Ebay's new buyer protection scam

[wayne15071965]

So I have been a seller on and off her since June 2001, Over the years I have sent items recorded delivery that either never turn up , or arrive with no notification of delivery.  Now someone wants to charge a buyer a fee for safe delivery, when they would have been charged that in the P&P cost.  Frankly it sounds more like a scam than customer service and Ebay are also trying to force us to use their shipping option, So much for free enterprise, sound like trying to get the monopoly on delivery as well.  As for hanging on the sellers cash til 2 days after delivery, really so post office goes on strike and you don't get paid, Think I may start looking to leave. So much for eBay's loyalty to us .

[madeat136]

Omg Really !!!! This just gets more and more crazy.I had an experience dropping off at post office today , the 'simple delivery ' £2.70 only allows (according to bloke in P.O ) a weight upto 250g 🙈Sent from my Galaxy

[van_fashion]

I’ve been selling for well over a decade yet eBay have been extremely terrible towards me.

Holding onto fees to gain interest is the new eBay nonsense. Claiming to be looking after customers best interest? Really? By way of not paying out when they should. Outrageous. They change their policies regularly I can’t keep up. 

Absolute scam. Is there any wonder thousands are leaving eBay to  join reputable and honest free selling sites.  EBay donot care about peoples livelihood just in gaining interest on your monies 😞

[van_fashion]

100 percent scam. Claiming the new policies is to look out for the best interest for sellers and buyers? Oh please. I’m leaving eBay once my items sell or don’t sell. Too exhausting having to ask them to release my payments. Not worth my time considering the pittance I’m making and the vast amount I’m spending for postage and packaging.  

yet another eBay ripoff /scam to gain interest on monies by way of delaying payouts. Keeping it in your/their pending. Outrageous! Shane in you eBay 😞

[van_fashion]

They sure do think we’re stupid ! 

[van_fashion]

Therefore new ebayer need to know or we need to spread the word before potential joiners fall for this nonsense new policy yet again. 

[andyf117]

In yesterday's post, I mentioned I was going to send a 'Second Chance' offer to the 'losing' bidder for an item which I had a duplicate of - it had ended yesterday evening after being listed for a week, and had not been subject to the buyer protection racket at the time...

....however, the category it was in was in the process of falling foul of the new system, and what I suspected might happen did indeed happen - although the SC offer showed his bid price as it had stood, which had been made whilst BP was not in place, the subsequent order page is showing BP was applied, and he's ended up paying more than the 'winning' bidder did. The 'winner' didn't have to pay it, so why should the 'loser'?

[f3speech]

If you list something for a flat £10 that is what you see on your seller page. If you look at the item as a buyer then it will have the fee on top, so the BIN price shows as something like £11.12. This is why there are so many odd prices around at the moment!

It gets really confusing when someone makes you an offer though as it shows you what the buyer has offered INCLUDING the fee, easy to get caught out accepting lower than your bottom price.

I don't like it, it feels complicated. I can only hope they will change it somehow to be simpler to follow. 

[knightinarmour]

One issue I have that I haven’t yet seen discussed is postage. (Sorry if it’s already been discussed; I don’t see it). 

under the old system, people paid you goods plus p&p and money was pretty much available straight away and you could use that to pay for postage - if not directly then indirectly by having the money to fund the postage. 

now, the money for postage is locked in within the goods money and not released until after the item is received therefore the seller has to pay for postage upfront with no funds available to support that. 

if you are selling say lots of things that might be a lot of postage to fork out hoping you will get it eventually. 

at least Vinted makes the buyer pay the postage direct and therefore the seller doesn’t see that money at all. 

any thoughts on that? 

[wintersdawn1]

I *think* you can use your pending money for postage if you buy the postage through ebay.

[ripface]

So I'm letting my last few auctions relist until they sell, and thus far am not motivated to continue placing auctions with eBay!  After 24 years of selling on the platform ... and in all that time never having had the need or inclination to contact eBay Help ... I've now had to call them twice in one week complaining that funds that should have been release had not been.

Life is too short for me to continue monitoring my auction sales to ensure that payments are released on time.  Both instances that I had to contact them on were days overdue.  One to the Global Shipping Program address had arrived safely according to the tracking ... and I received an email saying it was now being dispatched to the recipient in the US.  Four days later still no funds released so first call to eBay which resulted in them manually releasing the funds.  Second instance was with DPD the courier, who are probably one of the most consistent and reliable couriers out there (IMHO).  The item was delivered and the DPD tracking showed it was left at the customers safe place.  However eBay tracking still showed it as in transit.  Second call resulted in another manual releasing of the funds.  

This is shoddy and ridiculous!  The second buyer had already left me positive feedback.  Why this can't flag an item as delivered is beyond me.

eBay, get your ACT together ... this is beyond a joke!!!

