I tried to return some clothing purchased on Ebay that was supposed to be equivalent of a Men's XL but was child-sized. The seller strung me along and the return address was random parts of Canadian locales strung together, like "Toronto, New Brunswick" with a postal code in BC. eBay kept saying "you have to use the return address" while the seller kept offering small but increasing refunds if I'd cancel my compaint (yeah sure).
It took weeks but I eventually got all my money back. It was obvious this was an overseas seller who never intended to accept returns, but eBay obviously didn't care.
- Open a "not as described" case against the seller
- When they say you should return it, ask them for a prepaid label to do the return, which is your right, never pay to return it yourself, especially if they claim they will refund your costs (they won't)
- When they invariably don't give you the return label, or a refund, or something else to your satisfaction, raise it with eBay (after the requisite number of days), who will refund your purchase
This is why I stopped using eBay to sell things as a regular person - I just list them on Gumtree now. The last few times I used eBay to sell things it ended up essentially as theft, the buyer claims some attribute was not as described, eBay automatically side with the buyer and they get to keep the item and the money. As a seller you're out of pocket.
Meh, so what. If you use it for selling then yeah it sucks but if it’s for buying only, the feedback doesn’t matter so I personally would rather get my money back and open yet another account. But I understand it can be a problem for some.
Also, how is it even possible for a company to close your account if you charge back and win?? “We tried to rip you off once, you didn’t let us, so we don’t want to trade with you anymore” is an interesting stance.
The example you've provided of making it difficult to return an item (and thus also difficult to claim a refund) is growing, and it's something that I have also seen on Amazon.
As for Ebay I refer to it as the "place your grandparents go to get scammed" because there are simply too many gaps in their processes that allow scams to flourish and Ebay's customer service are only permitted to accept very specific types of evidence. This inflexibility allows scammers to thrive there.
I personally swore off Ebay after dealing with another type of scam that was operating in the UK. Whereby Ebay recognised unregistered mail tracking labels as if they were a fully tracked courier service. Scammers in the UK caught onto this error, providing a scam which goes roughly like this:
1. You buy expensive item on Ebay from scammer (usually a hacked account).
2. The scammer acquires Royal Mail tracking labels. (It's possible to pre-purchase them as Royal Mail aren't going to record the delivery address, unlike a fully tracked service where each label is associated with an address and parcel specs.)
3. The scammer assembles a basic parcel and addresses it to an address that is near the victim, but not exactly the victim's address. Typically the address will be a nearby convenience store as they will sign everything that comes in.
3. The scammer applies one of their Royal Mail tracking labels and drops off the parcel in a post box.
4. The tracking label's barcode is automatically scanned as it passes through sorting centres, however the address on the package is never recorded by Royal Mail; the tracking is effectively solely for the label.
5. The parcel is delivered to the false, but nearby address. The Royal Mail system receives a signature, a GPS imprint and a time of delivery - but crucially again the address is not recorded by Royal Mail.
At this stage you can see how the scam comes about. All a scammer needs to do is send anything to a nearby address and Ebay will deny refund requests because the scammer has a tracking history from Royal Mail.
However to be fair to Royal Mail, their website for this product clearly stated that it was not a fully tracked service, a nod to the shortcomings of the approach. I believe the product has now also been discontinued, instead now a photo of the delivery is taken - which would provide useful evidence to stop this kind of fraud.
My teenage son loves exclusive hard to get sneakers. I’ve tried to indulge him on sites dedicated to 3rd party apparel sales, but there are endless scams of people putting something like “Size 12 men’s”, and what you get is a size 12 toddlers.
You can eventually get your money back but the friction in the process is very high and time consuming.
They can. In the UK at least. I suppose there's a game theory element that if people know they get to keep the item then they could game the system themselves.
People certainly game Amazon, I've had m.2 ssd boxes arrive with nothing in them. Clearly someone's ordered it, kept it and returned the box but it costs Amazon more to track this sort of stuff than to just accept some losses.
It took weeks but I eventually got all my money back. It was obvious this was an overseas seller who never intended to accept returns, but eBay obviously didn't care.