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The nightmare that is selling on eBay

21 points by ahmadassaf ↗ HN
Few weeks ago, I decided to sell my unused Macbook Pro as I upgraded to the new model. The laptop was sold within hours of the listing and done! or so I thought ...

Just yesterday .. which is more than a week of selling my laptop, I receive a notification from eBay that the buyer wants to return the item because it does not match the description!

Despite clearly stating a no return policy on the item, it seems that eBay just doesn't care as long as the seller selects the reason "item does not match the description" .. very nice right! However, the reason for the return was _drum roll_

"On the original listing it stated that the laptop had an estimate of 10+ hours battery life, however when I’ve used it, it’s not lasted longer than 3 hours. I would say it had around 2 hours on average of battery life, which is far from the estimate stated in the listing which is therefore inadequate."

The nerve on this lad, to issue a return because a brand new battery (with a cycle count of 4, which he asked about on messages and I have screenshots as a proof) does not last for 10 hours .. and the ad clearly said "and a integrated battery that provides an Apple estimated 10 hours of runtime"

I am completely shocked by this request and my sane mind tells me, no way this will fly with eBay .. but to be sure I call their customer support

After waiting for 45 mins, and 10 minutes explaining the situation, the agent calmly tells me that as eBay does not check the fit for description, they always go with the buyer on this and that I have to issue a refund for the item! unless of course, I need to make an appeal bla bla bla!

Clearly, am not letting this go, but come on eBay! seriously! a buyer with zero karma .. does not reply to the messages I am sending to the claim, who comes up with an audacious reason and just click "does not match description" and you just take his side!

I have never had such an experience selling on any platform and eBay, you can do better

47 comments

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ahmadassaf
1) For those who never put an ad on eBay before, when you finalizing your listing, you have this "FREE" word floating around the submit button, making you think that listing on eBay is free and how do they get money you say? well thats when you want to purchase addons or bump your add (or so the naive person inside me thought). The laptop was sold within hours of the listing, and the usual payment went through Paypal on hold until the shipment is sent. This is when you first realise that Paypal (which is owned by eBay) takes some fees to process your payment .. i was ok with that .. it was less than 60 USD on the transaction

2) Few days ago, I received a bill from eBay telling me that I have to pay close to 200 USD as ad fees, as it turns out that eBay takes a percentage on every transaction that happens.. I swallowed that too and made the payment .. in the end its on me not reading properly (but the devil in me completely blames eBay for not being transparent on this .. a simple fee calculator before you submit the ad is really minimal work)

JakeWesorick
Both these things are listed pretty clearly up front.
jjoonathan
Not remotely. eBay goes to great lengths to emphasize tiny listing fees and hide their enormous final value / transaction fees.

Source: I've since sold tens of thousands of dollars of goods on ebay, but I still remember my first time.

jjoonathan
Yep, everyone wants a cut. 30% is a decent rule of thumb.

    eBay: 10%
    PayPal: 4%
    Shipping 5%      <-- maybe reflected in listing price
    Sales Tax: 7%    <-- not reflected in listing price
    Income Tax: YMMV
    Risk: YMMV
nine_k
I'd say if you see a large "FREE" button / banner / another clicky thing, the first reaction should be extreme caution and distrust. If they are trying to aggressively advertise it to you, they definitely see a way to profit off that, and the source of the profit is you.

The only exception should be things like "free and open source", but these things usually don't obnoxiously jump into your eyeballs.

masonic
PayPal is not owned by eBay anymore. In fact, you can easily buy with your credit card directly now and avoid PayPal's hidden default payment source (your bank account first).
mindracer
eBay is a nightmare for selling anything of value. My daughter in law tries to sell her car and had several people agree the price through the site then turn up with half the amount expecting to drive away. It’s full of scammers
petee
when they return it, tell ebay they swapped the battery on you and you want your money back
kristopolous
that's why I always make sure my item description photos contain all the serial numbers fairly prominently. people doing that scam know to move on.
mindslight
Pragmatically, you will be lucky if you can offer him a few hundred off and he keeps the item, or if he actually sends the laptop back to you. If you're unlucky, this is a prelude to him shipping you back a box of junk and keeping your laptop. If you do get a package back, video yourself opening it.

I buy plenty of stuff on ebay, but I'd never sell anything expensive there.

ponker
Lol... you got off easy! Many buyers will claim that you shipped them a brick and get a full refund leaving you with no item and no money!

