eBay's poor performance.

[records4jukes]

Last week I had an offer on one of my records from a customer in the Emirates with an accommodation address in the U.K. I accepted the offer and as suggested by the eBay prompts at the time, I then immediately sent the buyer his invoice. I noted that the buyer had that accommodation address in Berkshire in the U.K. and I harvested that address for the postage label.  I invoiced him AUS $35 for tracked and insured air mail postage.

I had never dealt with this customer before, nor had we ever had contact before.

He took  a few days to pay, but when he did, I sent the parcel tracked and insured air mail to the U.K.

The next day I was paid by eBay for the transaction, but instead of part of the $35 air mail postage, eBay had allowed only $7 which is my domestic postage charge. At this stage, I am the best part of $28 out-of-pocket!

I spent almost an hour on the phone to eBay yesterday, talking to 2 different operators, without any success whatsoever.

What happened is that in the time between when I invoiced him at his U.K. accommodation address and the time he paid, he changed his address to his Sydney accommodation address, and the eBay system therefore changed the $35 international postage fee which I had invoiced, to the $7 local postage fee.

At no stage was I advised of the change of address, nor did I after the invoicing event, at any stage think that I needed to check his "current" address. The eBay operators claim that this situation of changing an address between the time of sale and the time of payment is not possible, yet that is exactly what happened! 

After 20 years of selling on eBay, the attitude of the 2 operators yesterday in claiming that I must be mistaken, doesn't sit well at all. As a retired accountant and auditor, I know how systems do and should  work, and this shows that there is a bug in the eBay system, and that eBay will not acknowledge that.

records4jukes, Hobart, 2 July 2025.

[twyngwyn]

I always mail from the ‘your buyer has paid’ email. 

I would think the buyer would be able to change their address at checkout…?

[twyngwyn]

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2025/7/1751380854.html

[mic-s-korea]

I've actually bought from you in the past and been quite happy. This is partly off topic, but I have noticed in our product area, *a lot of sellers and buyers* have moved on. What remains in Australia are mostly big mass listing sellers with generic often overpriced imports sent out in minimal packaging for turnover. My perspective on this kind of thing is that the set up is now really geared towards mass sellers who factor in these problem events as costs of doing business and make it up along the way. E-bay as a platform from a small user (but one of many) perspective has shifted over to this generic mass turnover mindset too much. 

Trouble from E-bay's point of view is that the same generic product listed on mass is also everywhere else online and in shops. I used to come here for more uncommon interesting items and regular smaller trusted sellers, and sell the same way a bit also. I ended up buying t-shirts and odd electronics and various stuff quite a bit on the side. But I hardly even log in much these days.

Customer service online here has improved quite a bit from my take, and I've been really happy with it. But I'm pretty sure these kinds of things you mentioned and people receiving items too many times with issues that are a hassle to resolve, must be resulting in a loss of goodwill at best, and people just jumping ship at worse. I used to check in on what was listed every could of days here in the past ... but maybe log in once a month now ... and it's for sure down to seeing oceans of the the same generic stuff from a handful of the same sellers, and a set up really geared to this.