Ebay and Nationwide losing my money

Lisaa21

I wanted to share my recent experience as an Ebay seller and get your thoughts on what I can do. 

I sold a valuable item on ebay and had a sizable sum paid into my Nationwide bank account on 12 July. However Nationwide returned the payment due to the sender (Ebay) apparently not providing their address or country on the payment form - indirectly filled out form according to Nationwide. 

Nationwide rejected the payment on 13 July and sent the money back to Ebay but now Ebay are claiming not to have received it.

Nationwide are putting the onus on eBay to forward trace the payment, as they were the ones who initiated the transaction. They say it can only be traced by them and that Nationwide have no further action on their part. 

Ebay, on the other hand are asking me to get more senior people at nationwide to trace the payment as they can't do anything until the funds reach back into the Ebay account.

I'm particularly frustrated because I feel that Ebay aren't being truthful / correct as I have actually previously had confirmation from eBay that the amount has been received in their account. Now they are denying any such thing. 

I feel like I'm being taken for a ride and made to be the middle person spending hours on the phone and stressing to solve what is essentially Ebay's fault. 

My next step will be small claims court but I wonder if anything has been in a similar situation or knows the legalities of this and who is responsible for finding my money?

Lisa

Aylesbury_Duck

Seems pretty clear to me that it's eBay you need to be pursuing.  Nationwide have only implemented what looks like an anti-money laundering policy on the payment.  It's eBay's job to reconcile their accounts to prove that the returned payment has reached them.

Since you have confirmation from eBay that they have the money, take them to court for it.

born_again

How was the money sent to you Nationwide acc? 

" Nationwide returned the payment due to the sender (Ebay) apparently not providing their address or country on the payment form " Never heard of this...
But Ebay need to review their internal accounts & liaise with their merchant bank to trace the payment.

Manxman_in_exile

If I were the OP I would:

1.  Go back to my bank and get (a) the exact reason that led them to reject the payment (I believe @born_again has knowledge of the banking industry so it seems odd that he's never heard of this as a reason for rejection) and (b) all the reference numbers and dates etc that they can provide for the rejection transaction, and 

2.  Put all that to Ebay including Ebay's own previous confirmation that they had received the money back.

(I suspect it's lying in an Ebay suspense a/c somewhere and they haven't identified it yet).

Olinda99

Sounds very strange that a bank would return a payment from eBay. Maybe post on the eBay board as @Soolin may have more experience

soolin

Never ever come across this and I know people who deal with thousands of pounds worth of transactions regularly from ebay. I can't comment on Nationwide policies and haven't worked in any bank for years- but it seems an odd excuse to decline a payment.

I think I would be looking for more info from nationwide and then using that info to speak to someone more senior at ebay.

I would like OP to confirm though whether they are a regular seller or whether this was their first sale- and whether they had fully completed all the bank confirmation requirement with ebay when starting to sell. Also whether there was any dispute at all connected to the sale?

RFW

My Ebay payments go to my Nationwide account and I've never known a problem, they're pretty quick too.

They show up as from "Adyen N.V." which is the payment gateway Ebay use. As Adyen is the only name that shows up I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned. It's always possible that Nationwide would know who it was. How did Nationwide tell you about what had happened (phone, letter, email)?

Was it a UK Ebay transaction?

Are Nationwide certain that a payment turned up and was sent back, for whatever reason?

Was this a direct payment from Ebay or could it possibly have been sent by the buyer. There may well be something else going on here that hasn't been mentioned.

If you can get in writing from Nationwide that they returned a transaction to Adyen/Ebay then you can take that back to Ebay and get them to sort it. If not then you'd need more details and to provide more details here.

Lisaa21

Thank you everyone for your helpful comments and suggestions. I think I will be going back to Nationwide for the proof you mentioned. 

I was a first time seller and there was an issue with the account, which I'm sure has complicated matters. I didnt want to detail this above as was already confusing and rambling. 

The item I sold was located in another country. When I was posting, I couldn't work out how to change the item location other than to change my Ebay seller address, which I did. 

I think this has contributed to the issue because my address on ebay doesn't match my Nationwide address (and also ebay find it confusing). However when I spoke to Nationwide they assured me several times that it was ebay who didn't provide their address, not mine. 

I wonder whether they followed procedures for an EU (Italy) bank due to that being my address, but that this isn't sufficient for UK banks? 

Anyone have any thoughts?

There's a whole world of pain at the other end when they locate my money to the  get it out of ebay cause because of this adress thing but that's a story for another post. 

Thank you all

Lisa

soolin

So just to clarify , did you change your UK address for a non UK address on eBay as that would cause all these issues and eBay may well now consider yours a fraudulent account. You say the item was not in the UK, were both you and the buyer in the UK and did you state clearly that item was located elsewhere? If your eBay address and bank account address are different you will have failed money laundering rules as bank will return the money as not being recognised for the account holder - that might explain the wording about eBay not supplying the address . What they actually meant was that the country supplied by eBay did not match the country you stated when you set up your Nationwide account. Although none of that actually helps to say where the money is now. If eBay have marked this as fraudulent it might have disappeared into an account to be investigated somewhere at eBay, and I imagine you are going to have to spend time trying to track down the right department at eBay who deal with fraud. 

I have real concerns over this now, how long ago was the sale, have you got full tracking to prove delivery to the buyer at the address given by eBay and what sort of money are we talking about? 

Lisaa21

Thank you. Yes it's a real mess. 

Addressing some of your points in turn.

1. I'm in regular contact with ebay and I do not think there's any issues of fraud. I'm in touch with their leadership team and they know the situation and are supposedly trying to help. However it's possible it's been flagged somewhere else in ebay and not showing up on leadership systems?

Item was in Italy, I am in UK and buyer was in the US. Yes it was clearly stated where the item was, I wanted to make sure to be transparent (hence changing the address to make that clear).

2. Nationwide have been clear it's to do with Ebay's address and said that they even didn't have the country it came from. So while your explanation is sensible, it feels that they weren't put off by the country, as they said they couldn't identify the country. Weird. 

3. The sale was in June but ebay held the funds (first time seller). The actual payment finally got sent on 12 July. Yes I have full proof of delivery, including messages from buyer. There was a partial refund made on the sale price (again, all agreed and documented). We're talking about around £1000, so yes it's significant. 

Thank you so much for your help 

Lisa