Buyers able to leave negative feedback on cancelled orders

[prosperityreiki]

Hello everyone, I recently canceled an order where the shipping name was different than the name on the account, as per my shipping policy stated in the description. Reason for doing this is simple, in the past, any chargebacks I had were from accounts were the names were different, and the accounts turned out to be hacked. Ive had no issues so far, cancelling on average 4-5 orders a week, however this particular time, the cancelled buyer left negative  feedback. as an aside, this ability to leave feedback for buyers in this case seems absolutely ridiculous. Contacted Ebay and they told me their agents dont have the abilty to remove feedback anymore, and also said the link to request feedback to be removed will not be available for 60 days.

Any other suggestions?

P.S. already asked the buyer to revise his feedback but this is an useless option in my opinion

[teenytrinkets]

I personally don't have a problem with the different names, but I've never sold to a hacked account. My only suggestion is to stop canceling orders unless absolutely necessary.

I think the agent gave you incorrect info re: removing NFB. They will always need that ability for retaliatory & extortion NFB. If they've disabled their ability to remove NFB, they might as well just disable NFB altogether...

[hlmacdon]

On the US side they are trying to force all requests through the Seller Help portal to automate things. That might explain why it is being pulled from regular reps. Doesn't look like they have implemented it on the Canadian side yet...typical.

[recped]

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@prosperityreiki wrote:

Hello everyone, I recently canceled an order where the shipping name was different than the name on the account, as per my shipping policy stated in the description.

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You made a mistake, there was no reason to cancel, your terms are invalid and a policy violation.

There is absolutely no requirement for the registered name of the buyer be the same as the ship to name.

PayPal verified address means nothing at all.

You are in Managed Payment so there is absolutely no need for buyers to use PayPal anymore.

Own the neg, you earned it!

[femmefan1946]

It's not unusual for a family to share a Paypal account. It's less usual than it used to be, but "gift" addresses used to be a big deal around Christmas.

And even married couples don't necessarily have the same last name. I've been married for 53 years and we have different names.

Since eBay has "disciplined" you by allowing the FB to stand, might I suggest that next time this happens, you contact the buyer and politely ask for an explanation? Make the question "for your security" rather than an accusation.

[deeeight]

In my experience small numbers of negative feedback taken against a large overall number don't affect sales at all. You can also reply to feedback and say "cancelled because account / payment info discrepencies suggested fraud was occurring"

[deeeight]

Looking at your account, you have 1 negative and 231 positive in `12 months. Nobody's going to give a **bleep** about that negative as the percentage of buyers who even check feedback when a seller is 99.4% overall positive and top-rated seller status, is ridiculously tiny but yes as someone else pointed out, you're violating ebay's TOS with that restriction.

[prosperityreiki]

That restriction is there to stay, like I said, every time i had a problem when I was first getting started, it was because of a hacked account. Perhaps it's because of the items that I sell, but there were quite a few of those too.  Ever since I implemented this policy, this number has gone down substaniually. Ebay has no right to force someone to sell to a suspicious account, considering that just a chargeback on a item I sell would mean a substantial loss that would take quite a few other sales to recover just to break even. 

If Ebay wants sellers to accept Managed Payment (not that we were given a choice), perhaps they need to imrpove the security somehow and introduce some sort of verification when people create accounts, rather than forcing sellers just to accept whatever they come up with

[prosperityreiki]

Yes, I'm realizing you are right and this negative feedback is actually more of a positive as it shows potential sellers I  am serious about not shipping to suspicious buyers. It certainly hasnt affected sales at all so far

[cardconnoisseurs]

If chargebacks are such an issue for you, have you considared sending your items with tracking? This will successfully defend against 99% of chargebacks. We as sellers cannot be held financially liable for unauthorized purchases, provided we act in good faith, and can verify delivery of the goods/service. For our purposes, this entails sending an order with tracking. 

Of the 6-7 chargebacks we had this fiscal year, all but two were funded by the bank, or denied. Knowing how to respond to a chargeback claim is a skill in and of itself. If you have your guns loaded, and are willing to use them, you can even defend a claim WITHOUT tracking sometimes. 

