Hey guys just wondering if anyone can help me out -

Recently I had a two buyers not receive goods that I DID send on eBay and even though I offered tracking and they chose standard post eBay decided to reimburse them. Their policy apparently means even though I DID send the goods and offered tracking post that I as the seller have to pay if the buyer says they didn't receive it. (Basically the buyer can just bull**** for free stuff). I thought this was ******ed so I quickly cleared my paypal account, and now "owe eBay $x".

I received an e-mail that included "For your account to be considered for reinstatement, you need to pay the balance immediately. You can do this by adding or editing your reimbursement payment method:"
"If your account remains past due, your buying and selling activity may be limited. Your account may be charged a late payment finance charge of up to 1.5 percent of your past due amount, and the account may be sent to collections."

I was just wondering if they can actually somehow collect the debt, the credit card linked to my Paypal account linked to my eBay has been since changed so they can't charge that (or my Paypal account, which is empty).. Should I be "worried"? My address is registered on eBay though but I am from a different country (New Zealand).

Thanks in advance

You are unhappy people might have stolen your goods, so you decide it's perfectly fine for you to steal from eBay?

You always include delivery confirmation when you sell things online. In this situation all you would have to do is to give eBay the number and you would get to keep the money without any hassles.

The fact that they decide to refund the buyers with this policy is stupid, so as far as I'm concerned I'm not doing anything wrong. This is irrelevant though, ignore the insignificant details - what I'm asking is pretty clear

What do you mean? If you mean give them the tracking number the buyers chose standard post so there is no tracking number to give.

Delivery Confirmation is good, but my brother sent some home entertainment system last year. Got delivered to wrong address, and got screwed big time. USPS denies shipment to wrong address! I had same thing happen to me. Got the Free Iphone case from APPLE. Sent it to wrong address, i never got it. USPS said call apple, the carrier was called by usps and said "YEAH I REMEMBER DELIVERING IT TO ME" I LOL'd to the guy who told me that. Anyway, APPLE sent me a new iphone case for free. after 3 weeks receiving the second new case, i received the first case they shipped to me. I Dunno what happened. GOOD LUCK OP

Ok to be clear IF the goods were not received by the buyers who complained, they aren't going to arrive since it's been way too long since they were sent. My question is simlpy can eBay actually do anything if I have outstanding payments owed to them - they have my address that's all

Of course they can send you to collections. What the law in NZ is, I have no idea what it will take for them to get it from you, but have fun.

You can get delivery confirmation on standard first class mail. It is like an extra 45 cents or something. I never mail anything without it to avoid conflicts like this.

Ebay sucks but you need delivery confirmation or they will side with the buyer every time.

Depending on what you are selling, I would recommend the Amazon marketplace going forward.

Edit: Not sure if you were shipping to/from new zealand or if just your address is registered there. My delivery confirmation statement was for shipping domestically within the US.

Also, I'm not sure how far along in the collection process is, but paypal will try to debit your bank account or other funding source for the amount you "owe"

Oh right might be a US thing, there is no option for delivery confirmation here. What exactly is the deal with collections?

They get someone to harass you to pay back, add on fees, and if you don't, ruin your credit.

Can they do that?? What would happen if they did it and I complained to the bank

Can they do it overseas? And would they bother for an amount less than $100?
Wow ebay buyer protection policies are so f.... ******ed zzzzzzzzzz

lol what were the buyers feedback ratings?

i had someone steal 40 bucks from me even though the item was delivered to them. they said they just received an empty box, ebay was like ok send it back to zzthe3rd. box comes and its filled with styrofoam (for the record, i sent it UPS which 1. lists the weight and 2. you give them the item, they box it. i SAW the guy put it in the box and seal it up). when i pointed out to ebay that the box i sent weighed like 5 lbs and the box i got back weighed like 2 lbs, they were like sry m8.

basically now if someone with an awful feedback rating ever buys an item from me, ill just say sorry no go (and list this in the item page as well).

Yes they do that all the time. You can ask your bank to block them I'm not sure if they can or will though.

