fed up with daft policies on ebay

soolin

I listed a trench art item on ebay and it sold immediately and I was going to courier it off today. However, I got a warning that my item violates the weapons and firearms policy and has therefore been removed, and should I list anything again that violates the policy I risk losing my account.

I was going to send it anyway as I have the  buyers address in managed payments and have received the money- but it is a global shipping item so would go to ebay and probably get destroyed at that point. So I go to refund with apologies to the buyer and it occurs to me that whilst I can refund my bit, buyer still has paid all the GSP on costs. I phoned ebay and they said these are not automatically refunded and instead buyer has to either wait 3 weeks and open an INR or request his costs be returned manually. This seems to be very poor customer service for buyer, but after chatting with Dublin they have sent buyer a refund request which he can just click and return. he will still have to wait until refund is processed of course.

However, buyer still loses any difference in foreign exchange costs I suspect , and over 1000 items in trench art categories have been successfully sold in the past 60 days with several hundred still listed.  

martindow

I wonder if the issue relates to the fact that this is going abroad.  There are regulations for importing and exporting antique or historical items from the UK and into European countries.  Some only apply to high value items but in some categories anything over a hundred years old, even if of a minimal value, requires an export licence.  Looking at this list

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/guides/information-guides/export-licences/

your trench art doesn't seem to be affected unless it has a five figure value.  But if your listing mentioned a date over a century ago it could have raised a flag with Ebay.

Goodness knows what will be the situation from January 1st.

soolin

As I like to know where I’ve gone wrong I actually read the policy it does actually state that nothing made from weaponry , shell casings (or something else but I can’t remember the phrase) can be sold on eBay. 

it gets better though , I’m in managed payments and my weekly payout is Tuesday and no money moves from pending to payable until it is shipped or due to be shipped,  so although the money for the trench art shows in pending, the refund has come from available funds, and since there aren’t any it states that on Tuesday my bank account will be debited to cover the refund. So I haven’t received the money for the item but have to use my bank funds for the refund. 

My only hope is that some of the items move to payable tomorrow and cover the amount due to be debited. I’m also wondering at what point the pending original payment shows as payable?