[femmefan1946]

Managed Payments is so difficult to sign up for, that I suspect eBay has been trying to control the number of fake selling accounts, and hacked abandoned accounts with the signup process.

I guess we'll see when MP is rolled out world wide. I understand that Germany, USA , and Canada have been the first to be enrolled.

[prosperityreiki]

All orders are sent with tracking and signature upon delivery. Courier only delivery, no postal deliveries. That still will leave you on the hook if someone uses a hacked account, with the attached paypal/credit card thats registered on the account, to ship to a different name and address than the owner of the account. The credit card company will do everything possible to not take the loss themselves, and pass it onto someone else

[prosperityreiki]

The problem usually is hacked dormant buyer accounts, not selling accounts. Paypal added an additional security layer to spot those accounts, as it was very difficult for a hacker to have the password to both the ebay and associated paypal account in order to change the info and make them match. Now its become very simple for a hacker to change the info ...

[pjcdn2005]

Before Managed Payment when a buyer paid on ebay they would indicate the address that they want to use or add a new address. That address would be carried over to Paypal and would show on both ebay and PP so the only address the seller would see on both sites would be the one the buyer used when checking out.  Although people often said that that the seller should use the Paypal address when they are different, the fact is that they have not been different for years and that the 'seller protection' address was the payment address...which is the only address the seller could see.  It didn't mattered which name or address the buyer had registered on ebay or PP..it only mattered which name and address was used when paying.

If a buyer claims on Managed Payments  that they don't recognize the charge and the seller can show that the item was delivered to the payment address, ebay does state that they will protect the seller.

When a buyer reports that they don't recognize the transaction:

• You provided proof of delivery that included the following:
  • The tracking number provided by the shipping company uploaded to the site by the date indicated in the payment dispute notification email or resolution center;
  • A delivery status of "delivered";
  • Date of delivery;
  • The recipient's address, showing at least the city/county or postcode (or international equivalent) that matches the address displayed on the Order details page; and
  • Proof of signature confirmation, uploaded as an image, if the order has a total cost (including shipping and taxes) of $750 or more.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-protections?id=4345&st=12&pos=2&query=Sell...

[prosperityreiki]

From my personal experience, my saving grace with fighting previous charge backs was requiring the signature upon delivery. It didn't matter the item was under $700, the agent clearly told me that was their deciding factor. The particular item that I sell at the moment is over $700 so I will not absolutely not ship without it.

However, that creates another situation that happened actually today.  I had an order from a remote region, some god-forsaken place, some postal code which there is no way one could foresee, so instead of the $30 the buyer was charged for shipping according to the zone charts I filled out, the actual shipping cost was $200. Canada Post and Purolator were a LOT cheaper, however CP doesnt collect signatures anymore, and Purolator didnt for this particular destination. UPS was my only choice, but there is no way I'm gonna take a $170 loss so naturally, I cancelled the order. The buyer could have easily given negative feedback, it's just my luck he didnt,  because he was actually quite upset I cancelled the transaction. Anyhow, this underscored the current feedback system is broken, and there absolutely needs to be a way to remove negative feedback.

[femmefan1946]

I agree that using Signature Confirmation is a good way to stop false claims of non-reciept, even when the purchase value is much below eBay's demand.

While Canada Post doesn't collect signatures any more, tyler@ebay has confirmed that the carrier's declaration of delivery is acceptable.
Better would be marking any such packages "No Safe Drop" which should make the carrier return the package to the local PO where it would have to be picked up by the recipient or her agent.

If you use Calculated Shipping, the buyer sees the cost of shipping to her address. If you need to use a package service, it is always, in my opinion, better to use Calculated than Flat Rate.

Did you discuss the shipping cost with the buyer before cancelling? If she agrees it has been my understanding that you can raise the shipping cost (but if you used Calculated the discussion would be unnecessary)

Feedback is a 20th century legacy of the early internet.  I have reviewed a few purchases on other sites, but in 99% of purchases, I buy, I pay, I get.  No need for stroking the seller's ego. EBay could drop it entirely and no harm done.

[hlmacdon]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Managed Payments is so difficult to sign up for, that I suspect eBay has been trying to control the number of fake selling accounts, and hacked abandoned accounts with the signup process.

