For sellers that eBay considers to be failing to meet certain standards, any of the following:
Demotion of the seller’s listings in search results - no matter how the eBay shopper sorts the search results, the seller’s listings will be pushed down from the top. - cite
Delays on payments - PayPal may not clear funds into the seller’s account until a delay period has elapsed (the expectation is that the seller will still send the item immediately though) - cite
Limits on the number of items a seller can list, or the value they can turn over. - cite
Even reputable sellers can fall foul of these penalties for some pretty silly reasons, such as:
Sending the item by tracked courier, but not entering the parcel tracking information into the eBay system.
Getting less than 5 stars in any Detailed Seller Rating - this is a big problem, because people tend to think of 3 stars to mean ‘OK’, 4 to mean ‘good’ and 5 to mean ‘superb’.
In reality, 5 DSR stars means ‘acceptable’. Less than 5 stars means ‘poor’ - a buyer only has to drop to below an average of 4.6 stars (out of 5) to start being hit by the restrictions mentioned above. Or, regardless of average, have just two transactions (out of any total) where the buyer rated one or two DSR stars.
How much do you spend per year in shipping? If it’s less than that, it might be worth it to offer free shipping. I can’t do the math for you, but the discounts may cover the credits and free shipping will bring in more customers as long as your prices are still in line with your competitors (so it doesn’t appear you’re charging more to make up for the shipping costs).
My take on it is eBay doesn’t want to open a dispute until the product doesn’t arrive. They don’t seem to have a category for “I won’t send it and I won’t refund for 3 weeks” so the nearest thing is non-arrival of product. Once confronted by eBay, I’m sure the seller will use his excuse that he goofed.
He won’t get away with doing that too many times though - he should get a non-performing seller strike when the dispute closes (unless he persuades you to do a mutual cancellation)
I would never suggest starting another transaction. I was able to refund a payment after the funds were out of my account. It was awhile ago, but I believe I charged it to a debit card (without having to link it to my account).
In any case, the seller could be doing more to at least not be rude.
Fair enough - I was in a situation like this a while back and I definitely couldn’t refund any quicker - the only options for adding funds to my account were bank debit (with built in delay) or registering a card and validating it (also not immediate), but these things are subject to change (and differ in different parts of the world) so YMMV.
You may find that opening the case causes you to get a pained or aggressive email from the seller - it’s probably best just to ignore this unless the message contains an actual question (i.e. “why have you done this you big meanie?!?”) - if you do reply, just assure them that everything is under control and normal.
I’ve cancelled only one auction in nearly ten years and a 400+ 100% positive rating. I was out to sell the item cheap (25 used-once commercial grade video tapes in hard cases) and didn’t think through the shipping weight… so the winning bid was about 10% of the shipping cost alone. I cancelled, refunded and told the guy my assistant had thrown the tapes away.
I would just reply with “I’ll close the case as soon as the money is back in my paypal account, barring that, I need to continue forward since you’ve refused to refund my money”
Any further emails would get a reply of ‘All you need to do is just refund my money’. Don’t bicker, don’t rehash arguments, just tell him what he needs to do and maintain the upper hand.
From there just keep moving the case forward. Even if it’s April 10th and he says that he has started the refund and it’ll take [x days] to show up in your account, just go ahead and move forward with the case. If the money shows up, great, if not, you didn’t get tricked by his stalling techniques.
Except watch out for that “I want to resolve this case without waiting for the seller to respond” thing - it’s not always clear until afterward that this actually means abandoning the case.
On April 11, I escalated the case to eBay/Paypal, and within a few hours, received a refund on my Paypal account with my case decided in my favor. Yes, I checked my account, and the refund is credited properly. So I think I’ll close the action.
I would rather have had the item, but it was not to be.
Does anyone know how this affects the seller’s ratings? Would other potential buyers be aware of this seller’s poor behaviour in the case of Musicat’s purchase?