eBay/Paypal hiccup. Red Flag or innocent slip-up???

[Robert Hart]

After purchasing an item I received this message :-　


　
QUOTE:

　
　

　
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I have a small problem. This past week I changed my Paypal email address and I cannot accept your payment. Ebay said to send you an invoice from Paypal, and for you to pay that new invoice, and to also cancel the one you already paid. I am sorry for wasting your time. I can get this AB plate out to you tomorrow and I know you will be saving a bundle by buying it from me.

Let me know if there are any issues. I am sending the new invoice now to this email: Thanks for your purchase!

I have a small problem. This past week I changed my Paypal email address and I cannot accept your payment. Ebay said to send you an invoice from Paypal, and for you to pay that invoice, and to also cancel the one you already paid. I am sorry for wasting your time. I can get this AB plate out to you tomorrow and I know you will be saving a bundle by buying it from me.

let me know if there are any issues. I am sending the new invoice now.
　


　
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END OF QUOTE:
　


　
Yellow flags against continuing the transaction :-
　

Text within the message was doubled as in hasty cut and paste. - An eBay tag below the message suggested it was sent whilst the item was still listed. I thought a successful sale would have de-listed the item. - The paypal payment stalled for a long time whilst processing as if being routed, then eventually transacted. It has since appeared as unclaimed. - The transaction was a multiple payment, one to the vendor, another to the shipper Pitney Bowes. My reading of the paypal protection service is that multiple payments off the one transaction are NOT protected. It seems though that Pitney Bowes is some sort of preferred shipper in some sort of scratchumback win-win deal by eBay with the shipper. They call it Global shipping Program. - The second Paypal payment is requested outside of eBay process by invoice direct to PayPal. - Relatively low value of the item. Victims of scams more likely to just live with the experience and not bother to follow up.
　


　
QUOTE:
　

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( A public gripe by a customer on a forum ) - Ebay Global Shipping program....... appears to be a big fail for my experience so far. I don't know if the seller had done a number on me, the transport company or both. I have lodged a dispute with paypal, and now there is an email address for Pitney Bowes (there was not one previously) and what MAY be a tracking number. BUT...... I cannot find anywhere on the Pitney Bowes website to enter the number and see if it is a legitimate tracking number......... I can only find a search field have entered it in that and it comes back with nothing............. eBay was great 10 years ago, it has steadily gone down hill with scammers, (both sellers and buyers) and it appears little is being done about it.
　


　
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Green flags for the transaction :-
　


　
Prompt notification of problem ( Could be a confidence-building component of a scam ). Paypal payment to the vendor was indeed unclaimed as advised by the vendor. ( Could also be a confidence building component of a scam ). Shipper's payment was transacted. ( Could be a procedure-assurance component of a scam ).
　


　
I have suggested to the vendor that we call quits on the deal, the item be re-listed and again purchased, if there is a process for ending one without red negative feedback entries happening. Getting the shipping sorted may be another matter.
　


　
We shall see how this plays out. It might be a innocent stuff-up or maybe a scam. In the meantime however, it might be prudent for folk here to take care if they receive a message very similar to the one I received.

 

[Robert Hart]

Following up on my previous post above, the initial issue as declared by the vendor seemed legitimate. The transaction was reprocessed and the item confirmed despatched and delivered to the international shipping service, which is Pitney Bowes under the auspice of a joint venture between eBay and Pitney Bowes, the Global Shipping Program.

However there is a wrinkle. When the original transaction was recalled and repaid, the shipping component was recalled but there exists it seems no mechanism for re-issue of a request for payment of the shipping cost. Pitney Bowes understandably will have no desire or obligation to move the item beyond its warehouse at Erlanger unless it gets paid.

Ebay has a stonewall against any but template enquiries. I am trying now to have a new request for payment for the shipping component raised via their feedback mechanism, a backdoor means of trying to get a human involved in the deal. A search of the web raises very quickly commentary and dissatisfaction with the Ebay-Pitney Bowes Global Shipping Program deal.

In Australia the exclusive shipping deal might be deemed anticompetitive and attract the attention of our ACC which recently examined Adobe and Microsoft over the "Australia Tax", a contended mark up by both outfits which had implemented geographic blockers and diverters in order to prevent Australians from buying direct on-line from the US.

This forced Australian customers to buy from their respective Australian branches at prices which did not reflect the costs of doing business in Australia.

I will post any furthur news of this misadventure, satisfactory outcome or otherwise. In meantime, be very careful about buying via eBay/Paypal from within the US.

There are references on the web of eBay/Paypal levying Global Shipping Program fees despite some US vendors shipping by other means.

My misadventure was not initiated by the system per se. Because it falls outside of the system's templates to deal with, it is very difficult to resolve as it requires human intervention. There is no direct means via email to gain that human intervention.

