The official line from eBay is that funds from sellers can be held up to 90 days during disputes with buyers.
I have a situation where a regular buyer who had always left positive reviews was upset with a recent purchase, claiming that I was trying to defraud him. This wasn’t the case and I have pretty much only positive reviews for similar items. The buyer was fully refunded for the most recent transaction but he then opened disputes for old transactions from 3+ month back (which is well beyond the eBay refund guarantee period) and his reason for the dispute has absolutely zero merit, and I can’t find any eBay policies that’s even close to wrongdoing from my side.
I’m less concerned with the buyer actually winning these disputes (again, all for which I received positive feedback).
My issue is that because the buyer decided to open disputes for effectively all of these transactions in the past, eBay has been putting a hold on a large amount of my payments, which took my balance to a large negative.
This has now been going on for 2.5 weeks and I have no idea how long this hold on my funds, which is based on a dispute that even by eBay standards should have been resolved within 1 day at best.
Instead, the buyer is still in possession of all the items purchased but because I have a large hold on my funds, I have not getting paid for anything sold over the past 2.5 weeks because because it’s being offset by the large negative balance from this hold. This is likely to continue for another 2-3 weeks until my new sales finally surpasses the amount being hold or until eBay resolves the dispute, whichever comes first.
eBay doesn’t appear to differentiate between worthy disputes and disputes between disputes with zero basis.
Has anyone else come across a situation like this or have an idea how long on disputes without any merit takes eBay to resolve? I’m after an answer about what happens in practice and not just the eBay tag line that it may take up to 90 days.
I have accepted a long time ago that eBay is very much biased towards buyers and offers them a lot more protection.
I’ve even heard of sellers trying to affect the competition by opening up new accounts as buyers, and then purchase lots of items (each individually), purely in order to return everything within the eBay refund policy period and then leave numerous negative reviews on the competitions account - and eBay not removing any of the negative feedback despite the names and addresses on the two accounts being the same (showing that it is obviously the same individual)
But it feels more and more that buyers can just make up or do whatever they want, with only negative consequences to the sellers but nothing really for the buyers, even in cases where deceitful or outright intentions are not just obvious but also proven.
But back to my original question- has anyone encountered a situation like mine and how long did it take to resolve?
