Which online marketplace has the best seller protection, or where to sell a single jacket or two?

GervisLooper

I quit ebay a couple of years ago after a couple of horrible item not as described experiences where the buyer was clearly being disingenuous. We knew we packaged things well and they are claiming they were smashed up and the pictures didnt even show damage. Regardless ebay just sides with the buyer and enforces either sorting out ourselves or reading online it seemed they would just side with the buyer.

It was causing much stress drawn out over a couple of week period with the buyer being really rude and saying we are lucky they are being nice and allowing us the return and whatnot. I hated that experience as we felt our hands were tied and just to make it end offered 50% reduction to close the case even though we knew it was fraudulent.

Another similar thing happened before that but I was moving house so was not able to defend my case then but in hindsight seemed exactly the same thing as I knew the item was in perfect working order and they just got default win as I wasnt up on the case due to moving. Regardless they would have sided with buyer anyway.

I understand that people who run a shop let these cases run off their back and see it as the cost of doing business but it hurts when you only do sales once in a blue moon and then get something like this.

Doing more research for alternatives it sadly seems that this would be the natural state of affairs on any marketplace that gets any traffic as the companies claim that happy buyers bring in traffic for sellers and sellers are drawn to places with lots of buyers.

After the above incident I had a wonderful experience selling a batch of records to an online vynil store. They drove to me, inspected the records, paid cash. Probably got quite a bit less than I could have on ebay but really I was not desperate for the money and it was nice to have a pleasant and smooth transaction after those horrible experiences above.

I was looking up seller protection policies and individual sellers experience for several of the alternatives such as etsy and vinted. Seemed to be exactly the same complaints and many saying they are even worse than ebay, which I couldnt imagine is possible since ebay sides with buyer 99% of the time.

Even if those claims might be rare I simply dont want to support an ecosystem like that on principle. Just like how I dont use amazon any more and look for smaller independant companies for individual products.

So is it just a case of maybe advertising wherever, be it gumtree or suchlike or locally and just asking for cash in hand, if not knowing the people personally of course.

soolin

If you sell online then your buyers have rights and you cannot get away from that. If your experiences online are mainly negative then you may need perhaps to look at your descriptions and photos, yes there are bad buyers, we’ve all had them, but if you routinely have issues then it suggests something you are doing is attracting them.

if you want a sale to be completely hassle and risk free the your only recourse is face to face cash sales , which will of course limit your audience. Look at FB marketplace as well as Gumtree, lots of scammers of course and tyre kickers but you can control the narrative. 

Depending on what you want to sell you might want to look at clothing exchanges where clothes are inspected before they are accepted and if sold you get a small percentage of the sale price, this only works for high end clothing though. For antiques, collectables etc then a bricks and mortar auction where they do sell as seen , but check commission and other costs. 

Devongardener

Just use a local selling group like Facebook Marketplace or Nextdoor.  

There are no buyers rights or comebacks , just cash. You can use PayPal or bank transfer for more expensive items but I prefer not to.
Of course you have to be comfortable with buyers coming to your home to collect but at least you don’t have to pack and post anything.

soolin

Devongardener said:

Just use a local selling group like Facebook Marketplace or Nextdoor.  

There are no buyers rights or comebacks , just cash. You can use PayPal or bank transfer for more expensive items but I prefer not to.
Of course you have to be comfortable with buyers coming to your home to collect but at least you don’t have to pack and post anything.

If selling face to face then I certainly wouldn't be using paypal. If posting then any buyer who knows what they are doing is going to insist on paypal G and S which gives them rights as well. I wouldn't complicate face to face sales with bank transfers either unless you knew exactly what you were doing. 

JetpackVelociraptor

Fraud is rife everywhere, and very few people would want to buy from an online platform where they have no recourse if the seller doesn't supply the goods. You'll be limited to face to face cash sales, pretty much - no sensible person is going to use bank transfer to buy privately online from someone they don't know.

"I understand that people who run a shop let these cases run off their back and see it as the cost of doing business"

Not at all, we fight them tooth and nail! The trick is to do everything you can to prevent the buyers abusing the returns process before it happens, and have robust practices in place to deal with it if it does happen.

For us that means having key details in the title, accurate and in-focus photos from every angle and close-ups of any imperfections, and a description that includes near the top of the page a visible and thorough description of any faults or flaws with the item. 

We only work with delivery companies we can rely on to deliver our goods without losing, breaking or delaying things. We package things as much as is required to protect them from damage, and we always get a signature as proof of delivery. We also record serial numbers or add our own to the item where needed so we can track individual products, and we only ever send to the eBay address given during payment.

We offer a change of mind returns route but charge the buyers for the return cost, which means people don't feel the need to damage things if they want to return them, and the cost of the returns tends to put normal people off purchasing unless they're reasonably sure they want the item.

You don't get much control over who buys your items, but we always check the buyers' feedback when we receive an offer or a message prior to purchase. If you visit their feedback page and click "left for others" you can comfortably rule out a lot of troublemakers by blocking anyone who leaves a lot of negative feedback or who repeatedly has problems that are resolved by getting money off. Anyone who makes unreasonable demands, is unpleasant or rude is blocked and if they've already purchased, we cancel the order, refund and block them.

