eBay - best friend and supporter of fraudulent buyers?! | Sell

patience050 · 2025-07-24T23:20:37.408000Z

Over the last few weeks I had a "selling experience" that has left me pretty speechless, especially when it comes to eBay. Long story short: I got ripped off by a buyer, and all with friendly support from eBay. It all started because I sold a new, factory-sealed phone on eBay. It was listed for a price in the high three-digit range on eBay. As I always do with higher-priced items, I filmed the process of packing it into the shipping box, in the presence of witnesses. I also filmed the same thing when putting it into the parcel locker. I also filmed again that the phone packaging was sealed and the seals were intact.The buyer demonstrably received the shipment. However, she claimed that the original sealed packaging did not contain the phone according to the item description, but instead a model from the same manufacturer that was two generations older and in a different color. She then opened a case on eBay and requested the return of the phone to me, as it did not match the description. To back up her claims, she attached pictures to the eBay case. You can see the still unopened and undamaged parcel (so nothing could have happened during shipping). In addition, the phone packaging is still factory sealed. Then there are pictures of the phone packaging after it was opened, next to which the supposed contents are lying in the form of the mentioned phone that is two generations older. Signs of use can be seen on the phone in the pictures. I pretty quickly decided that someone was trying to pull a fast one on me. So I simply replied that she had received a factory-sealed phone as described and that the claims were not plausible, and since I am a private seller I unfortunately cannot offer a return. She blocked all attempts at a solution and, for example, also ignored requests for the device's IMEI. At some point eBay got involved. eBay first asked me to issue the buyer a shipping label at my own expense. I then called eBay several times and explained that I had documented everything very well and that there was no doubt the buyer had received a factory-sealed device and that she herself had even confirmed that in the form of pictures. In those phone calls I was also told that eBay had already issued a shipping label for the buyer and that I could wait for the return shipment and then open a case in which I could state that the buyer had sent me back the wrong device. I didn't like the approach, but I thought that if she sent it back to me without being asked, there wasn't much I could do about it either. Then came the bombshell today: an email from eBay saying the case had been decided in the buyer's favor, and the money being held back had been paid out to her again. The case would thus be closed. I naturally called eBay right away to ask what that was supposed to mean. The answer was that I hadn't provided a return label, so I hadn't complied with the requests, and therefore the buyer was given the benefit of the doubt without further review. How I was now supposed to get the money or at least the item itself was completely irrelevant to the hotline. First of all: the hotline in the two previous calls had simply lied to me coldly. Apparently no shipping label had ever been issued by eBay. Based on what I was told on the phone, I naturally saw no need for action at first.Aside from that, in today's conversation I was also told that eBay would first believe the buyer. Can you believe that? So as a buyer on eBay I can just claim I received something else, and then the seller HAS to let me send the item back, no ifs or buts? I offered several times to send eBay the clear video footage of me placing the factory-sealed packaging into the shipping parcel and into the parcel locker. They didn't ask for it. Then I wrote to the buyer again and asked her to return the goods to me the way I sent them to her (i.e. factory sealed). And now it gets entertaining: the buyer replied quite cheekily that according to eBay's policies the phone had now become her property after the decision and she could dispose of it as she pleased. And since she didn't know where the phone came from and it might even be stolen goods, she had now put it on top of a trash can somewhere in the city. Of course that's total nonsense and just unbelievably embarrassingly bad lying. She is now sitting there with my money, has a new phone, and on top of that her used old phone, which she probably didn't want anymore. And all because eBay in particular lies to sellers on the hotline, only to then artificially create a situation in which a fraudulent buyer can be ruled in favor of without much effort. That's it for me and eBay. As a seller, you just get ripped off here, with a lot of support from eBay.

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eBay - best friend and supporter of fraudulent buyers?! | Sell | eBay Germany