Buyer Cancellation and eBay response/process

[tzuwo-66]

eBay's navigation is atrocious, I opened a topic on community.ebay.com already on this here (https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Buyer-remorse/td-p/31502581), but I just found this discussion forum too and thought I'll share what's happening so far with my issue. Will keep it updated along with the other thread.

Before reading:

I know the path of least resistance is Cancel Transaction with Buyer Requested as reason, but I'm curious to see eBay's process and whether their Help page is actually correct. So here goes...

Issue Summary (TL;DR):

• Buyer wants to cancel transaction due to buyer remorse.
• I ask for Buyer-initiated cancellation or I can open Unpaid Item Case in 4 days as per "Cancel an order"
• Buyer went silent and left negative fake feedback without payment.
• Contacted Chat with *redacted* on 9th January 2021 ~11:50:00 AEDST
• *redacted* was unable to help. Redirected me to open Seller Help case on Negative Feedback.
• Opened negative feedback case.
• Case got rejected "Due to Technical Error" and told me to go back to Customer Service.

Oddity:

• When I goto transaction cancellation for that item, it said it was cancelled already when I have never confirmed a cancellation.
• When I click View Cancel Details, it takes me to an error page saying "This listing has been removed, or this item is not available."
• I still see the transaction in my Seller Dashboard and able to ask payment, masked as paid etc

Issue (in full):

• No payment from Buyer for over 24hour.
• Sent payment reminder ~30hours after Auction Ended.
• Buyer says his PayPal got hacked and wants to cancel.
• I replied he can open another PayPal with a new email.
• Buyer replies he wants to cancel transaction as he found cheaper elsewhere.
• I asked for buyer-initiated cancellation or I can open Unpaid Item Case in 4 days.
• Buyer did not reply and left a negative fake feedback.
• Opened a discussion on community.ebay.com (https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Buyer-remorse/td-p/31502581)
• Contacted Chat with *redacted* on 9th January 2021 ~11:50:00 AEDST
• *redacted* was unable to help. Redirected me to open Seller Help case on Negative Feedback.
• Opened negative feedback case and reported *redacted* for breaking eBay policy.
• Negative feedback case got rejected "Due to Technical Error" and told me to come back to Customer Service.
• Made second report on *redacted* for non-payment.

[*tippy*toes*]

Dont worry about contacting eBay, or the buyer. Just open a non payment dispute immediately, and then close it 4 days later. You will get your fees back, and the buyer will get a strike on their account. Once the dispute has been closed, you can contact eBay to get the negative feedback removed, if it doesn't go automatically. Negative feedback can't be left when a non payment dispute has been closed.

If eBay balk and say it is the buyers experience, remind them of their policies that state that if a buyer doesn't pay, and a non payment dispute is closed, any negative feedback is to be removed.

Actually, you may not be able to open the dispute until tomorrow, as it appears it's not been 4 days since sale. Try to open it, and it will tell you when you actually can if it's not 4 days yet.

Edit: make sure you add this buyer to your blocked buyer list, in case they try to revenge buy should you decide to list more items.

[tzuwo-66]

Update.

• I did some reading and digging, it seems if I open dispute, and buyer did pay then blame me for other issue after sending them the item. I'm actually at more of a financial lose as it seems eBay do favour Buyer as per this experience so far.
• I found another link/pathway to cancel the transaction with "Buyer requested" and eBay representative told me I could do so that way.
• I did it, but I noticed the negative feedback remains. (Maybe I shouldn't have done it in retrospect, but eh~ learnt something)
• eBay Chat representative did balk and brick-walled me by saying they do not have the power to remove feedback even though the feedback removal system tells me "Due to technical issue, please contact Customer Service". I did quote the policy and again, I got the same response/brick wall.

The lesson so far.

• eBay DOES NOT adhere to their own policy
• DO NOT ENGAGE BUYER if they do not pay. Simply let transaction fall to 4 days then open Unpaid Item Case. Buyer has all the power here. You cannot leave feedback but they can, whether they've paid or not
• If they do leave negative feedback. It is up to you to take the risk of Unpaid Item Case, again, it's a lose-lose for seller here

I've opened a ticket on ACCC for eBay Australia regarding this. Will update on where it goes.

BBB seen to be dead for US. I was planning to do one for eBay US too.

