Blocked buyer created another identity and bought from me

[block36]

Good morning everybody,

Hope you can give me intelligent suggestion how to resolve the situation.

The person who lives in Germany (Russian woman married to German man) was my buyer and to deal with her was very unpleasant - for every simple transaction she was sending multiple emails w/o valid reason(s) and demanded instant answer.

If the answer was not received within one hour, she was asking why late answer...  I also noticed that she has left few negative feedback to other sellers with multiple exclamation marks. Obviously, the sign of emotional problems...

A couple of her payments thru PAYPAL were not made from her credit card, but from her bank account and for this reason it took 10 business days.  Her explanation was that stupid people from PAYPAL did not understand her...

And to my relief she was kicked out from eBay with her score below 100 (it was 74)

But a couple of months later she appeared under new identity, bought few cards, gave me usual hard time and although we have exchanged positive feedbacks I decided to exclude her to be in peace. And excluded...

And yesterday the buyer with 0 feedback bought a card from me,,, It was her and she advised that she bought the card under her friend's name and wants to know why she was excluded under previous name. She also managed to write me under her excluded name demanding the same explanation.

She did not make the payment for the card she purchased yesterday  and this morning she has purchased another card and she asks for combined invoice.

I do not want to send her invoice because I do not want to be paid.

PLEASE HELP!!!  While I was writing this letter she sent me two another demands for explanation

[pierrelebel]

It is unfortunate you came across such buyer.

I think only eBay can solve that problem by cancelling the transactions and blocking the buyer under the new identity (or suspending such buyer)

I suggest you start here: http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/handle-problems.html

...filling the box report a problem with a buyer

If that fails to solve the issue, call eBay Customer Support.  Be patient as these folks are not always properly trained to handle difficult problems.

[momcqueen]

You are going to have to call eBay Customer Support for this. It is good that you have record of who she is as you will have to demonstrate that you have blocked her in the past, and for good reason. Have all your documentation ready. I would encourage you to call during North American business hours to increase your likelihood of speaking to a domestic agent.

I'm thinking that there are a few alternative solutions that eBay may offer you but they are the kind that can be done only via a higher authority. I don't want to speak on behalf of eBay but, obviously, she is not allowed to create an account with another person's name; that's fraud. I suspect they will boot her off again and then cancel your transaction(s). Lay low until you have direction from ebay. If you can't gain what you need from Customer Support, don't be afraid to ask to speak to someone else there, a supervisor. Persistence pays.

As an aside, do you have a great many German customers? (In my personal and business dealings with the German people, to generalize, I have found them not to be rude but sometimes curt, and I've always chalked that up to some finer points of the courtesies we expect as Canadians being lost-in-translation.) Anyway, in the short- or long-term, if you find that you have very few customers from Germany, you might temporarily block the entire country. That should take care of it, simply. Hardly fair to the ban the entire nation but perhaps your difficult customer will give up and go away after awhile and you can unblock it again.

You have my deepest sympathies. We've all had eBay dealings with people that leave us to frown in dismay. Mine is a gentleman who's never been a bidder or buyer here but is somehow able to send me messages (despite being long since blocked) of nonsensical ramblings with interesting insults, the latest of which is either that I should go (----) a pig or that I am a pig and should therefore go (----). It's difficult to tell from the message. 

Anyway, good luck as you carry forward. If you think of it, let us know how your matter was resolved. 

[block36]

Thank you very much for your recommendations regarding this situation.

Initially I have written to eBay through "report a buyer" asking to stop this buyer's insulting emails and last Monday I called eBay and seems that the person I talked to was experienced American female CSR.  

Interesting that when I mentioned that the majority of insults I was getting were in Russian (with use of the Latin alphabet), she mentioned that she knows Russian (she studied the language), I asked her to read them although she may not know this kind of words - most likely they would not be included in the programs for amateurs. 

As mentioned earlier, the rest of emails have something written in German as well, and of course I did not care to get the accurate or any other translations considering multiple exclamation marks in these letters.

In one of the letters she wrote me in Russian "we know your address!"... Considering the tone of her correspondence, this is nothing other than the threat and I mentioned this to CSR joking that this is a case for Interpol now - the thread comes from the foreigner! 

While listening my story this CSR was presumably checking my feedback because she mentioned that she sees I am not the one who causes any problems and she will mentioned all this in her report to superiors.

Nothing happened after this ...

The insults were coming and so far I have 14 of them. The last one was yesterday - it was in German - something to do with feedback. The threat of course...

I am very glad that I did not answer a single one of them and therefore did not to provoke any further insults. 

Unfortunately she is still on eBay (with both codes now - the new code has a feedback of 2 already and old has a couple more added on). 

I guess we do not know what is the protocol for such a situation, i.e. when and why eBayers get excluded - most likely if this is done, it will be done by German eBay after they receive this information from American eBay?

But may be they want to keep her because she buys something?  

I will report any further developments (if any...)    

Thank you for listening!

[momcqueen]

Oh dear.

I am glad you called Customer Service but I think it might be warranted to call again. Explain everything to the first rep you get, say you are being threatened and then ask perhaps for someone in the Trust and Safety department.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you go through each and every message that you have received from this woman and use the 'report an inappropriate message' at the bottom of the page. It looks like this:

I think it would be in your best interests to create a paper trail here for posterity. It does not sound as if this person should be allowed to continue to trade here. And, if I were you, I would be wary of any odd mail that you receive from overseas. 

