Ebay refusing fee credit. Any tips?

gazfocus

I sold an expensive item (£1850) on eBay a couple of weeks ago, and as soon as it sold, eBay restricted my account of 10 years. Naturally, I refused to send the item because eBay were withholding the payment and informed the customer who was understanding.

I cancelled the order on eBay and a few days later, I had an email from eBay saying the cancellation had failed because they couldn’t take the funds from my bank (well no, they had the funds already!)

The customer understandably opened a case to get his refund and as I couldn’t refund him, he escalated to a claim where eBay stepped in and issued the refund. 

Customer is still fine about the process and is obviously happy he got his refund in the end, however, eBay are still stinging me for the final value fees (£113) and the ad fees (£55). 

I’ve reached out to eBay customer service, provided them with the cancellation ID to show I had attempted to cancel, and explained that I could not refund them through the case, and once it was escalated to a ‘claim’, eBay don’t allow the seller the opportunity to refund without being penalised. As such I don’t agree that I should pay them £168 in fees for a sale that didn’t complete. 

EBay have responded saying that because they had to step in and refund, they will not reverse the fees. 

Any tips on how to get them to credit these fees? Seems like if challenged in court, the fees would be unenforceable but I would likely lose my eBay account (which now has its restriction removed) if I tried to take them to court. 

soolin

The shame of it is that this unfortunate situation is all over 30p as that’s how much eBay hold when they return FVFs.  If your balance was nil at the point you sold and you immediately tried to cancel then you would have been 30p short and eBay would have expected to take that from your bank account.

This is all a result of a snowball effect, it sounds like this sale was not common for you and would have been subject to the 21 day hold which everyone who either starts to sell, or has an unusually high sale, or a sale in a common scammable category. I suspect you hit all 3 of those criteria. Once buyer had received the watch and after eBay were happy that the buyer was happy , the funds would have been released. The fact that they couldn’t take the 30p  from your bank would also be a red flag and almost certainly mark you as a scammer. 

Your attempt at refunding failed due to the 30p issue. Unfortunately once eBay have to step in on a sellers behalf that reflects badly on the seller and according to the T and cs you agreed to they then give you a selelr warning and retain the FVFs . If your cancellation had succeeded and eBay were able to take the 30p from you then that would have been all it cost you. 

You could try offering them the 30p now , and offering to go through a full verification again with your bank, but I can’t see any other easy way of resolving this. 

As for losing your account, check your seller dashboard , that selelr warning might also be enough to cause you issues going forward. You will also be likely to be subject to the 21 day hold on future larger sales until such time as eBay are happy with the way you manage your account. If your account is still live and usable I would suggest selling a few low cost items , preferably ones that you can send RM48 to show delivery. let them impose the hold, and build up a bit of feedback and reputation with eBay.

soolin

I just noticed you had £55 insertion /listing fee, is that right? I’ve never seen a listing fee that high , what extras did you use? 

Now that I have actually bothered to read that bit it changes my figures above. listing fees are never re credited , although you do get a fee credit if you relist the same thing within a certain period using the same listing. Any extras though like reserves are never refundable and that is clear in the T and Cs, so eBay would have been chasing more than the 30p.

I will leave my initial response up though for anyone else reading this . 

To sum up, if you had refunded you would have received FVF refund of £113 but your listing fees of £55 would have still been payable.

gazfocus

Thanks for replying @Soolin though that’s not what happened here. 

I’m a business and have sold on eBay for over 10 years. In that time, I’ve old equipment on eBay, sometimes for up to £6,000 without any issue so while its not common to sell a high value item, it’s definitely not ‘new’ to my account. 

Regarding the 30p insertion fee, this is also not what happened. When I attempted to refund the customer, eBay attempted to take the entire £1850 from my card even though they were holding onto the funds from the sale. I specifically have a card that only has a small amount on for the likes of eBay/amazon/etc so they can verify the card as needed, but never will have £1850 on it. 

I get the reasons eBay decided to restrict my account and once I appealed, they removed the restriction (for clarity this wasn’t a watch…not sure why you thought it was haha), but they shouldn’t be able to just steal £168 from sellers just because the seller couldn’t refund the buyer without ebays help. Where does that even make sense?

And no, apologies, the £55 was a promoted listing fee. In my experience, this should be refunded when an order is cancelled/refunded which is what has happened when I’ve had to refund a buyer in the past. 

tightauldgit

Seems to me from what I read that you decided to go 'off piste' from Ebay's processes and as a result the buyer has had to ask Ebay to step in to get their refund and in that case, Ebay have decided not to refund your fees. That being the case I suspect that Ebay are in the right here. 

As annoying as their processes might be at times you did sign up to abide by their rules and terms and they do sometimes withhold payment on items that they consider high risk. How did you expect that to resolve itself with your approach? You said you wouldn't release the item until you got paid but Ebay wouldn't pay out until the buyer got the item. 

As for the refund - again you tried to issue a refund without the funds available to cover it. What did you do at that stage to resolve that issue? Did you contact Ebay? 

If I was the buyer I don't think I would be very happy that I paid for an item, then the seller refuses to send it, then he doesn't issue a refund, and I'm waiting for a significant sum of money to come back to me. 

Have to be honest and say while I appreciate sometimes Ebay's processes aren't very user-friendly I think you are in the wrong on this one.