Their feedback was ok, most likely the buyers really just didn't receive the items, but I did send them. Aka lost in post..
Regardless I closed the paypal account too, I'm guessing they can still view the details? Unfortunately can't change the address on eBay tho.

i would just pay f'ing ebay the amount owed. it is not worth potential damage they could do to your credit.

its a common mistake, but never sell anything on ebay without delivery confirmation.

unless it is a cheap item that you don't care about, always use some sort of delivery confirmation, its the only safety measure sellers have.

even if you do use delivery confirmation, the buyer can claim "item significantly not as described" and buyer will likely be reimbursed. it is generally not a good idea to sell expensive items on ebay for this very reason.

ebay is more for low cost and mid range items. buy and sell expensive locally, unless you are willing to risk it on ebay, but don't say you were not warned.

You agreed to their terms, hence not paying them is stealing.

Always send recorded delivery and you won't have these problems.
Unless you have a tracking number eBay will always side with the buyer.

What you did is wrong. You choose to involved in transactions where you knew e-Bay would be the arbitrator of any dispute and then you choose to steal from them when you disagreed with the decision. This is further aggravated by the fact that you could have avoid this by simply spending a negligible amount more on shipping.

How much money is involved?

I think someone mentioned you are in New Zealand. I have no idea what the specifics are but collections work in generally the same way in most countries. e-Bay will try to collect the debt. When they fail they will hire a third party collection agency to harass you. Collection agencies are restricted by legislation on what they cab legally do but they generally don't care and they will find sleazy ways to circumvent the rules in an effort to harass / embarrass you into paying the debt. They will also report it to the credit bureaus. This is not worth it for what I'm sure is an insignificant amount of money. If the sum is large enough they can sue you and then get a judgment but generally they don't as most debts are too small to justify it -- although they will threaten you with litigation. Eventually some years in the future the debt will be stat barred and then it will be sold to a last resort collection agency who really can't do anything to you except harass this **** out of you and embarrass you -- they are very good at this.

So basically while e-Bay likely can't do anything to force you to give them the funds you are basically choosing a to have damage done to your credit rating, years of harassment, and the inability to use e-Bay under your own name in the future so you can keep a few hundred dollars (likely even less) that don't belong to you. Seems like a horrible deal to me.

have you actually tried contacting ebay and explaining the situation? that didnt seem clear in your post.

there could be some sort of override they could do for this small amount of money.

you could also ask them the steps they will take if you refuse to pay.

thats what i would do.... but i mean if it falls through just pay and learn a fairly cheap lesson imo.

I skimmed this thread so sorry if I'm repeating.

Most likely if those two buyers are claiming they didn't receive what you sent, EBay probably had some automated system, and they will always side with the buyer. EBay has probably been screwed so many times by sellers who steal people's money that they just take the buyer's word for it now.

I would say to contact EBay and explain the situation to a real person who may be able to override the system. Tell them you offered tracking and the buyer's decided on standard shipping. That falls on the buyers now since they took the risk of truly not having it delivered and having no idea where it may be.

I can't see how this is your fault. It's pretty ridiculous that this happens and I don't know why people on here are siding with the buyers also. If I offer you insurance and you don't buy it, then something happens and it gets broken, it's not my fault that you didn't buy insurance. I offered it to you and you didn't buy it so you took the chance of something happening along the way. It's no longer my problem once the package gets shipped.

OP, if you have receipts, I would get a picture of them and show them to EBay also.

Although this sounds reasonable its not the reality. Sellers are responsible until the goods arrive, the insurance is for the seller not the buyer. Sellers shouldn't offer the choice of insurance but should include it in the p&p price unless the seller is willing to assume the risk.

It's ******ed but I do accept it's their policy. Unfortunately sellers are effectively forced to send with tracking/confirmation which may be easy in the States but for someone like me selling small items (in terms of $ value) it's terrible because I pretty much can't sell at a profit since other competitors can sell the same item with cheaper post. Normal post is about $1.50 US, tracked is like $7US.... Given the items are usually only like $10-20US you can see why offering tracking is pretty dumb.. I partly knew of this before but didn't think it was that extreme, offering tracking I thought would have been enough but yeah.

The total amount is less than $100 US

Anyway I'll try contact eBay, don't think they will agree though - they simply refunded the buyers who reported not receiving their goods after a month (which is about the maximum it can take for goods to arrive). In NZ for example if tracking is offered but the buyer doesn't choose it because they want to save the money it's their problem, although the seller can help sort it out with the post office etc. I mean I have receipts of stamps but that doesn't really prove anything. The same stamps are used to send local and overseas (obviously overseas require more stamps).