Dispatched phone now buyer is acting shakey wants me to cancel

[jaccrowle4]

So everything was going great I got the money, dispatched the phone this morning but was worried about the "empty box" scam.

so I factory reset the phone and put a simple pin on it.

i messaged the buyer saying i have left a pin on the phone, as suggestion i saw on Reddit, and that I've got my eBay notifications turned on, when they receive the phone, message me and i will send them the pin within 5 minutes.

well the buyer has told me they're going to contact eBay, they want to cancel the phone. this wasn't in the description. they won't be held to ransom.

i have told them i was scammed years ago and now I'm just trying to cover my own back and that I don't see what the big deal is.

They're making a deal about contacting eBay but won't tell me why eBay have advised them so between acting shakey about the pin and now apparently lying about contacting eBay.. what do I do? l've already sent the phone this morning, is there any what to cancel the order and have my phone returned to me before it's dispatched to them?

I'm in the UK and I've sent though Royal Mail. Thank you

[*vyolla*]

I'm not knocking this, because I think it's a great idea and eBay should adopt this feature and it should be added to all used phone listings, but this is something you should've mentioned in the listing description and/or made this clear to your buyer before dispatching the phone.

All you can do now is to let the buyer know that as soon as they receive the phone they can open an eBay return and you can then issue them with a pre-paid returns label. 

They may not be happy and leave negative feedback though.

[jaccrowle4]

Yes I really do wish I’d have stayed this before hand, that is one of my regrets with this listing.

Ive spoke to an eBay over the phone and they’ve basically told me what I did was a really good idea but the buyer needs to return the item.

Ive messaged the buyer who has gone from quick frequent message to absolute silence and told them to refuse delivery and return to sender if the receive the package not to open it and to return it straight away.

my biggest concern now is receiving and empty box 

[plpmr]

" told them to refuse delivery"

Having already read what I think are your unacceptable actions I'm not surprised that you have advised your buyer to take a course of action that would lose them buyer protection.

refuse delivery voids eBay buyer protection.

[jaccrowle4]

I did not know that. 

in your opinion what about my actions are unacceptable and why? I just want to learn what I can do differently or better in the future

so far I’ve had quite a few people on Reddit tell me I’ve been perfectly reasonable with the exact same post so any advice from you would be appreciated 

[red_magpie]

my actions are unacceptable and why?

Even if it seems a good idea, you can't just make up your own rules on eBay.

If you intended to enter a pin which the buyer could only unlock when you send it, this should have been stated in the description. Unfortunately it's made your buyer suspicious that you may somehow use it to hold them to ransom. Unfortnately there's not much room for trust when trading on eBay. Your buyer has just as much rght to suspect you to be up to some trick as you did to suspect they might claim to have received an empty box - which does happen.

As for telling your buyer to refuse delivery of a phone they have paid for, this is very serious. You clearly didn't realise that this is a tactic used by criminals to trick buyers into throwing away their protection under eBay's money back guaratee. You need to urgently contact the buyer to change this, and explain that refusing delivery would invalidate all their protection.

Next time, do please just follow eBay's procedures.

[jaccrowle4]

I wish I did state it earlier, i started getting cold feet and did the pin like an hour before sending it because as I’ve said, I read online this would be a good thing to do.

when I spoke to an eBay advisor after he also told me this was a great idea.

i told the advisor that I am going to message the buyer and tell him he should refuse the delivery, he did not say to me anything about invalidating the buyers protection. 

I really don’t want to be on the wrong side of this and want to do anything as right as I can, I’m going to message the buyer now and advise him not to refuse delivery as I’ve learned this would invalidate his buyers protection and instead he should receive the parcel and open a return through eBay. 

as for following eBay’s procedures, again,  because I don’t want to to anything that could be seen as wrong in the future, what procedure specifically did I not follow? 

the eBay advisor I spoke to on the phone sent an email to me also clarifying what we spoke about on the phone and in the email he has stated

“We see the messages between you and the buyer, and the PIN code that you put there is not against any of our policies”

So is the only thing I’ve done wrong I should’ve stated in the description about the pin before hand?

or is there something else?

as I’ve said in a previous comment I just want to learn what I can do better

[*vyolla*]

---

@jaccrowle4 wrote:

So is the only thing I’ve done wrong I should’ve stated in the description about the pin before hand?

or is there something else?

---

No, that's about it. It must be absolutely clear what the buyer is getting.

[jaccrowle4]

If that’s the only thing then I’d like to say I’d do things differently next time but I’m never gonna sell a phone on eBay again.

i should have put it in the description but i also should never have listed it on eBay in the first place.

i appreciate the feedback though