Ebay customer service...what a joke!
 

eBay strikes again. Got up this morning and found a negative from a "buyer" in a foreign country. We had an item a while back and a buyer from Austria wanted to buy. The buyer was told that we do not ship outside of the United States and she bid anyhow. eBay was contacted and they advised us to issue a transaction cancellation and we did so. Never heard anything from the buyer until feedback was left today buy this buyer who did not pay for an item.

I called eBay to dispute the feedback and they said that this did not violate eBay policy even though there were blatant lies in the feedback. Buyer claimed that we cancelled due to fact that we did not get enough money for item when the transaction was cancelled due to fact that we do not do foreign shipping. I said for the record, the buyer can lie in the feedback and not pay for an item and still leave negative feedback and this was not against eBay policy. The eBay person said that this is allowable and the feedback had to stay. What a joke!!!

As it has been said before, eBay does nothing to protect sellers from idiot buyers. Bring me back the old feedback system where you can leave negatives for buyers.

I think on ebay under: Account => Site Preferences => Selling Preferences => Shipping Preferences => Exclude Shipping Locations From Your Listings

you can remove the ability of foreign buyers to bid on your listings. I think you can also do something similar when you create each individual listing on ebay.

Hi Gary,

We actually did that after we dealt with this idiot the first time. My point in the post is that eBay says it is okay to lie in a feedback and have not paid for and item and still leave negative feedback. Lies and malicious feedback are apparently not against eBay rules.

Thanks,

Ken

Sorry, Ken, I think you are probably screwed. It looks like the buyer waited until the last minute to leave feedback, so you might also want to leave negative "positive" feedback also. Sometimes, if you call ebay and speak to a different person, they might be more helpful, but they could also not change anything so might not be worth your time.

Using silence and reading In between the lines you could tell that the operator did not agree with what the buyer had done but she wasn't going to do anything about it. Typical corporate crap where something didn't exactly fit into their little predone senario so they weren't going to do anything about it. They said the only thing we could do is contact the buyer and request a feedback revision. Really.........I mean really if a person intentionally abused the feedback system do you think they would change their feedback? NOT!!!

similar story
 

back on Nov. 17 buyer won a PSA card which he got and left me a positive feedback. On Dec. 27th he wanted his money back because he sent the card to BGS and they did not cross the card over. Total joke. If you want a BGS card then buy it in BGS holder. He got the card, very happy, 35 days later because BGS feels they want to piss off a PSA client had to return the money. Ebay does nothing to protect the sellers no matter what the case might be.

Did the buyer accept the cancellation? If they didn't, file a NPB and when they don't pay you should be able to get the negative FB removed.

According to eBay, they did not accept the cancellation. I never saw a notice one way or the other on cancellation. We did report the buyer as she made demands that we ship to somewhere that we had already said we would not ship to before she bid. I asked the operator if we could open up a non paying bidder case and since the buyer did not accept the cancellation she said we couldn't.

I had something similar happen to me a couple weeks ago.

I just started selling on ebay and I was selling a bath fan. When I was originally filling out the listing i skipped right past that section where you can block certain countries from bidding. I just assumed that nobody was dumb enough to buy a $30 bath fan that weighs 11lbs and pay to have it shipped overseas..... silly me.

Sure as heck ... within a couple hours of listing someone from some conglomeration of islands somewhere on earth (I dont remember where they were from but it wasn't Kansas) messages me and asks how much it costs to have it shipped to them. I tell them that I don't ship overseas on items like this.

They kindly thanked me for my time and then bid on it anyways. :eek:

Luckily they got overbid and didnt win the auction ..... but I learned my lesson and now I TRIPLE CHECK that I have those boxes checked on items that I won't ship overseas.

Wow, people are so brazen! And eBay feels a need to protect them? I think if anyone is stupid enough to bid and they do so anyhow, they should have their bidding privledges to bid revolked. They obviously failed their reading classes.

Anyone care to share their eBay IDs to the rest of us can block them from bidding?

