I don't know if this is the appropriate section to post this, so my apologies if it isn't.
Well then, I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but it's still going to be long, so bear with me :\
I sell stuff on ebay, mostly cards and stickers. I'm not one of those professional sellers, whose business life is based solely on selling. I began as a buyer only, then got myself with so many "extras" that I began to try to sell what I had to spare. Also some opportunities to resell stuff I found cheap. You know, home business lol.
It's been going about 4 years and even though I had my bad moments, I can't really complain, because the 99% (or so) of the transactions were smoothly gone by. And the money helped me save a lot when doing my collections. So with this, I thank eBay for providing me the worldwide space and of course, the buyers who trusted me when buying my items, some of them became regular
And in return, I always try to provide an excellent service, be a single lousy sticker or some complete card set with binder. Never got a negative feedback and scores are no less than 4,9.
But, today I lost my faith on ebay. Like I wrote before, I had my bad moments and actually, ebay didn't help with that. The only moments they did was almost in a threatning mood I had to be in. One or another, I got a decent customer service helper, who really read and understood my messages. But today, what happened was something I never thought it would (or maybe I did, but refused to believe that would be even possible in such a company).
Let me tell you right away: this isn't about money. At least not entirely. It's about despicable attitudes, laziness and bad quality (and recurrent) service. Something that my "sense of justice" can't really accept, even though I see injustices every single minute. Anyway, sorry for the intro. Here we go.
One month ago, I sold some cards to a UK guy. Cards had their value, but nothing major. Also, buyer had a nice feedback, so I didn't see any reason to send signed-in. So, cards were sent by standard postage, as I usually do.
Two weeks after, buyer opened a case, claiming he didn't receive the cards. It usually takes about 1 week, even less, for UK buyers to receive it, so it's "normal" to be concerned after two weeks. Still, since we had Christmas and New Year's gone by recently, there still can be delays. So I asked the buyer to wait one more week.
After waiting that week, buyer told me he still didn't receive it (I must say, he was always very polite). I know pretty well how eBay works with these situations, so I asked the buyer if he wanted to be refunded or the same cards to be resent (luckily, I still had more). He still wanted the cards, so the next day, I sent them again, now signed-in (with tracking available). At my own expenses, of course. And after sending that, in the same day I provided the tracking number to both ebay and buyer, with the carrier's name.
Now comes the "wtf" part: after 5 days, instead of waiting to receive the cards, buyer escalated the case, meaning he wanted eBay to make a decision (yet, he still left a message for them that he still wanted the cards). When I saw this, I sent a message to the buyer, because I didn't understand why he did that, so I politely asked him why he didn't wait to receive the new cards. I even told him that, according to the tracking, the cards were already in UK, so he should receive them by Monday or Tuesday. So far, no answer from him.
But! Do you think this was the worst part? Naaaahhhh... eBay has quickly "reviewed" the case and decided in buyer's favour, claiming that "We've received insufficient tracking information from you. You must provide tracking information in the Resolution Centre before a case can be escalated". Am I dumb? I've provided the tracking number BEFORE buyer escalated the case, with the carrier's name, so even if you can't check the tracking within eBay (they have a bunch of carriers listed, but not the portuguese postal services), you can easily track the parcel on the carrier's page (even in the destination postal services page, which is Royal Mail in this case)... But maybe I'm just too naive to believe this is an easy task for everyone, specially those ebay analysts.
After a decision is made, you have 30 days to appeal a case. So after I saw this outrageous outcome, I immediately
tried to do it, but guess what? You can't! Following every step eBay tells you to do just leaves you in dead ends. Actually, I couldn't even send a simple message to them, after they've redesigned the customer centre to "triage" better the customer's needs... In my honest opinion, this is more like: "if we can't hear sellers complaints, then they don't exist".
In the end, I had to send a message to Paypal under the "Seller Protection" issue, but I'm not really expecting they do anything. I've provided also the tracking number in Paypal transaction (again, with the carrier's name included), but if they're like eBay, it'll be ignored.
I'll keep trying to solve this mess, but I saw so many complaints about how eBay just always decide in buyer's favour that I'm thinking this will be a meaningless "crusade". Like I wrote before, this is not about the money, even though I lost the money, a bunch of cards and the postage I had to pay (one tracked, so it wasn't cheap). This was a very huge alert that you, a seller, are not one bit protected. I also buy stuff on ebay and I had to complain whenever I didn't receive anything, not as described or in bad condition. I can easily access all the options, at least I always managed to do so. And if I remember correctly, every single purchase problem I reported was solved (not always for the best, but still acceptable). So I know how empowered the buyers are. What I didn't know was that, the fewest layers of protection that a seller have are just useless.
Ebay can claim whatever they want, send me mails of how protected I am and how that has avoided opening cases to soon to me or leaving bad scores (it seems I have some kind of knight in shining armor that have my back, though there's no shed of proof about what they claim, because they don't disclosure any detailed info about it), but in the end, when it really matters, they fail miserably. I had some issues in the past that confirm this, but this particular situation just proves it.
So, this can be also serve as a warning to all people who sell (or want to sell) on eBay. Of course, these situations are the exceptions and rarely happen, but when they do, the so called "seller protection" is just rubbish. Try to solve things by your own in their customer service centre and you'll be faced with countless of "walls" and "dead ends". And I bet they're so proud, probably believing they had such great tools to help sellers. Probably sellers complaints have drastically decreased, but if they think it was for their work... Well, I just laughed now
Sorry for the long, long, too long post, but that's how I am, always cared to explain everything, to avoid misunderstandings... You know, as eBay clearly do... Oh, laughed again!
