold a 30$ coffee syrup bottle to a US buyer and had to pay ~13$ in shipping.

Buyer receives it and wants to return it because she "Doesn't care for the taste".

How would you handle this?

Am I right to assume I am not responsible for return fees?

If she opened the syrup bottle, there's no way I'm reselling this item again...

What would you do?

Thanks!

rose-dee · ‎07-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
It is, in my opinion, ridiculous to expect to buy food online and then be refunded in full for 'not liking the taste' period.

... which position, quite frankly, the seller could have taken before selling and shipping any food products, i.e. by stating no guarantee of satisfaction, and no refunds/returns on food products.

Whether that would prevent SNADs -- honest or not -- being accepted by eBay on food items is another question.

In this instance the seller has promised to stand by his/her items. Dealing in food products and guaranteeing satisfaction makes it the seller's responsibility to refund.

In the end, I think this buyer was simply being honest (if perhaps a bit naive about online guarantees regarding food). The seller has a choice to send the customer away happy or make a customer who will certainly never come back, possibly never even to eBay itself.

momcqueen · ‎07-12-2016

@rose-dee wrote:
@mjwl2006 wrote:
'Doesn't care for the taste' is a Remorse return...
I must respectfully disagree. Buyer's remorse in this instance would have meant having second thoughts about purchasing and expecting a refund for her own mistake (gee, I've decided I really don't want this product after all, or gee, I meant to pick chocolate rather than vanilla [didn't pay attention to the listing], or gee, I've just realized I overspent my online shopping budget).

If the buyer's motive were not that she was dissatisfied with the product, but that she'd simply changed her mind about buying, it would have been easy for her to make up a claim that the product was tainted -- or to taint it herself perhaps, by opening it and leaving it out in the sun for a couple of days. This sort of deceit would be a lot harder to do successfully with almost any other product but food.

No, I think the fact that the buyer reported that she didn't like the taste says that she was simply being honest about her disappointment with the product and expecting the seller to reciprocate (according to the seller's guarantee).

What guarantee is that exactly?

Not that it matters. It is rather obvious to me the the Original Poster has moved on. We are merely arguing amongst ourselves here, and contributing mightily to Global Warming with all the Hot Air being expelled.

pierrelebel · ‎07-12-2016

"What guarantee is that exactly?"

As stated earlier, please take a look at the front page of the original poster's eBay store.

momcqueen · ‎07-12-2016

Right: 30 days warranty on everything!

And as I said earlier, all that front page 'guarantee' indicates is that a buyer has 30 days to use their ebay guarantee as opposed to 14 which is what most of us use. It does not state, "Buyer! You have 30 days to buy whatever you like from me, use it and then request a full refund while keeping it.'

rose-dee · ‎07-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:

What guarantee is that exactly?

Not that it matters. It is rather obvious to me the the Original Poster has moved on. We are merely arguing amongst ourselves here, and contributing mightily to Global Warming with all the Hot Air being expelled.

Um, seller's store home page, main banner: "100% positive feedback score and 30 days warranty on everything!" (Including the exclamation mark).

As a buyer, I would probably take the seller's word "everything" to mean, in fact, everything being sold. As I said, if the seller felt uncomfortable offering a warranty on food products, he/she could have specified an exception for those items.

This discussion is not only interesting, but also revealing about various sellers' attitudes in dealing with customers and what guaranteed customer satisfaction really means. I think it's a useful and important topic, especially if new sellers to eBay are reading the comments.

I once bought a very expensive moisturizer cream, fully expecting it to be wonderful. I had to open it to try it out, but I did not at all like the effect it had on my skin. There was nothing inherently wrong with the product itself, nor was it spoiled or allergenic. I simply didn't like the way it felt. The store (in that case a B&M store) had a satisfaction guarantee, they cheerfully provided me with a full refund and and a whole bunch of samples of a few other products to try instead. That was good business sense. I became a loyal customer. And I told my friends too.

It's a seller's choice whether to be truculent and adversarial in such circumstances, or whether to use the opportunity to make a permanent customer who will remember how they were treated. EBay certainly won't force you to bend over backwards.

rose-dee · ‎07-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
Right: 30 days warranty on everything!