I rarely sell on eBay but I demand that people have 100 feedback, no negatives, and more than 10 years on eBay. Probably costs me some money on the prices but I’ve never had a problem.

petee
Im curious how this works, if they have negatives, do you just cancel the sale once they've won?
ponker
I write the requirements in my listing. If I get a bid from any such person I cancel it. If I get a bid sniper who doesn’t meet the criteria at the end I cancel the sale and specify that it was for not meeting criteria.
jjoonathan
I've had it done to me in the last year, so I'm pretty sure it's possible.
kynak
definitely a need for a site like StockX to authenticate items before it reaches buyer
ben1040
I gave up on selling on eBay years ago when I listed an iPad, and twice in a row the auction was won by a scammer using a stolen eBay/PayPal account.

My recollection of how the scam worked was that they messaged me after the sale to say the iPad was a gift and could they send it to some other address than the PayPal confirmed address, and also not include any receipt info in the package that could spoil it as a gift.

It looked like the classic drop shipping eBay scam where I’d find out from PayPal that a stolen card was used, the charges would be reversed, and I’d be out the iPad and the money.

charlieegan3
That's more elaborate than I had. In my case, they won my item a few times in a row and sent fake paypal payment emails.

When you're keen to sell the item, waiting for a week only to have a scammer win the auction gets tiring.

ben1040
That’s really the kicker here. I blew two weeks running the two auctions, plus the time wasted in dealing with requesting a refund on eBay commissions because it was a fraudulent buyer.

Ultimately I sold the iPad to a coworker for $75 less than the eBay price because it was worth it to not have that hassle (and net of commissions/PayPal fees, it wasn’t that big a difference anyway).

rayhendricks
Craigslist in-person in front of a bank or police station is the way to go. The rest mostly tend to be scammers or people who will waste your time.
sharkfinsoupmix
Check that the cash is real with one of those pens. Don't accept anything else.
kristopolous
I sell 10-20 things a week. 95% are great and hassle free. The other 5% are eventually fine as well although it takes a bit of work. Run it like a store. Back your stuff, accept it if people want to return.

It's about getting rid of junk, not about making money. You'll come out ahead, not by a lot, but ahead.

Some tips:

Amazon boxes are lighter than "normal" cardboard boxes.

Buy padded envelopes in bulk.

Obo is usually a waste of time. "It's marked as "let buyers make offers" --- you get mostly lowballing hacks looking for over 50% off the market rate

Given that, counter-intuitively, pricing things too cheap can scare people away. Raising prices can sometimes lead to faster sales

"Buy it now" usually has better customers than auctions. I can't explain the psychology but I've sold a couple hundred of each, it's clear.

Don't worry about the limits if you're putting on high quality stuff, they are to prevent someone from posting for example, 10,000 nearly identical phone case variations and flooding the site with crap. You'll get constant "promotions" if you push enough volume

Sometimes your pictures work better, sometimes the white background professional ones you just lift from Google images does. I can't explain this one yet but some things sit idle for weeks and then I switch out the image (going either way) and they sell out in a few hours. It's weird.

Usps is pretty lenient within a margin of error. If you accidentally send, say, a $7.87 package as a Regional Box A that costs $7.49, they seem to not care. A 12.1 oz package sent as a 12oz? They also don't care. I've caught a few mistakes I made and waited and watched the package, everything went smoothly. Also, FedEx can be cheaper for larger items, don't forget to check that tab. They're open pretty late and it's pretty easy

For calculations roughly take .87 * sale - shipping cost - $.50 for packaging.

You may find out you only make $5 from that PCI ATA controller you had in that box but now it's finally gone, going to a good home, and hey, look at that, you just got $5.

Is it a waste of time? Well that's entirely up to you to decide. I looked at it as a hobby like gardening or crafts. As far as hobbies go, profitable ones are rare. Also I really have too much stuff.

Also, if you ever wanted to try marketing and sales, the business side of tech, this is a nice soft introduction, a very low cost, low risk way to gain an intuition on pricing, place, product, pitch, etc.

Ebay: A++++ highly recommended, would sell again.

ahmadassaf
I agree you with on this .. its not about making money at all and would accept a return within reason. It seems that eventually I'd have to, and I wonder what the laptop would look like when its back
charlieegan3
I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees it that way. I used ebay to give things that I don't want to someone that does. Any money I made was to pay for the hassle of it. I saw it as getting paid for recycling.
noncoml
Why are you so adamant about not accepting the return?