I guess we'll see when MP is rolled out world wide. I understand that Germany, USA , and Canada have been the first to be enrolled.

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Two factors, one being the operating agreement with paypal that caps the number of users they can have on a competiting payment system. This is likely why they are so inflexible when things go awry with registration. The other one is they are going extremely conservative with their KYC/AML obligations , bearing in mind many sellers have been setup for years with ebay and already provide personally identifying information as well as business information.  The way they have setup things now a few data entry errors or the oft suggested just make your microdeposits fail by entering gibberish is enough to get you flagged as a suspcious account so now you have two barriers to entry. They definitely seem to be trying to weed out illegitimate accounts based on how much grief they give you should something go awry.

 I've yet to see a courier take a signature in over a year now.  With the way managed payments handles chargebacks it is now easier for a determined bad actor to scam you as ebay seems to have little interest in presenting any evidence to the bank or card issuer as they've decided it is financially advantageous to just automate everything, cut costs, and dump everything on the seller.

[prosperityreiki]

Unfortunately, calculated rate is way, way off the mark in my case (using UPS and Purolator exclusively) so that's not an option. I have to create shipping charts myself, but even those have their drawbacks for remote zone in Canada. For example, there are postal codes of remote villages in quebec, ontario , manitoba, etc that the actual shipping is around $200 in my case, while it's usually half that for the other postal codes that would be covered by the rural Ontario chart. The simple solution which I've arrived at is to charge everyone in  a certain zone the highest possible shipping cost in that zone, but that assumes I know ahead of time what that particualr postal code is, which is impossible. It would be nice to be able to have the ability to simply ban certain postal codes ranges from ordering Anyhow, this should be the subject of another post, as should be the fact that Ebay has a bug with certain rarely used postal codes where it offers free shipping no matter what I input into the shipping zone charts

Raising the shipping cost after the payment is done is not an option as far as I can tell, also it introduces mistrust, plus this is just more hassle, as just like ebay, I'm trying to automate things as much as possible to save time and costs for everyone, so the less communication the better on everyone's part.

[mr.special-editions]

First off what you need to understand is there's a cost of doing business it's your error on the shipping and your mistake was using a courier.   You have a choice eat the loss or face negative feedback (again this was your error the buyer should of given you neg) and a defect from eBay.  Personally I pride myself on being an honest seller and that means I would eat the loss, it happens.  Also you are selling PS5's there's more than $200 profit they cost $629.99 and even bundled ones with a controller still only cost $719.99.  Most of your profit would be gone for the shipping but you would still walk a way with a little.

Unless you are importing them into Canada and cannot claim an ITC or you are selling consoles and breaking Canadian tax laws.

eBays calculated rates on items you sell PS5's and Xbox's are pretty accurate via Canada Post.  You can get signatures via Canada Post on top of they are a bit easier to deal with for insurance claims.  Good luck getting $1000 out of UPS.

Canada Post online 'Snap Ship'

Signature + Card for Pick Up

You're welcome!

[prosperityreiki]

It's obvious you haven't dealt with Canada Post lately. Indeed, other sellers do use Canada Post and I've had regular packages take over a month, with one going criss cross across the country from Ontario to Alberta and back lol. Xpress, their fastest option, takes a week. Plus there is no signature option anymore, at all. Thus there is no way I'd entrust them with a package worth $50 let alone $1000. On the other hand, UPS or Purolator get it there within 2-3 days for most locations, even to the US. In fact shipping to the US is faster than within Canada, but again, that's another story

As far as refusing to eat a $200 loss, there is nothing dishonest about that. It's like saying you would take advantage of a business if they made a mistake or oversight on an item they were selling by $200 and you, as a buyer, would insist they honor that oversight. The dishonesty is on part of the buyer in this case taking advantage of a mistake or a platform shortcoming in this case. And yes, maybe I'd come out with a profit even after eating the shipping cost, but then again that's irrelevant, because I can make the full amount  selloing to the next customer, which would ensure I'd get paid fairly for my work of sourcing the items. And this is lots of hard work, trust me, they are not exactly easy to get.