Do you have to return an item 30 plus days after delivery because buyer claims its fake?

[sarvocca]

Good day,

Posting from UK here. Basically sold an item to AUS after 30 plus days a buyer said its fake wants a full refund. He added photos of the shoes that clearly show they were used. Apperantely as an international seller I must follow the AUS rules for returns. Can someone explain to me what these are? Here in UK you have only 30 days from date of delivery to return the goods. Thanks

[countessalmirena]

Hi, sarvocca,

I see from eBay.co.uk's MBG that "If this [item is not as described in the listing] happens, you [the buyer] need to tell your seller within 30 days from your actual or latest estimated delivery date."

(So it's not so much that the goods need to be returned within 30 days of the latest estimated delivery date, but rather that the buyer would be contacting the seller about the goods within 30 days of that latest estimated delivery date.)

The MBG on eBay.com.au doesn't have a longer timeframe.  It states:

Item significantly not as described

• A buyer must request a return no later than 30 days after the actual (or latest estimated) delivery date, or, if the seller's return window is longer, within the return window.

However, note that "When we have no information about the estimated delivery date, we consider the latest estimated delivery date to be [...] 30 days from the payment date for buyers and sellers in different countries."

Also note that "In some situations, we may extend the period of time in which a buyer is eligible for the eBay Money Back Guarantee. This lets us consider the buyer's location, the postage service used, the seller's extended return window, holidays, delays due to weather, national emergencies, labour strikes, governmental acts, fraud, and other circumstances."

If that time period has elapsed, then of course the buyer is unlikely to be able to open an eBay dispute. The buyer will still be able to open a dispute in PayPal, and if they present evidence that the shoes are fake, they may not even have to return the shoes.

I suppose what you do in this case would be based on

• has eBay's MBG timeframe passed (given the latest estimated delivery date)? (I can see you sold two pairs of Vans - one on 20 June and another on 11th July; if it's the pair that sold in July, it's well and truly within eBay's MBG timeframe, and if it's the pair that sold in June, it is probably just wtihin the timeframe).
• is there any possibility that the shoes are fake?
• do you have supplier or manufacturer receipts so that you have a chance of proving that these are authentic?

If you think that you were possibly misled and that these may not be genuine, you'd probably be best off issuing full refund and messaging the buyer saying that you may have been misled, that you sold them in good faith, feel awful about this situation, and are of course prepared to cop the loss on the chin by issuing full refund. You'll have to decide whether it's worth your asking for the shoes to be returned; in cases where it's not as described, you the seller will be up for the return postage cost. And if these are perhaps not genuine, it's really not worth your receiving them back - not to mention your buyer will feel outraged at having to package these and return them if he/she truly believes they're fake. Any chance of these being non-genuine... you're best off telling the buyer to please destroy them and accept your sincere apologies for an error made in all innocence.

If you are sure they're genuine, you may want to stand your ground and fight a dispute - but only do this if you've got evidence to support your case, as otherwise eBay (or PayPal) will simply stomp all over you. You do not want your percentage to go down any further - 95.1% doesn't give your buyers a good feeling of trust. You also do not want any defects on your account which would affect your ability to sell - and if a claim is made with eBay stepping in to force a refund, a nasty defect shall be bestowed upon you by eBay.

I hope this helps.

[sarvocca]

Thanks so much for your response. The shoes are most definately real and I have sent them via tracked so there is a delivery date that can be checked online. The date was 18/07/2018 and the buyer created the case on 19/08/2018. Ive contacted ebay and to my surprise the person stated that they onlyconsider the estimated delivery date? Is this true?

[countessalmirena · Accepted solution]

Well... eBay should not be only considering estimated delivery date. The policy says "no later than 30 days after the actual (or latest estimated) delivery date", so I think what you will need to do is to actually upload the delivery information into the case, to prove actual delivery date.

I'm just wondering, though, whether the 18/07 delivery date is the date for the buyer (Australian date), or was it the 18th in UK time? Did you check the tracking number on Australia Post's tracking page? (Link: https://auspost.com.au/mypost/track/#/search)

If the date there is the 19th, then the buyer's just managed to open the case in time.

How do you feel about giving the Australian eBay CS reps a phone call during business hours (AEST - Australian Eastern Standard Time)? eBay's "Have us call you" option is by far the best way to get in touch with eBay. (Emails are useless, for a number of reasons, but primarily because the responses, when they are finally sent, are bot-generated.)

eBay say: We'll call you at the phone number registered to your account, or you can enter a different number.

We’re available from 8am to 10pm AET, 7 days a week.

(AET = Australian Eastern Time, which is a blanket term to cover AEST and AEDT; AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time.)

Quote the policy to them (very politely)...

And as said, make sure you upload receipts, anything to do with proving that the shoes were authentic. You need to be putting ALL of the required information into the actual case; communicating with eBay or the buyer outside of the case isn't enough.

Make sure you don't let eBay escalate the case. If they do, it's almost certain that you will lose the case, plus be given a defect automatically. If eBay won't accept that the case was opened past the timeframe, and/or won't accept your proofs of the genuineness of the shoes, then it's more than likely that they'll force you to refund - so to prevent that from happening, you'd need to swallow the bitter gall of preempting an unfair decision and just refund the buyer.

I do wish you well, and I hope that you can demonstrate either that the case was opened too late, or that the shoes were genuine.

[lyndal1838]

Countess, 18 July to 19 August is 31-32 days, depending on whether the dates are Australian or UK time....are they both Australian or both UK or one of each.

The buyer may be out of luck.

This case is definitely on the nose IMO.

[collect247]

Op says that ebay are only considering the delivery date and the claim date so it looks like ebay aren't worried about the 32 days it has taken the buyer to claim but in fact because the buyer has claimed the shoes to be fake is the issue here.

So it won't surprise me if ebay allow the buyer to keep/destroy the shoes and issue a full refund to the buyer?

Yes this stinks of a stinky buyer.

[countessalmirena]

It certainly turns on the knife-edge, Lyndal! I was trying to work out if any confusion between the dates in eBay could have resulted in the bot thinking it was 30 days... but yes, you're right about it being either 31-32 days.

The bots must indeed have been looking solely at the estimated delivery date.

[sarvocca]

Follow up for anyone that is reading this in the future. eBay decided to leave the case open. Turns out the buyer did manage to open the case on the 18th but because of a system delay I have recived the email almost 12 h later on the 19th. Despite the fact that I tried to argue that the buyer opened the case at 4 pm and the item was delivered at 7 am ebay did not budge and took the buyers side (no surprise there) despite him technically being later over 9 h. At the end I have lost around 100 pounds as I had to refund him and leave the item with the buyer. So yeah, I will most definately never sell internationally, do not expect any help from eBay if you are a seller as they will do everything in their might to protect/take the buyers side. 

[lyndal1838]

You are certainly not the first seller to find out that ebay favours the buyer in a dispute.