And as I said earlier, all that front page 'guarantee' indicates is that a buyer has 30 days to use their ebay guarantee as opposed to 14 which is what most of us use. It does not state, "Buyer! You have 30 days to buy whatever you like from me, use it and then request a full refund while keeping it.'

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put that wording prominently on my store banner if I didn't mean to indicate that I personally stood behind every purchase, no questions asked, and regardless of what the eBay MBG might say.

momcqueen · ‎07-12-2016

My gosh, a warranty does not imply you can keep your item and ask for your money back. Have you read the terms of a warranty offered on something? Appliance, eyeglasses, it doesn't matter. Warranties are never unlimited.

The Original Poster moved on days ago; they have not deigned to answer or check back to elaborate on their situation. You may all continue to argue about this yourselves. I would take the issue to ebay directly for actual advice on this case. We can pontificate about this forever to no actual effect.

rose-dee · ‎07-12-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
My gosh, a warranty does not imply you can keep your item and ask for your money back. Have you read the terms of a warranty offered on something? Appliance, eyeglasses, it doesn't matter. Warranties are never unlimited.

The Original Poster moved on days ago; they have not deigned to answer or check back to elaborate on their situation. You may all continue to argue about this yourselves. I would take the issue to ebay directly for actual advice on this case. We can pontificate about this forever to no actual effect.

Unconditional warranties do exist, actually, perhaps not on many consumer goods, but they're not unheard of. Warranty is equivalent to guarantee. It's up to the seller to be explicit so that the buyer doesn't misinterpret the intent.

EBay's advice will be useless. Their MBG says nothing about buyer satisfaction in such a situation, i.e. there is no obligation to refund under the MBG for issues of personal taste or preferences.

The OP may be gone, but other sellers who face a similar dilemma will have to decide for themselves whether they feel their buyer is making a complaint in good faith and they want to entice that buyer back, or just blow them off and block them for good. Neither action will garner any intervention by eBay, so the seller is free to make the call.

Incidentally, an analogous issue happens with the colour of clothing items. You can describe a colour until you're blue in the face, warn about monitors displaying colours differently, etc., yet a buyer may still find a particular shade "not to their liking" or "not flattering" (this has happened to me as a seller). In that case of course, the item can be returned for a refund as long as it hasn't been damaged or the tags torn off. If not, you have the same problem. Is the buyer being honest? Is he/she truly disappointed in your product?

This is really all about how sellers view their buyers and how they accept -- or don't accept -- the realities of online selling.

i.am.vivian · ‎07-12-2016

@rose-dee wrote:

This discussion is not only interesting, but also revealing about various sellers' attitudes in dealing with customers and what guaranteed customer satisfaction really means. I think it's a useful and important topic, especially if new sellers to eBay are reading the comments.

It is, I agree. I think we are all getting tired of all the endless CP threads but mostly tired of CP and their dithering so any change of topic and people latch onto it for something else to talk about.

I also have to agree with the people who think it is really galling for someone to buy a food item and ask to return it just because they don't like it. Everyone here makes a different analogy but I think it is similar to buying a dress that doesn't fit. It is not really "remorse" because the buyer doesn't regret buying it only that they can't use it. The DIFFERENCE is that a dress can be resold so it should be returned. It is called a "remorse" return but maybe I just don't like the word remorse which makes the buyer sound finicky and that might not be true.

From the point of business I think the best thing is to just politely refund the buyer in full and then BLOCK. You really have to block sometimes. You don't want them coming back next to try the chocolate. No good? Then the strawberry. That too?

I am also cheap, tight, and like to hang onto my money so if it were ME I would probably offer a partial on the first try but it really depends on what the buyer is like to deal with. If I said I spent $13 on shipping so offered a refund minus $13 and the buyer complained, I would then refund the whole thing saying I understand their position and that I refunded all of it.

Yesterday I spent half the day looking up feedback policies so if someone else can better it please do. I did not see where it says any time a buyer opens a case at all then no feedback can be left or negs will be removed. I DID see the policy that says when a buyer opens a case and eBay steps in and the buyer loses and eBay finds in the seller's favor THEN any negs left will be removed.

