Ebay's Money Back Guarantee

[frau.au2015]

In May this year I bought 36 stamp items on ebay from a Florida seller. The images on ebay were not very clear but I thought it was worth taking a chance on the stamps because of the MBG. When I received the stamps, they were absolutely worthless. Not only were they forged, but they were very poor forgeries. I contacted the seller and informed him that they were forgeries and that I wanted to return them for refund. He agreed by message sent June9th. On the 16th June I sent the stamps back by registered mail and with a tracking number. Recently, I discovered that ebay have refused to refund the money because the seller hasn't received his items and the "tracking number isn't valid". After getting in contact with Australia Post I discovered the stamps were still in Australia as of June 25th. I sent a screen shot of the parcel addressed to the seller, receipt for registered mail and tracking progress stating they were in Melbourne waiting for International delivery to ebay. Even after all that, ebay still dispute the tracking number and will not refund  the money. What can I do?

[jellybirddesigns]

Did you just communicate with the seller, or did you open a case for Item Not as Described?

You should never have to send anything back at your expense.

What's worse is that if you just communicated with the seller, they can give you any old address. Whereas if there was a case and the seller wanted the item back (at their expense), their registered address would have been provided.

[sandypebbles]

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@frau.au2015 wrote:

 they were in Melbourne waiting for International delivery to ebay.

Did you send it back to the seller or to an address for eBay?

You have not mentioned following the correct procedure for the money back guarantee, did you do that ? (by, as mentioned, opening the item not as described dispute)

[lawrence-4434]

I did follow the procedure for returning an item but I needed to list 36items and the system did not cope with all of them. For 11 items I received a message "internal application error" and could not finish the entry. I have since found out that the stamps should not have been returned to the seller at all because they were forged. 

[countessalmirena]

@lawrence-4434,

The problem is that the seller hasn't received the stamps. You've already taken the route of sending back these items, in a way that isn't exactly the best way to handle this sort of situation. I am assuming that the cost of sending overseas with tracking is not really commensurate with the cost of the stamps.

What you should have done (in my view) is to contact eBay via Live Chat, and explain the situation. If you'd made a Statutory Declaration that the stamps were poor forgeries, you could have said this in the chat, and stated that you wished to upload it as evidence. In all likelihood, the CS rep would have opened a case for you and then closed it almost immediately without the requirement for you to send back the forged stamps.

You should not be responsible for the cost of postage back to the seller in a case of SNAD (significantly not as described). For an international purchase, the seller is still obliged to pay any return postage, customs fee, brokerage, duty, etc. Never ever return an item without getting the seller's explicit agreement to refund you the specific cost of return postage through eBay messages or through the dispute.

However, as I've indicated, in many cases of international purchases, the return postage cost is simply not worth it. If the seller was aware that you knew the correct process, and was confronted with the return postage cost before agreeing to having the stamps returned before he/she would issue a refund, it is very likely that the seller would simply have refunded you. After all, it beggars belief that the seller wouldn't be well aware that they'd sent you forged stamps, so they must have known that they would end up paying the additional amount of return postage as well as refunding you the full amount, just to get back some badly forged stamps.

In your current situation, you really should contact eBay through Live Chat and explain the situation very carefully, point by point. Ask for full refund plus your postage cost. (Have all of the evidence ready as PDFs, so that you can upload it to eBay. Ask for email address or any information about how to upload it to the CS rep with whom you are chatting. This includes AP receipt showing address of seller, etc.)

But if that is not successful, I think you might be best off going through your card issuer. Explain that you received forged stamps, that you initiated a return without being aware that you shouldn't have returned forged stamps to the seller (that they - meaning the stamps - should have been destroyed, rather), and that the parcel is still sitting in Australia as a result of COVID-19 delays in being processed. Explain that on the basis of the parcel still being unprocessed, eBay have refused to refund you. Hence you request a chargeback for the amount of the item. (You'd probably have to "eat" the return postage in that case, though, unless the bank is happy to consider that cost.)