[andha-21]

Every time I think about the BPF I keep coming back to the Trading Standards angle 

Below is an extract from Citizens advice;

Check what you should report to Trading Standards

You should report a business to Trading Standards if they sold you something:

• unsafe or dangerous, like an electronic appliance with faulty wiring or food past its use-by date

• fake

• not as described - for example, you bought a package holiday but something advertised wasn’t included

• you didn’t want to buy - for example, they put pressure on you

I look at that last bullet point and that is like red to a bull.

They aren't putting pressure on us, they just aren't giving us a choice. Which may actually be worse than what Citizens Advice were expecting.

[ripface]

This is shoddy and ridiculous!  The second buyer had already left me positive feedback.  Why this can't flag an item as delivered is beyond me.

***Thought for the day***

Although this sounds like a good idea from a sellers' perspective, I guess that eBay would prefer *not* to release funds when an item has positive feedback left ... that way they keep a hold of your money for a little longer.  Stoopid me!!

[strontiumdogma]

eBay must be making a fortune in interest on the funds it is now holding as a matter of routine. I wouldn't mind betting that that is skirting the boundary of illegality too. I reckon this whole cockamamie scheme was cooked up by money men with zero experience in customer service.

[goodibags]

Ebay will argue that the buyer agreed to the terms of sale at the point of purchase. To be fair, some buyer fees do flash up at some stage in the process.

It's worth noting that if a buyer bought an item that included a charge for Special Delivery postage and the seller sent it 2nd class, the buyer is entitled to request a refund of the difference in postage costs. On the basis that they were overcharged or mis-sold a service that was not provided.

Likewise, in cases were an item is collection-only or the buyer has arranged collection, the protection fees they paid were clearly unwanted and unnecessary. The service appears to have been been mis-sold.

So what is the process by which a buyer should ask Ebay (not the seller, obviously) for a refund?

[macleod63]

Surely they should allow buyers to opt out of this fee.

I always post with adequate cover for the items value.

I also will refund or part refund if the item was not as described. 

But I guess I am not everyone.....

[ile136yz]

It is being gradually applied to all Private Accounts. I've had a quick look at your listings & the first Book came up £11.12 which looks like Buyers fess have been added.

[martinwh1]

We all do that but, in any case, what you are talking about is covered by eBay's free "Money Back Guarantee" which remains in place. The whole point of this post is that the so called "Buyer Protection Fee" only offers  24/7 Customer Service access, probaly provided by a chatbot.

[andha-21]

I'm not sure eBay can argue about terms and conditions.

It's why contracts usually have disclaimers along the lines of "this doesn't effect your statutory rights".

Any company/individual can write anything they like in a contract but if the contract runs against standing sovereign laws then it basically isn't worth the paper it's written on".

The entire premise is built off ignorance, as in if people don't know their rights, they won't see the dodgy bits and therefore won't challenge them.

That's how companies get away with their dodgy stuff for so long.

Most simply don't know/care/prefer to keep their heads in the sand/or think along the lines of a company like eBay wouldn't try to game the system.

& that's how they get away with it. It's not that they are exceedingly clever/sneaky, it's that they basically don't have an opponent. They are playing chess by themselves.

[ripface]

Just when I thought things could not get any worse .....

Has anyone noticed that the option to "Send an invoice" has been removed??  I've a guitar that has not been paid for in over 24 hours so decided to send an invoice to remind the buyer.  No way to do that now, so no way to apply any discounts for the item or P&P. 

Really??

[abrahamtoast]

edit - this was in response to @knightinarmour not @ripface 

Postage has been done to death on these threads since the changes were first announced.

However, as you seem to have come along rather late - the solution is to leave the money from your first couple of sales in your eBay balance, and use it to purchase postage from eBay. You don't need to always buy postage from eBay - once you are up and running you will be able to transfer your eBay balance to your own bank account, and make your own postage arrangements. - That is, until Simple Delivery becomes compulsory for private sellers, when the problem you outline will disappear (only to be replaced with different totally foreseeable problems).

There should then be enough there to pay your postage as you go along. If, as you suggest, you are selling "lots of things", as a private seller,  they won't all sell at once, and you won't be in the position of paying out large amounts in postage at the outset. And to be quite blunt, for the amounts we're talking about, very few people will be in the position of being unable to afford to post sold items. You know your money with eBay is safe, and you will get it. The delay is a slight inconvenience, but not the massive deal-breaker some posters make it out to be.

Your second point is more valid. eBay's tracking is not syncing properly with that of Royal Mail and many other couriers, which is leading to unjust delays in making funds available to selling. I currently have four items, which have been delivered, for which payment is being held. I have received feedback for two of them, and I checked with the buyers for the other two. eBay should not have brought in these changes until their integration with the other tracking systems was 100% reliable. Sellers are being forced to wait too long for some payments because of this inefficiency on eBay's part.