There is nothing that I can see that says Open Case = No Negs, guaranteed.

If the buyer is told to open a case they might decide to open a SNAD case and SAY it was rancid even if the product is fine. You can't show a picture of rottenness. Then the seller has to pay return shipping which will seem justified since they wanted it back so bad. Demanding a worthless item be returned just to punish a buyer might backfire.

But not everyone opens a case. If the buyer of the syrop gets refunded with no case being opened, the seller does not get a defect. If the seller digs in their heels and says to send it back if the buyer is unhappy it is true this might make the buyer not bother but then they go and leave negative. Or at least they CAN. What to do might depend on what matters most to the seller: no money or no negs.

If anyone here knows of where the links are connecting opened cases and negative removal PLEASE post them it would be a big help to everybody since nobody seems to really know for sure.

momcqueen · ‎07-12-2016

I too looked for written proof of the Returns case feedback policy and found none. I cited it from my memory of what changed when the Sellers Standards were altered combined with my own experience with Returns as a buyer and from dealing with ebay Customer Service as a seller.

I think it would be prudent for one of us to raise the question at Board Hour tomorrow and ask for Raphael's thoughts on cases like this. Where Food items and Returns requests are concerned. For the record. And see what he says about feedback being disallowed on cases that are closed. It would be valuable to have that clarified absolutely.

silverpinups · ‎07-12-2016

Silverinups: I totally disagree with what you say about flavour/taste being the seller's risk responsibility. It is not and should not be on the seller. As a buyer, anytime you buy a food product that you haven't tried before (wether in store or online), it is the risk YOU are taking. Unless the product is stale, rotten, has insects in it or is defective in some way, a buyer has no business asking for a refund for this. If I received a refund for every "mistake" I made buying something I didn't like the taste of, I'd be loaded. The seller can only advertise the flavour, consistency, ingredients etc - she cannot advertise the exact taste itself through her computer screen. When a normal person buys a food product, takes a bite/sip and realize they don't like it, the NORMAL person thinks to themselves "gross, what a mistake and waste of money, never again" and throws said food in the trash. Only a person with serious self-entitlement issues would ask for a refund.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I believe you mean you "agree" with me..... not disagree!

booquemeister · ‎07-13-2016

The old "Refunds Cheerfully Given' sign behind the counter come to mind - but - online?
(insert emo here)

momcqueen · ‎07-13-2016

I took the question to ebay Canada Weekly Chat and here it is: http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Weekly-Chat-Session/July-13th-2016-Weekly-Session/td-p/344058/highlight/...

Re: July 13th 2016 Weekly Session

in reply to raphael@ebay.com

‎07-13-2016 03:44 PM

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Good morning, Raphael:

This past week, a seller came to the discussion board with a question about how to handle a return request on a food item they had sold. The reason for the request was cited as the buyer disliking the taste of the food they had bought. This situation resulted in conflicting advice and a lengthy debate among other ebay members about how one is obligated to handle food-related returns and what is or isn't covered by the ebay Money Back Warranty. This is the thread: http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Return-request-because-quot-Didn-t-like-it-quot/m-p/34404...

My question to you as an ebay staffer is two-fold:

1. Under the ebay Money Back Guarantee can a buyer purchase food, eat it, and then request a return and/or refund without return because he or she 'didn't care for the taste of it'? Should the seller approve the Returns request on the grounds that money will be refunded once the opened and not-resaleable is returned, or not?

2. Once a Returns case is opened and satisfactorily closed, do both parties still possess the ability to leave feedback on that transaction?

Some of us looked among the Help and Best Practices information that is published here and could not find a clear answer.
Hi mjwl2006,

What an interesting edge case. I have searched the CS database and there are no specifics on how eBay should decide if for example that return case was escalated. At first glance, I want to look at this as buyer remorse, where the seller's return policy would apply. Taste is subjective and to me it's the same thing as a buyer wanting to return a sweater because they don't like the colour (different thing than it being the wrong colour). With that said, I'm curious how CS would actually handle this so I have sent an email to a trusted colleague. I'll update this post with my findings.