This person was bidding on some non sports card items but will gladly give the name if you want it.

I believe it was

mdjcro-2008_2009

Since he/she didnt win an item, and I had about 10 of those fans all sold within a few days ..... I checked some bid history and im pretty sure thats him.

Again .... this was for a bathroom exhaust fan .... definitely not sports related at all :)

Here it is for you member name l07c27201010

Member is from Austria

I'm going back and forth with somebody right now.

After auction is won I get a message:

"Why is shipping $42.95"

my answer in short

"Because you are in Australia, that's what the approximate cost is. Price for non-U.S. shipping was stated twice in the description"

his answer:

"Can't you just roll the poster up in a tube"

my reply:

"No, it's cardboard".............(which was also stated in the auction, and the fact it had to be shipped flat, twice in the same auction listing.)

Haven't heard back. Almost hope they don't pay.

Ken,

Use the "Report A Buyer" button on your feedback page (towards the top right, should be over the "Seller Dashboard" link). Explain that the buyer contacted you, ignored your response that you don't ship overseas, and never paid for the item, and tell them that you don't think a buyer should be able to leave a negative for an item they never paid for. Be matter of fact, don't curse or inflate the situation, and there's a good chance that the neg will be pulled (may take as much as a month or so, and you probably won't get any notice of it, it'll just disappear). I've had much better luck with this process than I ever have with calling and getting a live person to do anything. I don't know if it goes through different channels or what, but all I've ever gotten out of live reps is faux sympathy and no helpful action.

In the future, you're probably NOT better off putting in the transaction cancellation request the way you did, because eBay leaves it up to the buyer whether they want to agree with it or not. As you found out, if they say, "No, I still want it" but then still don't pay, you can't do the usual NPB process. Chances are, if you've flat out told them you won't ship to their country, they're not going to try to send you the payment. Even if they do, you can refund it, and then still do the NPB process. The key being that buyers that fail to pay for an item and have an NPB claim filed against them cannot leave negative feedback (or if they already have, but don't pay, the neg will be pulled once the NPB claim is finalized).

Will definitely try this one. Thanks

eBay just proved to me what idiots they are again. Sold a bunch of cards and was leaving feedback and accidentally left a feedback on the wrong buyer who had not paid yet. Realized my mistake and called to have feedback removed as it was left for the wrong buyer. eBay lady with Indian accent said that there was no way to remove feedback since it was not a negative or neutral. Didn't matter that the feedback was left for the wrong buyer so she cannot remove it. Get the same lady every time I call and I am beginning to think she is either stupid or just plain lazy and doesn't want to do her job. eBay itself said in their print that if feedback was left for the wrong buyer to contact them.......for what? As I have said before costomer service at eBay is pathetic.

I agree with Lance completely with his 2nd paragraph.
Unfortunately ebay allows negative feedback even if the buyer agrees to a cancellation!

Our lovely Joey Farino did this to me after he accepted the cancellation but he was nice enough to revise the feedback after we conversed nicely.

But he didn't have to! If a cancellation is accepted by both parties, no way should an bad feedback be permitted!

I would take this one step further and say that if no money exchanged hands then negative feedback should not be allowed. Common sense to me if you know what I mean. But the eBay and common sense really d not belong in the same sentence.

If you left a positive feedback for the wrong buyer, and later decide that the Positive was accurate but would have left a different comment, you can always "Follow up to Feedback Left For Others". Won't change the original comment, but you could maybe cram a short explanation for the unrelated comment into the few characters allowed for the follow-up:

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...ewFeedbackLeft

Have no reason to think that the buyer that I left feedback on will not deserve a positive feedback, I just left it before person has paid which is not what I normally do. Person has good feedback already and I would expect it to continue. The point is in print (eBays own words) they said to contact them if this happens and they tell me there is nothing they can do. Why tell a person to contact them if this happens so they can do nothing. Doesn't make any sense. As I said earlier in my posts, I am beginning to think that something can be done but this one person chooses not to do anything. I have been in business before and had employees like this.