Is it because eBay will charge you anyway? Well, in that case your problem here is not the buyer, but eBay.

I personally don't trust sellers that don't accept returns. More frequent that not, they bend the truth in their description. (I understand that's not what happened in your case)

Having said that, I never ever buy, or sell, anything that I cannot write off on eBay. Not worth the stress.

ahmadassaf
I'd be happy to accept the return if it was within reason, but this claim seem to be outrageous, and more on Apple than eBay as why they claim their batteries can last for 10 hours.

I feel I'd be obliged to accept the return but my fear is getting back a damaged or beyond laptop, and all in all its just an unpleasant experience

noncoml
> my fear is getting back a damaged or beyond laptop, and all in all its just an unpleasant experience

Completely understand. Just the stress of the thought that you may get back a damaged item makes it not worth it.

Hopefully it will be OK! Best of luck!

sharkfinsoupmix
Sigh. Loser bozos can't accept the reality of a product, so they blame the seller because reality and their delusions don't coincide and they can't do anything about the manufacturer. They're barking up the wrong tree and looking for a scapegoat. Expectations and sour grapes human behavior fail.
jjoonathan
If you accept returns, people will use your listing as a dirt cheap rental service. This problem is much more pronounced for goods that are desirable to rent, of course.

Even if a listing says "No Returns" eBay allows returns for SINAD (significantly not-as-described).

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noncoml
> If you accept returns, people will use your listing as a dirt cheap rental service

I would say a small percentage of people.

But I understand. That's why eBay is not suited for one-off sellers. It's meant for little shops, that will amortized the cost of the "free rental service". Just like Amazon does.

jjoonathan
Right, but it's a legitimate reason to offer "no returns" (which on eBay actually means "SNAD only").
philcrocket
There are definitely less protections for the seller. Plus, guess what, eBay and PayPal keep the fees afterwards!

I’ve had my own similar situation recently. Very frustrating. The customer service rep disconnected on purpose. Useless waste of time.

ahmadassaf
wait .. so if I offer a full refund for the buyer .. the Paypal and eBay fees will not be refunded?
dingaling
Why would they? They provided their services to you as part of the sale. What happens subsequently is irrelevant.

You don't get a refund on your costs from the post office either.

masonic
For credit card transactions, you would otherwise get the variable fee back on a return/refund from normal legitimate processors.
ahmadassaf
eBay just got back to me with "If you issue a refund, we'll credit your final value fee immediately." no sure about Paypal though
charlieegan3
I decided to not sell a macbook on ebay after I listed it and had a number of fraudulent buyers win auctions and not pay (while sending me fake paypal emails). I sold the laptop to a friend instead.

I find the ebay seller fees pretty offensive so tend to use ebay only for things that I'll take any amount for and that I have no use for. I see it as targetted recycling via reuse rather than a selling platform and generally don't sell stuff for more than £30.

I had a bad experience similar to the OP with a motherboard a few years ago but was able to claim on the courier that it'd been damaged in transit (even when the buyer almost certainly damaged the item).

sys_64738
I stopped selling on ebay about 8 years ago when an iMac I sold had the buyer quibble over the year. It wasn't worth it so I gave then 20% refund and they disappeared back under their rock. You have no protections on ebay as a seller.

That being said, I've sold plenty of stuff but it takes one to sour the whole experience.

sharkfinsoupmix
Don't state concrete specifications as your personal attestation.

Always quote the manufacture or include weasel words.

Nextgrid
Do you have the money from this sale in your account? If so tell them to pound sand and let eBay hold the bag. Legally the sale seems to be completed fine (you've stated upfront that no returns are accepted and the reason for "not matching description" is clearly bullshit) so I wouldn't worry about it. If they try to collect the money later you refuse and keep telling them the same story and provide the same evidence, which by that time will be routed to someone with at least half a brain that will clearly see the lies of the buyer and not fall for it.
llampx
eBay has turned into a complete scam. As a seller, I would not touch it with a 10-foot pole. As a buyer, I only use it for low-value items like USB cables or other junk.

I have had a nightmare experience where I sold a Macbook Pro, the buyer claimed that his/her card was stolen and used for the purchase, and at the end I was left with no money and no laptop. Filing a police report did jack-all.

No eBay, no PayPal.