eBay ruled in favor of the buyer despite clear contradictions and evidence

Summary: The discussion involves a situation where chrisselelecards mentions that eBay favored a buyer despite clear contradictions and evidence provided. lidor3073 inquires about eBay's final decision and its outcome, seeking more details on the resolution.

Hello everyone,

I’m currently stuck in a really frustrating situation and could urgently use some advice.

I sold a collectible card on eBay for about €250 and shipped it as an insured DHL package (insured up to €500, with tracking and confirmed delivery).

According to DHL (including their chatbot), the package was personally handed over to the buyer on March 31.

Then the buyer wrote to me on April 1 around 8 p.m. (roughly translated):

“big problem, it arrived today, I wasn’t at home, it was supposedly delivered to me and stuffed into my mailbox with a broken top loader… I think DHL messed up”

So there are direct contradictions here:

DHL says it was personally handed over
The buyer claims he wasn’t at home and it was stuffed into the mailbox
He also claimed the top loader was damaged

I asked him several times for photos, but he never sent any.

Then on April 7 he opened an eBay case and suddenly changed his story, claiming the package arrived empty.

At the same time, he uploaded photos in the case showing:

a top loader that is not damaged
a package that does not look like it was stuffed or handled roughly

That directly contradicts his original message.

On April 13 he then filed a report against “unknown” and provided a case number.

What I don’t understand:

Our eBay chat clearly shows that he changed his story (from damaged to empty)
The photos he submitted do not match his original statement at all
The DHL tracking shows personal delivery, which contradicts his “mailbox” claim
He never provided any proof when I originally asked for it
At first he himself blamed DHL

Despite all this, eBay told me they can no longer do anything for me because the buyer filed a report and they are therefore siding with him.

In addition, DHL customer service explicitly told me that in a case where the recipient claims the package arrived empty, the buyer (as the recipient) has to contact DHL himself to report an insurance claim. That never happened, though.

Now DHL is rejecting my insurance claim because the damage was not reported within 7 days — but I couldn’t report it earlier because the buyer only later claimed that the package had been empty.

So now I’m stuck in the following situation:

eBay refunded the buyer
DHL is rejecting the claim because of the deadline
and I’m left holding the bag even though I shipped everything correctly and insured it

Has anyone ever experienced something like this?

Is there anything else I can do (appeal, escalation with eBay, legal action, etc.)?

Any advice would be really appreciated.

chrisselelecards

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Posted 3 months ago·Last reply 3 weeks ago

5 comments

zappydooyoo

·3 weeks ago

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I’ve had so much trouble here by now and had so many pointless phone calls with support. Everyone can decide for themselves how long they want to put up with this. There’s a reason eBay is losing millions of customers. Google the numbers, and a lot will become clear to you....

nina@ebay

·3 months ago

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@chrisselelecards Good evening. 🙂 You will receive a notification about the eBay messages within the next few minutes. That should solve the problem. 🙂

Best regards,

Nina