Well then, I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but it's still going to be long, so bear with me :\
I sell stuff on ebay, mostly cards and stickers. I'm not one of those professional sellers, whose business life is based solely on selling. I began as a buyer only, then got myself with so many "extras" that I began to try to sell what I had to spare. Also some opportunities to resell stuff I found cheap. You know, home business lol.
It's been going about 4 years and even though I had my bad moments, I can't really complain, because the 99% (or so) of the transactions were smoothly gone by. And the money helped me save a lot when doing my collections. So with this, I thank eBay for providing me the worldwide space and of course, the buyers who trusted me when buying my items, some of them became regular
And in return, I always try to provide an excellent service, be a single lousy sticker or some complete card set with binder. Never got a negative feedback and scores are no less than 4,9.But, today I lost my faith on ebay. Like I wrote before, I had my bad moments and actually, ebay didn't help with that. The only moments they did was almost in a threatning mood I had to be in. One or another, I got a decent customer service helper, who really read and understood my messages. But today, what happened was something I never thought it would (or maybe I did, but refused to believe that would be even possible in such a company).
Let me tell you right away: this isn't about money. At least not entirely. It's about despicable attitudes, laziness and bad quality (and recurrent) service. Something that my "sense of justice" can't really accept, even though I see injustices every single minute. Anyway, sorry for the intro. Here we go.
One month ago, I sold some cards to a UK guy. Cards had their value, but nothing major. Also, buyer had a nice feedback, so I didn't see any reason to send signed-in. So, cards were sent by standard postage, as I usually do.
Two weeks after, buyer opened a case, claiming he didn't receive the cards. It usually takes about 1 week, even less, for UK buyers to receive it, so it's "normal" to be concerned after two weeks. Still, since we had Christmas and New Year's gone by recently, there still can be delays. So I asked the buyer to wait one more week.
After waiting that week, buyer told me he still didn't receive it (I must say, he was always very polite). I know pretty well how eBay works with these situations, so I asked the buyer if he wanted to be refunded or the same cards to be resent (luckily, I still had more). He still wanted the cards, so the next day, I sent them again, now signed-in (with tracking available). At my own expenses, of course. And after sending that, in the same day I provided the tracking number to both ebay and buyer, with the carrier's name.
Now comes the "wtf" part: after 5 days, instead of waiting to receive the cards, buyer escalated the case, meaning he wanted eBay to make a decision (yet, he still left a message for them that he still wanted the cards). When I saw this, I sent a message to the buyer, because I didn't understand why he did that, so I politely asked him why he didn't wait to receive the new cards. I even told him that, according to the tracking, the cards were already in UK, so he should receive them by Monday or Tuesday. So far, no answer from him.
But! Do you think this was the worst part? Naaaahhhh... eBay has quickly "reviewed" the case and decided in buyer's favour, claiming that "We've received insufficient tracking information from you. You must provide tracking information in the Resolution Centre before a case can be escalated". Am I dumb? I've provided the tracking number BEFORE buyer escalated the case, with the carrier's name, so even if you can't check the tracking within eBay (they have a bunch of carriers listed, but not the portuguese postal services), you can easily track the parcel on the carrier's page (even in the destination postal services page, which is Royal Mail in this case)... But maybe I'm just too naive to believe this is an easy task for everyone, specially those ebay analysts.
After a decision is made, you have 30 days to appeal a case. So after I saw this outrageous outcome, I immediately
tried to do it, but guess what? You can't! Following every step eBay tells you to do just leaves you in dead ends. Actually, I couldn't even send a simple message to them, after they've redesigned the customer centre to "triage" better the customer's needs... In my honest opinion, this is more like: "if we can't hear sellers complaints, then they don't exist".
In the end, I had to send a message to Paypal under the "Seller Protection" issue, but I'm not really expecting they do anything. I've provided also the tracking number in Paypal transaction (again, with the carrier's name included), but if they're like eBay, it'll be ignored.
I'll keep trying to solve this mess, but I saw so many complaints about how eBay just always decide in buyer's favour that I'm thinking this will be a meaningless "crusade". Like I wrote before, this is not about the money, even though I lost the money, a bunch of cards and the postage I had to pay (one tracked, so it wasn't cheap). This was a very huge alert that you, a seller, are not one bit protected. I also buy stuff on ebay and I had to complain whenever I didn't receive anything, not as described or in bad condition. I can easily access all the options, at least I always managed to do so. And if I remember correctly, every single purchase problem I reported was solved (not always for the best, but still acceptable). So I know how empowered the buyers are. What I didn't know was that, the fewest layers of protection that a seller have are just useless.
Ebay can claim whatever they want, send me mails of how protected I am and how that has avoided opening cases to soon to me or leaving bad scores (it seems I have some kind of knight in shining armor that have my back, though there's no shed of proof about what they claim, because they don't disclosure any detailed info about it), but in the end, when it really matters, they fail miserably. I had some issues in the past that confirm this, but this particular situation just proves it.
So, this can be also serve as a warning to all people who sell (or want to sell) on eBay. Of course, these situations are the exceptions and rarely happen, but when they do, the so called "seller protection" is just rubbish. Try to solve things by your own in their customer service centre and you'll be faced with countless of "walls" and "dead ends". And I bet they're so proud, probably believing they had such great tools to help sellers. Probably sellers complaints have drastically decreased, but if they think it was for their work... Well, I just laughed now
Sorry for the long, long, too long post, but that's how I am, always cared to explain everything, to avoid misunderstandings... You know, as eBay clearly do... Oh, laughed again!