It's been fun so far. I'll see where it goes afterwards to see how low Sellers actually are in the foodchain. 🙂

[tzuwo-66]

Also, blocking buyer from revenge buy is not really going to do much. The loophole is that buyer can use bot/cheap labours to create as many accounts as they wish. This favouritism actually allows a buyer to bring down small/medium seller if they want to.

[davewil1964]

You seem to know it all, so this is probably going to be disregarded -

Keep a note of the address; revenge buyers are unlikely to have multiple addresses available. Then cancel if they buy. If they continue to do it (unlikely in most cases) report them to eBay for circumventing blocks. That used to work eventually. I'm not sure if it still does.

Why are you posting on eBay USA anyway? You are Australian, listing on eBay Australia. The rules are different in the USA.

[tzuwo-66]

Far from it! I would love other's input too! I'm surprised how little sellers are regarded on eBay given they're the one paying the bill. It's really strange in a way.

As for why I'm on US board. I landed on community.ebay.com initially and I was confused when I found this board too. So there's that. Also, it could be nice for people to know how this works regardless of whether they're in US and Australia. I don't think I touched anything on local Laws yet in my case.

As for my experience so far, I don't think eBay care very much unless it's hitting them hard economically? Like if someone only targets small/medium merchants here and there as some sort of sick joke/revenge etc, I don't think eBay would care. As a software engineer myself, I'm almost.... Nar, I won't 😛

I would think the notion of the company following their own policy is a norm across US and Australia? Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a lawyer and I'm interested to know too.

[gutterpunkz05]

As the buyer had 4 days from auction end to pay, what was the point in getting pushy well before payment was due.  Your push to have the payment  completed may well have contributed to the cancellation request

[tzuwo-66]

Interesting.

So I messaged a reminder 24hours after auction close.

Buyer made an excuse to say PayPal hacked immediately.

I messaged with benefit of the doubt saying he could open PayPal with another email if he wants to complete the transaction.

He then said he don't want it any more immediately after the above exchange.

I then followed eBay's Cancel a Transaction page to say he can initiate a Buyer-requested cancellation or I need to wait 4 days for UIC.

Does this sound pushy? O.O I'm curious.... I wasn't remotely aggressive in our eBay message exchange either. Or is this the definition of pushy :S... Genuinely curious.

[digital*ghost]

---

@tzuwo-66 wrote:

Before reading:

I know the path of least resistance is Cancel Transaction with Buyer Requested as reason, but I'm curious to see eBay's process and whether their Help page is actually correct. So here goes...

---

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say... 

As you mentioned in your first post, the path of least resistance is generally preferable to what you need to do now - buyer requests cancellation, seller agrees, the end, as the buyer usually has no further interest in doing anything. Cancellations can be annoying, but at least they don't keep someone on the hook for you to have to deal with, or create situations like this. If they leave negs after requesting a cancellation, removal is usually a pretty simple procedure. 

I don't really understand why you would be ok with a buyer-initiated cancellation but not a seller-initated one (in case it's relevant, AFAIK the official option to request cancellation is only available to buyers for 1 hour after the purchase and after that the only option is to message the seller directly), nor why you'd push for payment (by sending reminders) from someone who has requested a cancellation, they clearly don't want to complete the purchase.

When a UPI is opened, the emai notification a buyer receives threatens them with account suspension, which can only ever raise tension with someone who asked to cancel. When somone asks to cancel and for reasons of your own, you want it to go through the UPI process, I recommend simply responding and advising the transaction will automatically go through the cancellation process on X date and finalise on X date, so nothing further needs to be done so they can ignore any reminders from eBay regarding the transaction. 

Buyers don't have all the power, eBay does, and they favour buyers in most cases - in edge cases like I would call this, they favour sellers in instances where they have followed procedures and / or were trying to provide a high (enough) standard of customer service. 

Were you able to successfully open a UPI? Normally this option is not available if you've already cancelled a transaction, but if you do have an open UPI, as the others have said the feedback will immediately qualify for removal once it's closed. If it doesn't happen automatically, another chat with CS should see it removed.

[lyndal1838]

If you open an Unpaid Item case and close it 4 days later issuing the buyer with a strike NEITHER of you can leave feedback.

If the buyer has already left feedback you can have it removed if it does not disappear automatically once the dispute is closed.