Update: After speaking with CS, in this particular case since the seller issued a pretty solid guarantee of satisfaction in the description and that they have a stated return policy that says 30 days money back, if the case had been escalated the return would likely have been enforced but under the seller's terms (buyer pays for return shipping). Obviously, if the seller didn't care to get the item back since it was opened, they could opt to just refund.

For your question #2, yes, even if a case is open and closed, feedback can still be given.

Thank you very much for looking into this. As you might have gathered from the manner in which my question threatens to overtake this week's Weekly Chat, you can see the ferocity behind the conflicting opinions expressed in the original thread.

It's good that the original thread opened a discussion and offered different opinions for direction on this but I will cross-reference your answer with the original thread for anyone that might stumble on it down the road as they seek advice in how to handle their own case.

Also, I appreciate being corrected on my misunderstanding of the no-feedback-allowed on a closed Returns case. As much as I don't like to discover I am incorrect about something I have stated, it's more important that the record be set straight so that people don't make misjudgements based on misinformation. I'd rather be corrected on something I was wrong about than defend an incorrect answer or try to bend another's opinions to my own.

Please note there was other discussion about this question throughout the thread so for the fullest understanding of the ebay Canada staff response to the issue, please read the whole Weekly Chat thread. And I was flat-out incorrect about no feedback being allowed on a closed Returns case. Raphael say feedback can still be given on a transaction where a Returns case is opened and closed.

I must be thinking about specific cases where extenuating circumstances came into play with a return.

pierrelebel · ‎07-13-2016

The last post by Raphael (#45) says it all"

"We do encourage sellers to provide excellent service to their buyers, within reason."

So sellers can read whatever they want into it "within reason"!

momcqueen · ‎07-13-2016

Yes, I thought that was an excellently diplomatic way to answer the question.

vip-marketplace · ‎07-15-2016

OP here!

Sorry, I forgot to check back the thread after taking care of this return.

I approved the return of the item but did not provide a return label.

I also sent a message to the buyer saying I approved her return request but specified she was responsible for return costs.

Hopefully, the ~15$ she'll have to pay to sent this back from the US and the trouble of going to the post office and filling the shipping and custom labels will discourage her. I know I wouldn't go into that much troubles to make ~15$ (item cost minus shipping).

BTW, I took the time to read everything even though I had already accepted the return request.

Thanks for all the insights and information!

pierrelebel · ‎07-15-2016

Thank you for the update.

Please let us know if you ever receive the item back or if a claim if made with eBay or PayPal by the buyer.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-15-2016

"Please note there was other discussion about this question throughout the thread so for the fullest understanding of the ebay Canada staff response to the issue, please read the whole Weekly Chat thread. And I was flat-out incorrect about no feedback being allowed on a closed Returns case. Raphael say feedback can still be given on a transaction where a Returns case is opened and closed.

I must be thinking about specific cases where extenuating circumstances came into play with a return"

Or you could be thinking about an actual case vs a return. A return request is not a case unless eBay is asked to step in. If that happens and the seller wins, feedback cannot be left and/or will be removed.

momcqueen · ‎07-15-2016

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
"Please note there was other discussion about this question throughout the thread so for the fullest understanding of the ebay Canada staff response to the issue, please read the whole Weekly Chat thread. And I was flat-out incorrect about no feedback being allowed on a closed Returns case. Raphael say feedback can still be given on a transaction where a Returns case is opened and closed.

I must be thinking about specific cases where extenuating circumstances came into play with a return"

Or you could be thinking about an actual case vs a return. A return request is not a case unless eBay is asked to step in. If that happens and the seller wins, feedback cannot be left and/or will be removed.

Yes. That was what I had been thinking of and failed to isolate one from the other.

Thank you for pointing that out and clarifying it further. I mean that most sincerely.

I'd hate for anyone reading this thread in the future to make a misstep based on incorrect information I was responsible for posting earlier in the thread.

booquemeister · ‎07-15-2016

" Perfect Pitch can be a blessing & a curse. Imagine listening to a recital given by a solo guitarist. You know the key signatures of the pieces being performed, but the guitar has been tuned slightly flat or sharp...a most unsettling experience for the listener with "Perfect Pitch"."
(Nicked from Muscat Cafe)