And you think the grass is greener on the other side......

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Re: And you think the grass is greener on the other side......

Wow... hopefully a lesson for the big companies and their seemingly almost-automated ways of customer/seller service.

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Re: And you think the grass is greener on the other side......

I have a brother who used to work in local government.  An adjoining council to the one he was working for had a dramatic reduction in public liability payouts one year so he asked one of the workers at council why they had such a large reduction.

 

That council had been in the practice of not challenging or contesting claims for amounts under $2000 as they thought it was not economically viable to do so.  Word of this got around town so people had been making claims against council for amounts below $2000.

 

A re-think of this attitude saw them contest every single claim, with responses to letters of demand indicating that council were happy to see it go to court AND that council would seek reimbursement of costs if the decision went their way.  Suddenly, people stopped stubbing their toes on raised concrete footpaths, they stopped tripping over garden beds in council parklands and they stopped stepping in holes and spraining their ankles on nature strips . . . . . . all things that people had been claiming a couple of hundred dollars for before the change in council attitude.  The number of claims dropped dramatically, hence the drop in payouts.

 

The correlation with eBay is that they are currently in the “it is easier to refund every claim” frame of mind.  This will continue until they see the light and change their thinking and contest claims before making a decision by demanding more evidence from those making claims.

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Re: And you think the grass is greener on the other side......

What an interesting read.

 

In one article there was a report about Amazon & their auto refunds where people get refunded without having to return items or prove there was a problem. It said Amazon checks for too many claims coming from the same accounts but I would question how careful their check is as the report said amazon replaced one item twice, before it even had time to be delivered.

My impression here is this couple could have got away with their scams if they had only held themselves back a little & not been quite so greedy. I would think there must be a lot of smaller scale scamming happening on amazon, more even than on ebay.

 

I particularly liked this bit written by someone commenting on the second report. How true!

 

 
The "amusing" part is that if you "try to steal from eBay", they go berserk. Talk to a buyer, send an email, include a link etc - and eBay comes down on you like a ton of bricks... its ok to steal from sellers but not from eBay.
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Re: And you think the grass is greener on the other side......


@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

I have a brother who used to work in local government.  An adjoining council to the one he was working for had a dramatic reduction in public liability payouts one year so he asked one of the workers at council why they had such a large reduction.

 

That council had been in the practice of not challenging or contesting claims for amounts under $2000 as they thought it was not economically viable to do so.  Word of this got around town so people had been making claims against council for amounts below $2000.

 

A re-think of this attitude saw them contest every single claim, with responses to letters of demand indicating that council were happy to see it go to court AND that council would seek reimbursement of costs if the decision went their way.  Suddenly, people stopped stubbing their toes on raised concrete footpaths, they stopped tripping over garden beds in council parklands and they stopped stepping in holes and spraining their ankles on nature strips . . . . . . all things that people had been claiming a couple of hundred dollars for before the change in council attitude.  The number of claims dropped dramatically, hence the drop in payouts.

 

The correlation with eBay is that they are currently in the “it is easier to refund every claim” frame of mind.  This will continue until they see the light and change their thinking and contest claims before making a decision by demanding more evidence from those making claims.


Particularly interested in that bit about the council.

Maybe I shouldn't be broadcasting this even further but the education dept is or was exactly the same. It did not want cases to go to court so just about everything got settled out of court. I know this as I worked in a school & the prin told staff that every year there were at least 5 cases. Some of them were distinctly opportunistic-people claiming they walked into a tree branch near the footpath (outside the school and only protruding by a couple of inches). But all of them walked away happily with several hundred dollars in their pockets.

There were even a couple of cases where I believe the boot should have been on the other foot & the dept should have been suing the people for malicious damage or trespass. Things may have changed since my time there but I remember thinking the dept should not roll over on every case, they were making themselves into sitting ducks.

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