Do that, and then call ebay again. Best of luck in resolving this. 

[Anonymous]

Every time I get any new buyer, I always use "contact information" to make sure that I am not getting the same buyer (deadbeat unpaid item bidder) before I accept their "make offer" or their bidding.  If they are the same ones but different Id usernames, I would decline or cancel their bidding and put them on my block list and also warn them that I am reporting them to eBay for violating eBay policy.  The best way to use "contact information" is that I don't want to "cancel transaction" for obvious reasons, defect, getting negative feedback which is not worth it.

I had one horrible insane buyer that kept popping up with 6 different names and I insist to eBay that they should do something about that insane buyer.  Finally all those new 6 names have been suspended as he didn't pay to lots of sellers too.

[momcqueen]

My albatross is a gentleman who's never been a buyer but fancies me a competitor to his sales outside ebay.

As such, I should have been able to block him from making contact and did include him more than a year ago to the 'Bestest Buddies' list to no avail. The messages still come.

As with the original poster, there is also a language barrier with this man but I can decipher enough to know when I am told to 'get to know a particular farmyard animal in the biblical sense'. He has also mentioned some conspiracy theories and has mentioned he no longer takes his medication and I am to blame for that too apparently. 

His eBay ID has been reported by me countless times and it seems like nothing is done. Or, if it is, I am not informed or seeing the results because the contact persists.

I suppose that I need to take my own advice and call Customer Service again but the thing is that this is absolutely a case where, for some inexplicable reason, the 'block' has not worked as it is supposed to. I don't know the reason. 

[block36]

The story goes on... May create a TV serial one day with "international" flavor?  

This manipulative person has marked "payment sent" against the item to be able to add the feedback to me.

- Why there is such an option and what it actually means?  Cash or cheque payment?  If so, why it is applicable to sellers who accept PAYPAL ONLY?

And if the seller like me (with PAYPAL only) has agreed to other method of payment, there should a field indicating such an agreement. 

I hope I will be able to claim one day the non-payment for this item .

Yesterday I was on the phone for 1 hr.55 minutes being transferred to 7 persons with VERY DIFFERENT levels of knowledge (if any).

The final conversation was with the person from the TRUST AND SAFETY Department and her assurance of the potential resolution in my favor sounded very convincing and I also got her email confirming further investigation.

[momcqueen]

My apologies, I was away from my desk yesterday and meant to reply to your post much sooner than this.

The manual 'mark as payment received' is great for sellers that accept Cash on Pickup or for when there is some weird glitch with combining invoices and one has to be issued directly from paypal as is allowed but somewhat discouraged.

But I think that is a red herring here. Your buyer marked it as 'payment sent' specifically to gain your attention and get your goat by leaving negative feedback. This person is dangerous, and while I don't mean that specifically in the life-and-limb sense, I would again strongly encourage you to call Customer Service to hurry them up with getting rid of this stain both on your record and also to remove the buyer from ebay. I feel your pain about the two hours you spent talking to seven different people (been there, done that) but it is unfortunately the only way to fix it. Mark your clock for Hour 73 (or whatever they told you) and call again if it's not gone.

Good luck.

[block36]

The story has ended... 

And I hope this person from Germany will never any appear under any other name(s).

She is no longer a registered with her second identity and probably will be kicked out with the third as well... 

Her "follow-up" feedback was the mixture of different languages incl. English which she does not know, at least dozens of exclamation marks and she called me "brainless"...  She sent me a couple of new emails with threats and insults as well.

With all this I feel sorry for her  - such emotional unbalance with zero of common sense makes me wonder about her lifestyle... Just for a moment..

In regards to eBay I would translate Russian expression "she was digging her own grave"

The main reason that this negative feedback got removed is the fact that transaction got cancelled - no payment was made....

The person who processed the feedback removal said that another report will be made against this person's latest identity because of the insults.

Thank you very much for following my story... Hope your trouble, Maureen, will be with "happy end" as well and sometimes the best way is just to ignore it. - The dog is barking but the caravan goes ahead...

[pacificwinds6875]

Contact EBay - they will deal with it AND report it also within EBay.  You don't have to sell to that person if you don't want to - remember that.

[block36]

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@pacificwinds6875 wrote:

Contact EBay - they will deal with it AND report it also within EBay.  You don't have to sell to that person if you don't want to - remember that.

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Thank you! 

I know now - was like "in shock" when faced such a behavior 

[momcqueen]

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@block36 wrote:

Thank you! 

I know now - was like "in shock" when faced such a behavior 

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Yours was a quite shocking example of how quickly this kind of thing can go badly for a seller. Most of the time, the problems that come forth to the board are fairly small in nature (like my own with the blocked buyer(s) who persist in sending me odd and obscene messages) but to me they are a nuisance at most. Once someone creates an account to begin to leave negatives against yours, this is a whole other world of trouble as it affects a seller's ability to conduct business here safely.  

[blackranda2]

Report her to eBay for each member id she has used and explain to them that it is the same person. It is against eBay policy for a member who is blocked to use a new member id to purchase from a seller who has blocked them. When eBay started this policy of allowing members to have more than one member id, I knew this was going to be the result. It has happened to me more than once. Just recently a member did this to me. When I emailed her and told her I knew it was her, she got upset and sent me a negative for an item she had purchased before I blocked her. I contacted eBay, had the negative removed and refunded the last payment.  The eBay system has made it way to easy for buyers to exploit it now.

[kh-leslie]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.