First Possible Return from Ebay

Originally Posted by Phantoms001

I totally understand your point, I do agree with you 100%, but the reality is that this is not the way it works in real life. Walmart will give you a refund on things purchased at other stores (people come in with no receipt and if they make enough noise they will get store credit), restaurants comp meals all the time that someone says was bad (even though they ate most of it), Paypal and Ebay are going to side with the Buyer, they have to in order to stay in business.

It sounds like your problem is that you need to decide on what fights are worth fighting.

Ebay and Paypal are both designed to protect the BUYER. You can do a google search on "screwed selling on ebay" and will find THOUSANDS of complaints from sellers that just got the short end of the stick. The more searches you do the more complaints you will find. I've seen people have tens of thousands of dollars frozen in their paypal account.

I have better things to do with my time then fight a losing battle with Paypal over a few dollars. As I said before, this is the reason I do not sell high dollar items on ebay. I will find another outlet. You should be completely prepared to LOSE anything you are selling on ebay and eat the shipping costs.

I could buy your RAM, send you a message via ebay that it was bad, send you an empty padded envelope with tracking, and guarantee you 100% I would get my money back while keeping the memory. Other posters here will tell you the same thing. It's part of doing business on Ebay, you just hope you avoid the slugs and honest people buy.

By all means, run your business what ever way makes you happy and the most money. I'm certainly not criticizing your practices or ethics. I'm just give you a few thoughts so that you don't have to learn an expensive lesson the hard way. Why reinvent the wheel?

True, and I understand fully on how ebay and paypal work. They are in it for the people who make THEM money. What they don't get and understand, is that it is BOTH the seller AND buyers that make them money. Without one, there is no other.

If someone tried to mess me over on a deal, I wouldn't worry about handling it through ebay and paypal. What everyone does keep forgetting though, is that when you complete a transaction, you have the buyers/sellers information. As long as you keep good records, you deal with paypal and ebay to keep good with them, and you sue the buyer/seller outside of ebay.

Again, this isn't about the worth of an item, or what someone sells it for, or reputation, etc. It is just the principal of the matter.

Also, yes, I agree that Walmart and many restaurants do this all the time. That is their business model, but they are most likely the only retailers/restaurant you will ever find that will.

Businesses are not in business to get screwed over. They are in business to make money and treat customers the right way, but it is a 2 way street.

Even if a buyer bought an item (ram or other wise) and they had any issues with it, I would just ask for it back, and then refund them their money. I wouldn't care if it was really broken or not. If not, I will just resale it. If it is broken, to scrap it goes.

Even if you put in the listings that all items are sold as is, no refunds...that alone is a joke, since ebay and paypal don't care and will do it in a heartbeat.

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

True, and I understand fully on how ebay and paypal work. They are in it for the people who make THEM money. What they don't get and understand, is that it is BOTH the seller AND buyers that make them money. Without one, there is no other.

If someone tried to mess me over on a deal, I wouldn't worry about handling it through ebay and paypal. What everyone does keep forgetting though, is that when you complete a transaction, you have the buyers/sellers information. As long as you keep good records, you deal with paypal and ebay to keep good with them, and you sue the buyer/seller outside of ebay.

Again, this isn't about the worth of an item, or what someone sells it for, or reputation, etc. It is just the principal of the matter.

Also, yes, I agree that Walmart and many restaurants do this all the time. That is their business model, but they are most likely the only retailers/restaurant you will ever find that will.

Businesses are not in business to get screwed over. They are in business to make money and treat customers the right way, but it is a 2 way street.

Even if a buyer bought an item (ram or other wise) and they had any issues with it, I would just ask for it back, and then refund them their money. I wouldn't care if it was really broken or not. If not, I will just resale it. If it is broken, to scrap it goes.

Even if you put in the listings that all items are sold as is, no refunds...that alone is a joke, since ebay and paypal don't care and will do it in a heartbeat.

Yeah, we offer a 14 day return regardless. I have to have it for the Top Rated Seller discount (which on the volume that we do, is a pretty large amount at the end of the year), plus it doesn't matter if you say as is or not, if the buyer decides they do not want it, eBay will force you to refund them the money if they can show proof it was sent back.

I understand your position on taking it up with the buyer, but it doesn't work that way in the real world. It's not cost effective, or practical to file against every scammer in the world. It would cost you too much time, money, and energy, and even if you were 100% in the right every time, you are still going to lose from time to time.

Originally Posted by Phantoms001

I totally understand your point, I do agree with you 100%, but the reality is that this is not the way it works in real life. Walmart will give you a refund on things purchased at other stores (people come in with no receipt and if they make enough noise they will get store credit), restaurants comp meals all the time that someone says was bad (even though they ate most of it), Paypal and Ebay are going to side with the Buyer, they have to in order to stay in business.

It sounds like your problem is that you need to decide on what fights are worth fighting.

Ebay and Paypal are both designed to protect the BUYER. You can do a google search on "screwed selling on ebay" and will find THOUSANDS of complaints from sellers that just got the short end of the stick. The more searches you do the more complaints you will find. I've seen people have tens of thousands of dollars frozen in their paypal account.

I have better things to do with my time then fight a losing battle with Paypal over a few dollars. As I said before, this is the reason I do not sell high dollar items on ebay. I will find another outlet. You should be completely prepared to LOSE anything you are selling on ebay and eat the shipping costs.

I could buy your RAM, send you a message via ebay that it was bad, send you an empty padded envelope with tracking, and guarantee you 100% I would get my money back while keeping the memory. Other posters here will tell you the same thing. It's part of doing business on Ebay, you just hope you avoid the slugs and honest people buy.

By all means, run your business what ever way makes you happy and the most money. I'm certainly not criticizing your practices or ethics. I'm just give you a few thoughts so that you don't have to learn an expensive lesson the hard way. Why reinvent the wheel?

This is 100% correct.

If you sell on eBay and collect payments via paypal, you will almost certainly run into this eventually. And when you do, I don't care how good your legal team, documentation, etc is. You will lose. Paypal has been sued numerous times, has a history of going to court over incredibly small/petty claims, and has (since) restricted its user base from being able to file certain types of suits against them. It's all in the fine print.