If someone reports an item not received, we have their signature on the delivery paperwork or parcel confirmation as proof for eBay. If someone reports a fault, we immediately offer a return for a full refund as the first solution, and usually an offer to repair as the second solution. This is what eBay wants sellers to do, and hilariously it's also what most return fraudsters DON'T want sellers to do - they want to keep the item at a discount. If they go ahead with the return we don't have to refund until we get the item back, and as the seller we can appeal if the item they send back is not the same one we sent out or if the damage is caused by misuse. If an appeal to eBay fails, we can report it to Action Fraud, get a crime reference number, and appeal again to eBay with the crime reference. It's quite effective.

If all else fails, a sternly worded legal-looking letter before action sent to the buyer often gets the desired result.

I realise this response is probably a bit overkill, but the idea that businesses just accept this is a real bugbear for me! In over 15 years of eBay selling we've lost a total of maybe £50 due to eBay daftness. The idea that businesses just "take it on the chin" is, in a way, quite damaging to all of us trying to sell online. The people committing fraud believe it has less impact because it's just "part of the cost of doing business", and some of them genuinely don't seem to realise that what they're doing is fraud or criminal at all.

GervisLooper

JetpackVelociraptor said:

Fraud is rife everywhere, and very few people would want to buy from an online platform where they have no recourse if the seller doesn't supply the goods. You'll be limited to face to face cash sales, pretty much - 15 years of eBay selling we've lost a total of maybe £50 due to eBay daftness. The idea that businesses just "take it on the chin" is, in a way, quite damaging to all of us trying to sell online. The people committing fraud believe it has less impact because it's just "part of the cost of doing business", and some of them genuinely don't seem to realise that what they're doing is fraud or criminal at all.

I am just going on the countless reports from disgruntled sellers online and also videos on youtube of sellers who lost to ebay just defaulting to the buyer to keep the ecosystem flowing smoothly. Maybe you want to not bring it to light that this is the case to not "encourage" the wrongdoers but it is a chicken or egg thing, the fraudulent buyers who are this way inclined are already rife, as well as the fraudulent sellers you highlight, and well aware of the state of things. They already know the system well and how to abuse it. Making a post about it on an obscure forum, to most, isnt going to change anything. I prefer to not pretend it doesnt exist and rather talk about it and how to avoid than make overly optimistic assertions.

They are abbreviated INAD - item not as described - for a reason, because it happens so much.

It is like they say in online security, "security through obscurity is the worst kind of security".

Maybe you have done well and I think a lot depends on what you are selling so it definitely depends. I will note that I was on ebay for 15-20 years using it semi regularly, just as a Joe Public, not as a business, and dont remember it happening in that time. This happened twice in relatively quick succession both for items relating to vinyl collection or DJing. So maybe the buyers are more likely to be more deviant and conning in this area.

Anyway I no longer have a horse in this race as I stopped using ebay for over 2 years and only want to sell this one item so doesnt really matter to me either way if others choose to keep using them or not. I am just telling my experience.

It is just those two incidents left a very sour taste in the mouth making me not want to support a company that encourages that in future.

martindow

The OP seems to have been very unlucky if items have been correctly described.  

Judging by this recent thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6260522/vinted-returns/

Vinted seems to leave buyers to it if there are problems - not sure if that is synonymous with good seller protection ...

RFW

martindow said:

The OP seems to have been very unlucky if items have been correctly described.  

Judging by this recent thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6260522/vinted-returns/

Vinted seems to leave buyers to it if there are problems - not sure if that is synonymous with good seller protection ...

I feel like I'm in a minority these days but I'd much rather be selling on a platform that protects buyers over sellers. Every study of customer buying habits  suggests that where they are better protected they'll continue to shop.
15 years ago, Ebay was a "Wild West" of sellers ripping off buyers and then leaving them negative feedback if they dared to complain about it. They were heading for disaster and resolved to do something about it.
I've been selling online for 20+ years and have had very few problems with customers. I can't even remember the last big problem I had as a seller and I'm getting through 50-100,000 transactions.
I know it's not meant to be that way but this thread does read as a "can you help me find somewhere to sell where buyers can't complain", not a great look on a consumer forum.

JetpackVelociraptor

Given the amount of work we actually do to prevent buyer fraud, I wouldn't say I'm "overly optimistic"! It's just that, as a seller, there is a lot you can do to prevent it. We take the same actions to prevent fraud on all of the platforms we sell on, not just eBay. I do the same on my personal eBay account where I sell things like unwanted clothes and accessories, so it's not that specific to the items we sell.

As a seller, in my personal experience, the worst place for fraud isn't eBay at all. It's Gumtree! I've had more "I work on an oil platform" or "this is an emergency, let me pay by card over the phone and my friend will collect the goods" type fraud attempts from Gumtree than I've ever had eBay returns fraud. Of course, they don't get anywhere, but again that's because of the actions we take.

I do think people are sometimes too accepting of the idea that eBay's customer service is the only place to go when things go wrong on eBay, and that's just not true. A crime is a crime, however it is committed, and a swift reminder  to the sort of person who thinks they can get away with falsely claiming INAD is generally very effective. And eBay absolutely do behave differently when you have a crime reference number, and particularly if you show yourself ready and willing to pursue the matter.