eBay.com lost case

[oRen]

Hey,

I got a question regarding a lost item case on ebay.com.
I have send out 3 cards to a buyer who now claims that he has never received a letter from me.
The purchase was sent not trackable so I got no proof that he is not just trying to scam money out of me while I got a bill that clearly states that I have send out a letter on that day.
He was whining a quite a lot and finally ebay judged this case in his favor.

I am not able to understand how this is possible. IF I get my money back on every non trackable send purchase just by claiming that I did not receive my item this platform is highly ridicules.

Anyone got some serious piece of advice ? Just suck it and never use ebay again ?

[Jonathan Alexander]

Issues like this have been reported several times on this site and noone really came up with a good solution for that problem as far as I remember. But I do remember several people claiming that ebay has always been with the buyers in these cases. I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of sellers don't sell to specific countries. I think the best solution is to only send your items via registered mail but apart from that there's not much you can do.

[Tha Gunslinga]

If you don't have tracking, you will lose every case. There's absolutely nothing you can do except either stop selling or accept that occasionally this will happen.

[Richard Cheese]

See the EBay thread:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?10997-How-to-get-the-most-out-of-Ebay

Gunslinga is right. If it's worth a significant amount of money, make sure you get a tracking number.

[Mr.Dieth]

I had the exact same situation.
Wasn't a thing I could do about it.
I am really sure that person was just scamming me ..

[cdr]

You're naieve at best if you send something paid for with paypal without a tracking number.

Take it as a lesson; first-class package (use a small bubble mailer padded to be 3/4" thick) with delivery confirmation is about $1.80.

[Tacosnape]

The wiser thing to do is just not sell anything with Ebay ever. Ebay is a buyer's website. You're an idiot if you sell anything on there, and are risking a lot of difficulties. I actually know someone who paid his bills for two months claiming disputes on items he never recieved, then re-selling them in other markets. He disappeared shortly thereafter, so it likely caught up with him, but there you go. Smart people just don't sell on Ebay.

The realities of the situation are as follows. If you don't use a tracking number, you won't ever ever ever win a dispute under any circumstances. I can be sitting here with the item in my hand, Open a dispute with NO TEXT, and then refuse all communication, and win. This happened to me.

Also, you can lose with a tracking number on overseas shipments. So don't ever ship internationally.

[cdr]

That's possibly a little overboard.

eBay (which owns PayPal) is definitely an evil monopoly - like, telco monopoly level evil. Evil evil.

But there's a reason millions of people still use it - despite the hassle and the fees, it can still be the best place for some people, sometimes to sell stuff.

I still use it when I'm lazy or when other venues (vendors, MOTL, etc) don't work out. It's fine, and since I've had 10 years of selling on eBay to figure out how the system works, I never have any serious problems.

Also, the only recent international dispute filed against me I won. I deal with an idiot buyer every couple months and I've not lost a dispute in years.

[c7272]

Maybe people in the world say they don't receive the items because that is actually what happened.

Either way, one person is out and there is no way to set up the eBay system, in its current state, so that there isn't a possibility for fraud. As it stands, either the seller claims he has sold an item and refuses to acknowledge that the item was lost, or the buyer claims he never received the item. Changing the system would then benefit the "other" set of eBay users, and if the resolution was that the cost was split 50/50 the same behavior would go on.

The only way to ensure everything works out is to have trackable shipping on everything. That way the seller can always say the package was shipped, or worst case the mail carrier is committing some sort of illicit activity, and you will now when the package has arrived.

Thinking about it honestly wouldn't surprise me if eBay made trackable shipping mandatory. It would make things a little bit more expensive to ship, but then the eBay environment becomes closer to a retail store in terms of reliability of the mail. I have never had a problem buying from retail websites in my entire life and I think the prices the sellers get might actually improve (which increase eBay's revenue) as a result of the additional security that the service provides. (Disclaimer: This is free advice, take it at face value)

It would be nice to know that the buyer didn't take advantage of you and, instead, truly didn't receive the package. I can't imagine anyone would be happy to not receive something in the mail after paying for it.

[Dark Ritual]

Yeah this happened to me the one time I sold my survival's on eBay prior to the banning. I didn't get delivery confirmation and tracking on the package so the guy filed a dispute and won. Quite annoying. Ebay always sides with buyers is what I hear and I just stay away from selling items on there now. But yeah. Don't ship internationally and always get tracking and D.C. for every item so you don't get scammed.

[oRen]

You're naieve at best if you send something paid for with paypal without a tracking number.

Take it as a lesson; first-class package (use a small bubble mailer padded to be 3/4" thick) with delivery confirmation is about $1.80.

Have look where I am located. Trackable shipping costs about 3 times of untrackable shipping - about $8/$9 instead of $2.50/$3. None wants to pay $8 shipping for a $20 item.

Anyway I would have not sold a single item without trackable shipping if i knew that ebay judges this way. All around Europe the BUYER takes the risks for not paying for trackable shipping because courts have ALWAYS ruled in the sellers favor.
The way the ebay system works just sucks balls and I will not use it again for selling anything ...

oh yeah - btw thanks for scamming me c7272 ...

[Amon Amarth]

Ebay wasn't always so bad for sellers. But they kept nickel and diming you with more bullshit over the years and its become unbearable anymore.

[dahcmai]

Ebay is a hole in the frigging financial universe that sucks in anyone caught in it's monstrous vortex of fees. If you have no tracking number you can be scammed anytime there. I can literally buy a FBB Underground Sea from Germany and say that it didn't arrive and get my money back within 3 months almost guaranteed. I know exactly what Ebay wants to hear to win a case. It's quite silly. Being a foreign country, the odds are you can't get a tracking number so you lose instantly right there.

It's sad, but true.



I've been bitching about Ebay forever and decided it would be much better off to do it myself. I made up a good way to do trading and selling safely and not charge an arm and a leg for it. It's just going to run me around $10k up front (yeah, I'm pretty serious about it and that's actually cheap for what I need) or I get lucky and find a damned guru to put together the site and be willing to go along for the ride in profits. I suck with web stuff being all old and born during the Triassic period and all. Hopefully, I can get it together before time ends or something.