Bicycle scam

[jcun4620]

I sold a bicycle on Ebay and the buyer paid through ebay and then came in person and looked the bike over and took the bike. The next day he reported the bike as not as described and claimed £100 refund from me. I told him the bike was exactly as described and refused to pay the £100. 

I spoke to Ebay on the phone and they told me to refund the buyer and the buyer would have to send the bike back to me and any damage could be deducted off the refund.

I did this and Ebay immediatly closed the return and the buyer has messaged me to say he can keep the bike and the full refund.

How is this possibe? Now I can't get through to Ebay as they say case closed.

[papso22]

That was appalling advice from ebay,   completely against how the  money back guarantee works.  Do you have a call transcript?

Returns always close with a refund and the buyer will have been told to keep the bike, so what happened was inevitable if you did what they said to do.

[jcun4620]

No I don't have a transcript, it was verbal.
What can I do?

[papso22]

You can try complaining to ebay customer service, but I think you are going to have an uphill struggle.

[jckl1957]

Ebay will have told your buyer that he has been refunded in full and does not need to return the bike.

The best way for you to deal with this is through the buyer.

Message them (or write them a letter.)

Be polite but firm.

Make it clear that they can't keep the refund and the bike and that you want the bike back.  You will probably have to offer to go and collect it - the buyer is unlikely to want to package it for transport even if you arrange and pay for a courier.

Although Ebay say he can keep the bike, that may not be a legal right and is certainly not moral for him to keep your goods and the money. Make him aware of this.

[plpmr]

Have a word with citizens advice and, or a solicitor.

[red_magpie]

How is this possibe?

Because from advice that eBay sometimes gives to users it's clear that some customer support staff simply don't understand eBay's own rules.

The correct advice to have given you was that as the seller you needed to send the buyer a prepaid return label, and to refund them on return. You could then theoretically have reported any damage to eBay, but eBay would probably have told you that as they don't see the items sold here they often can't tell who is telling the truth. Their default policy in this case almost always seems to be to support the buyer.

eBay does state that sellers may be able to reduce the refund where an item is returned damaged, but this is rara and in practice this seems only to apply to business sellers (for whom this is a legal right).

Another problem is that it's almost impossible to complain about eBay. If you try to complain to customer support they may just cut you off. eBay does have a complaints procedure, but it isn't published and one eBay rep told us that it "It is used for formal complaints, it is very rare for it to be needed or for it to be the best option to help a member. It cannot be used for appeals of suspensions, restrictions, eBay cases or a lot of other things." In other words, it can't be used for almost anything that users might want to complain about!

Like all of us, by accepting the user agreement you agreed to accept eBay's decisions. Including whether or not a buyer has to be refunded.

The root problem is that eBay has structured it's organisation in such a way that although its management of payments is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, its money back guarantee is unregulated. This means that there is no right of appeal against its decisions to any independent authority.