First "Request"

[notorious_guf]

Hi all, so I have just received my first "Request" & it's from someone who purchased 2 of the same item, very unusual in itself, but looking into the person's feedback given, out of 12 left, 7 are for item not received or poor quality product, 2 from 2 coming from within the month!

I know it's either a straight out lie, or since it's going to an office building, there is a slight chance the mail has been pinched or lost in a mail room.

My questions is simple, does eBay take into consideration the regular & excessive bad feedback a purchaser gives in these cases & if so, what is the best thing to say to eBay to encourage them to see through the customer lies?

Unfortunately it may all be in vain as unfortunately for the items I sell, I cannot offer tracking if I am to have any chance of selling anything & I have always accepted I'll take the eventual hit sometimes. It's just so dissapointing when the hit should have been stamped out of eBay a long time ago.

Thanks.

[phorum_junkie*]

If they have been sent without tracking then it is absolutely pointless trying to win no matter what the buyer's history is. If you often send things without tracking then you need to adjust your business model to add a small amount to each item which will cover the cost of the small percentage of not received claims you will get.

Also do not under any circumstances leave the buyer any feedback (which would have to be positive) with a negative comment. All that does is leave you open to censure by ebay as well as giving the buyer an extra 'point'.

[clarry100]

As PJ says very little you can do with no tracking to defend yourself.

If you think you have sufficient evidence to support a claim of fraud by the buyer you could raise a formal complaint with The ACORN.

Include their feedback history as evidence.

http://www.acorn.gov.au/

This report goes to the Aust Federal police.

You will get a case reference number once you lodge it.

So pass this onto ebay and the buyer. It might rattle someone's cage.

PJ advised to not leave false positive feedback and this is good advice.

We do leave normal positive feedback as that gives us somewhere to leave a follow-up to the feedback we left so that other sellers can see they have done this before and have a track record.

The message we leave goes like this:

<UID>: Replacement sent for item reported lost in post <date>.

Put in the UserID so that us other sellers can see who they are, otherwise the ID is hidden by ebay.

You can change the wording to refund if that is what you do.

[audio-spot]

I had the same thing happen to me late last year. Item was posted as a C5 envelope (no tracking) To a teacher at a school.

More than likely the item was delivered to the school, but probably got lost or stolen before it made it into the teachers correspondence.

I just refunded and moved on.

[davidc4430]

i see so often here on the boards the line 'it didnt have tracking so i just refunded and moved on'

i'd like to know just how many items are being refunded per year because sellers cant prove they were delivered.

i'm thinking its a huge $ amount.

[clarry100]

We send mostly by large letter.

We send out a replacement item for about one in every 1,000 items we mail out reported as not arrived.

Our items average around $10 each sale price. Cost to us is less than that.

So it seems an acceptable risk of doing this business.

[amber-eyed-girl]

It may well be.

If sellers are not able to use tracking as price prohibitive on their items, or don't choose to for any other reason, the best bet is to put a little extra into the price of each item. As a form of insuring against the odd loss. For cheaper items a few extra cents. That's the only way to cover it.

Personally I prefer tracking as a buyer but can understand it not being feasible on items that would then cost less than posting them.

[notorious_guf]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. We allow for the odd loss within our business model, so thankfully I'm not overly concerned by a loss. I guess my concern is more that the loss should be avoided if eBay were to consider the excessive amount of "Did Not Receive Item" claims by this customer & remove them from eBay or protect sellers with a great reputation.

We'll just refund the item, as I'm sure the definition of an idiot is to do the same thing twice and expect a different result!

[digital*ghost]

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@notorious_guf wrote:

 I guess my concern is more that the loss should be avoided if eBay were to consider the excessive amount of "Did Not Receive Item" claims by this customer & remove them from eBay or protect sellers with a great reputation.

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eBay (or rather, a customer service representative) has pretty much said outright they don't take the buyer's history into consideration when deciding the outcome of a current case (it's basically one of the most naive, if not willfully ignorant, positions they could have taken, i.e. "just because the buyer says they haven't received 70% of all purchases, it doesn't mean they actually received this one"). 

You can report buyers for suspicious activity etc, which is supposed to work independently of cases, and I recommend all sellers do so when they get a suspect buyer, but unless they deregister the member in question, you'll never know if they ever do anything at all about it. 😞 

[amber-eyed-girl]

Maybe they do that following the legal model of excluding prior convictions from a current trial...well, I think that a list of non-receipt should have eBay at least flag it for future investigation.

Not every run of missing parcels is a buyer fraud (can be post pilfering), but it should be noted.

AP does investigate if there are a number of reported missing items to one address or area...but they need to know about it (and it would therefore be genuine, if the buyer wanted it investigated).

It could be mentioned to the buyer as a suggestion...contact AP and lodge an investigation. The parcel could then turn up...

If it were me as the seller, I'd ask the buyer to please wait a little bit more, then I'd refund if not trackable. After that if it seems suss (instinct, repeated mentions of same in feedback) I'd block them to prevent it happening again.