I posted to a buyer recently 6 kg of Lego made up of 3 x 2kg parcels. One parcel also had some cheaper Lego compatible bits and pieces that was clearly stated twice in the listing, (this was about 500g worth of bricks included for free on top of the 2kg Lego that I had listed making that parcel 2.5kg). It was a free gift. I also added 1kg of extra Lego for free as she had bought 3 parcels. They all went into one plastic bag and then into one cardboard carton. The total postage weight at the post office was 7.766kg . The customer messaged me the day that she received the parcel and complained about the amount of non Lego pieces that were in there and asked to return it all. The customer also said that she had messaged me as she didn't want to go through eBay and make a complaint.
Although I knew there was only a small amount of "free" Lego lookalike bricks in there, as I have a return policy, I agreed to accept the return and asked her to post it all back to me. It was a lot of expensive genuine Lego pieces. Why she bothered to say that she was not gong to go through ebay, I have no idea as an hour later she changed her mind and submitted a return request for the items and stated that the items were different to my listing (which was not true my photos and descriptions were all accurate) and that over half of the Lego that she had received was "fake cheap nasty Lego copies" and not the genuine bricks. My alarm bells started ringing.
I received my package yesterday and The return postage label from the post office says 7.050kg. She left both labels on the box. The returned Lego has almost 3/4 of a KG of Lego missing and when I have looked through all the little Lego people figures are gone.
There is absolutely no policy or procedure in place that I can find to protect a buyer against situations like this. It does say that on line that if a customer has misused the eBay return system that customers who do this will be dealt with but in reality nothing happens.
This customer has abused the system twice, firstly by taking some Lego and keeping it, the weight of the box does not lie so she has not returned the goods as I sent them.
Secondly for declaring that the photos and listing was not as described which ebay never bothers to check, in my experience they just side with the buyer.
I have now a message that I need to refund her by the 24th May or ebay will step in. I called ebay and received the usual no help at all. I have reported the customer but as a seller we never get any follow-up or a callback from someone who can actually make a decision in this case. I know that the person who reads the complaint from me is not the same person who does the refunds for the seller and the refund will just be issued automatically and I will be left out of pocket for over $70 in postage and have had stolen almost 3/4 kg of lego. Nothing will happen to the customer.
This has happened 3 times this year with ebay not standing with me the seller, but this time the sale and postage was over $200, that's a large amount to be taken from my meagre sales. Can anyone suggest anything as I need to know what I can do when ebay refunds? They are just allowing buyers to get away with theft all the time and there is no dedicated team to assist a seller. Is there a body I can go to outside of ebay that has the authority to look into situations like this?
thank you all
Sonya
