Buyer inspected item in person, then made payment. Now wants to return item they have broken.

[alicelouise5678]

Hello,

We're having a real headache at the moment. We recently sold an item to a buyer who was invited to pay on collection AFTER inspecting the item and confirmung they are happy with it. They wanted to pay cash, but we insisted on Paypal for security and due to covid-19 safety.

They buyer called his wife to confirm all was good with the item after inspection and the payment was made, so we released the item.

The buyer then send us photos of a badly damaged item that they have broken whilst trying to assemble. We provided instructions as well as advice at pick up.

They are claiming that they did not receive the item as expected - even though they inspected it prior to payment. It's clear they have brutalised it whilst trying to asemble. Their incompetence is not our fault.

However, in good faith we offered a partial refund to help them move on and they rejected.

Ebay are saying we have to accept the return before we can do anything abou t it. The problem is they have taken the item across the country and it would cost us upwards of £100 to have it couriered over.

Is there any advice on what we can / should do? We're super stressed as we're in the middle of house move ourselves and have two very young kids so arranging anything is challenging, let alone a courier to pick up goods that have been damaged by the buyer.

Please help.

[red_magpie]

They wanted to pay cash, but we insisted on Paypal for security and due to covid-19 safety.

Then I'm afraid you've given this buyer carte blanche to find or invent any fault to claim a refund.

EBay's money back guarantee applies to items which are sold for collection if the buyer picks them up in person, AND pays by PayPal. If you had allowed them to pay by cash, as they wanted to, they would have had no claim against you.

You now have no alternative except to refund them in full. Disputing the case would be pointless. EBay's policy is to support the buyer unless they can determine that the item was as described. As eBay never sees the items involved in disputes, it's almost always a foregone conclusion that the buyer will win. If you dispute the case, you will just forfeit any return of fees and receive a defect on your account.

I think you're saying that eBay is requiring you to pay for the return postage, or provide a prepaid return label? That's interesting, and much as I would have guessed. This wasn't entirely clear when the rules changed, i.e. whether sellers would be responsible for the return of items that are collected, as they are for items that are posted. Inevitably some buyers will exploit this by inventing faults to get their items for nothing, as items sold for collection are often too heavy to be worth the cost return by courier.

This will be just one more easy way for buyers to cheat sellers on eBay. This has become an absurdly risky place to sell things.

It would be a good idea to read the full details of eBay's money back guarantee see: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/money-back-guarantee.html

[alicelouise5678]

Thank you. And yes, was a huge error switching to Paypal. If it wasn't for Covid we would have not worried about the cash so much. The standard ebay polices surrounding this seem absurd and I'm surprised that anyone would risk selling anything under these circumstances.

We've had many conflicting bits of advice from ebay. Seems like every callcentre person has a different opinion about what we should do, and some are not even up to date in their understanding of the policies.