Buyer Claims Wrong Item Received But Order Shows Is Correct

[monmondshop]

Buyer contacted me about receiving wrong item (red colour and they wanted black) I asked for the photo of the item they got for my record before refunding,  upon checking the order I saw they purchased the colour which was sent to them. I messaged the buyer and politely inform them that order was correct but they still  insist that they picked different colour. Is it possible that eBay could make this type of error in transactions?  I'm just currious.

[*vyolla*]

This will be an error on the buyers part. It sounds like the buyer selected the wrong colour from the dropdown menu, it's an easy mistake to make.

[monmondshop]

Thank you for the answer 🙂 Yes I know but in short period of time I had 3 buyers who made this similar mistake, I was just currious if it's just buyer mistake or other eBay error I wasn't aware of.

[*vyolla*]

You can ask eBay to raise a ticket to check if there's a technical error, but as no other sellers have mentioned this I don't think that there is one, the whole site would be in meltdown with variation listings.

I’ve found that the easiest route to contact eBay Customer Services is via the link below, you can request a call back:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/eua?id=5275&mkevt=1&mkpid

[thesmokingrunner]

Although on the balance of probabilities the buyer made a mistake and selected the wrong colour when ordering the fact that you subsequently mention that you've had the same issue with two other buyers recently suggests to me that the possibility of an error on eBay's part should not be dismissed. The problem, though, is that even if there was an error in the code there is next to no chance that Ebay would either admit or take responsibility for it.

I suppose you could always ask someone to make a 'test' purchase to see if the order you receive is the same as the one ordered (ask whoever makes the purchase to take screenshots when they place the order in case you need proof) - if the order details you receive are different to the order when placed you would at least be able to present evidence that eBay is at fault, but other than that Im very sorry to say that I think you'll just have to deal with these cases as NAD returns.

[lord_and_lady_m]

I had one recently the same. They ordered 2x dark blue items. It stated dark blue as the variations, but elsewhere in the order it showed one as orange.  Luckily both myself and the customer spotted something had gone wrong with the system, so cancelled and started again.

[*vyolla*]

Wow, the system is broken then. That's really poor on eBay's part.

[thesmokingrunner]

Sadly, *vyolla*, I'm not at all surprised. The question now is how to prove it?

@monmondshop 

@lord_and_lady_m 

Right. My initial thought is that this is an occasional error caused by an embedded value in a rogue module. Essentially, when the buyer places an order the entered details are captured and processed in two distinct ways: once for the buyer and once for the seller. Now, if the module which creates the seller's order details contains a hard-coded or default value for a Colour variation, it's quite possible that the details received by the seller would differ from those placed by the buyer.

It's a theory at the moment but I am wondering the if the incorrect orders you both received happen to be the most popular ccolour for the item ordered? Monmondshop, are the most popular colours for the three incorrect orders you mention the same colours which appeared on the orders you received? And the same applies to you, lord_and_lady_m; your screenshot shows two colours (with the same Item IDs?) - is one of those colours the most popular on that listing?

This issue does appear to be rooted in rogue code; the problem is proving it sufficiently for eBay to investigate and fix it. All I can suggest is to run some test purchases and save screenshots of the colours selected when buying together with the order confirmation received by the buyer and the order details received by the seller. The more proof there is the more likely action will be taken, but without proof I think each of you will receive the standard "there have been no other reports" brush-off.