Buying and Selling on Ebay and the Dispute Resolution Processes

I have purchased several things on eBay and never had any problems or complaints in the past. I don't shop there very often. However, my son likes to find figurines and other items. I recently moved and had many things that did not fit in my smaller new home. Therefore, I decided to sell my items on eBay in order to make a few dollars instead of giving my things to the thrift store. I put several listings on eBay and got ready to sell my stuff.

I sold my items for several weeks and it did better than I had anticipated at first. Then, I made the big mistake of purchasing an item on eBay at the same time that I had my listings for sale. Then, it happened. The first time I have ever had a problem over an item I have purchased on eBay and the first time I have ever left a negative feedback. I got my item and it had a problem. I tried to communicate about the problem to the seller in order to resolve the issue. The seller and I did not resolve the problem. Instead, they upset me more and I decided to post a negative feedback about how the transaction became. It is fair enough at this point. Then, the seller posted an obvious lie about me on my feedback as a purchaser. I saw the negative feed back and it is obviously a lie. I concluded that surely it is easy to take care of getting it taken off. That is not so. Part of the requirement for getting a negative feedback taken off is to pay for Square Trade. There is a mutual withdrawal option that is free. I did not feel good about using this due to the sellers dishonesty though. However, if one is interested in getting a non-mutual feedback taken off the Square Trade fee is required. I paid the fee.

This process takes time to go through. This of course happened prior to Christmas right as I expected to get more sales. I actually sold a few things during this time. However, my sales did drop. The dispute continued unresolved and the communication between me and the seller did not help the situation. I decided to stop communicating to the seller anymore and escalated the dispute on Pay Pal. This started a communication process between Pay Pal the seller and myself. More time passed by. The lie on my feedback about my payment history is completely obvious due to my payment times and amounts being recorded in Pay Pal. That did not appear to matter. The maximum amount of a refund gain-able by escalating the dispute on Pay Pal is the initial purchase price plus the postage paid. Further, one is required to pay the postage to return the item in a trackable manner. The amount of the return postage is not included in the maximum refund amount. I returned the item I purchased and got the refund. I lost the return postage amount. I am still in the square trade process. If I do not agree to a mutual withdrawal of feedback, I have paid the fee and am out the cost of the service in order to get an obvious lie taken off my feedback record. If I agree to a mutual feedback, I am out the cost of the Square Trade service unless the seller agrees to post a refund for this. This has been an expensive learning experience and purchase. I sent the product back and had to pay for the return postage and I had to pay for a dispute service as a consequence to making a purchase from a difficult seller. My listing sales suffered during this process too. The resolution finally came. The case in Square Trade is closed due to a lack of response from the seller. I do not get the negative feedback taken off due to the response from the seller prior to the lack of response later. The seller had requested a mutual withdrawal of negative feedback if I accepted a refund of half of my expenses. I did not agree to a mutual withdrawal. If she had sent in zero responses, the negative feedback gets taken off of my account. This is confusing to me. Pay Pal and eBay are connected companies and they have my payment records in Pay Pal. Yet, they are not able to take off the feedback that is obviously contrary to my payment record. I read through the directions in eBay about this situation and now I must go to court and get a court order to send in for the withdrawal of unfair feedback. This really got complicated. The rules according to my understanding of them are for the sake of having eBay avoid any liability in regard to feedback problems.

In conclusion and in my opinion, the dispute resolution process in Pay Pal and eBay are not adequate. Even if you do get a refund through the Pay Pal process, the return postage is out of the purchasers pocket. Even if you do get any unfair negative feedback taken off by the dispute resolution process in eBay, it takes time and the victim of unfair feedback has got to pay the price for the dispute resolution process. This adds up to having to be careful about making purchases on eBay. If you do have any problems, the refund policy, in my opinion, is not that good especially for high postage cost items. Further, the feedback policies make one vulnerable to obvious slander at your own expense. This is given a bigger sting if you happen to be selling items at the same time as going through one or both of the dispute processes. In conclusion, buyer beware especially if you are selling at the same time.