 

[Michael Hastings]

The difficulty of getting human intervention is the reason I stopped accepting paypal for direct (ie non-eBay) sales (and I don't do as much eBay selling anymore for the same reason - they have gotten both more expensive and more difficult to deal with).

Some people on Reduser seem to think there is something nefarious if I don't accept paypal even though have been in business for thirty years and have a standard merchant credit card processing account with Bank of America where if there is a problem I can pick up the phone and talk to my rep or simply walk into one of several thousand branches to get in person help.

 

[Robert Hart]

This saga does not seem to be resolving well and appears to destined to end badly. I have been getting the run-around other customers have encountered. In Australia this collection of outfits would be in breach of Federal Law for unconscionable conduct and possibly wilful and misleading conduct as well. -- In the hope of enough red flags being raised somewhere by the repetition often enough of the following message, maybe, just maybe some response may be evinced. All that is needed to resolve the issue is for an invoice to be generated and a request via paypal made for a payment by me of US$27-15, that is assuming the shipped item held at Erlanger Depot of Pitney Bowes has not been disposed of. So here it is, there being no other remaining routes of contact with any of the entities concerned :
　


To the General Manager of eBay Australia.


Please take notice that as provided by the Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Act (No. 2) 2010 Act No. 103 of 2010 as amended,


I intend to seek relief for;

failure of the United States business entities, eBay and the entity Pitney Bowes, which together provide service as the Global Shipping Program, to provide any published reasonably convenient route of direct enquiry to enable a matter of delayed shipment to be resolved,

failure of the United States business entity eBay to respond within reasonable time to enquiries routed indirectly via the feedback message service.

This regrettable action may be deferred or discontinued if you or an assigned delegate enquire with me and receive details of the difficulty with a transaction which falls outside of the limited templates of action normally enabled by the automated service.

I undertake to not initiate any action until three weeks has elapsed from the time of submitting this message.

Given that the contended transaction occurred on the 20th of November 2013, I consider that three weeks is a reasonable period in which to generate a response.


　

Yours sincerely,

Robert Hart.


EDIT:


There being no responsive initiative of contacting me made by eBay/PapPal/Pitney Bowes as a result of this posting and two readings of the above draft statement of claim to EBay's quality assurance voice monitoring system;

that final resolution of this unfortunate problem occurred only by investigation of my own to establish an unbroken train of evidence which brought about appropriate redress by the vendor;

I shall not remove this post. I do acknowledge the co-operation and professionalism of some of the eBay/PayPal/Pitney Bowes customer service staff members in providing information that facilitated my own further enquiries. This occurred after I finally was able to open and hold fast, sustained calls to the entities.

 

[Robert Hart]

After pulling an allnighter trying to navigate the obfuscatory process of ebay/paypal customer support, then an international phone call marathon that went from 7-15am local to 9-33am local, the upshot is in a few words that I paraphrase - "too bad mate, stiff bix, 48 days has elapsed and that's your lot cobber". The system managed to keep me away from the door. So it is back to the bank to have the debit card payment clawed back. Each of the customer service staff I spoke to after the first two failures to get anywhere was read my notice of intention to seek relief in the court as published above and I basically dared each of them cut me off this time round. No one did. I was advised that the sent item detained by Pitney Bowes at Erlanger KY was returned to the vendor on the 13th of December 2013. Now Pitney Bowes did not disclose that detail to me via email or phone call I made when the relevant number was given to the persons I spoke to. I was given a FedEx tracking number by the ebay customer service person for the return shipment to the vendor. I double checked by two readbacks, the tracking number to make sure it was correct. When I put it into the FedEx tracking search function it came up as invalid, so I think it was bogus and that Ebay won in the end and made me go away. I am not in a position to assert that the vendor got the goods back and kept the money. All international transactions with vendors, every single one, thus far via bank draft or telegraphic payment has gone without a hitch. I had made many transactions via ebay/paypal wthout a problem and now two which went bad. The stonewall they put up as an apparent deliberate part of their business plan is not acceptable to me. Accordingly, once my bank has had its chance to throw Paypal around the room, I will be disabling the ability to levy my debit account as it appears there is no readily apparent process available by which to discontinue a paypal account. The same goes for ebay. It may be well hid in the small print somewhere but I am too weary right now to go after it. Sadly my recommendation is, the immediate grat of being able to buy via eBay and convenience of paypal does not outweigh the grief. My recommendation is use the ebay search function by all means, find the product, find the vendor, examine the vendor's credential and reputation and then trade outside of eBay/paypal. Quite a few legit eBay vendors have other storefronts.

 

[Robert Hart]

On reflection and re-reading my comments above, maybe a little more supplemental information is in order. --- In short. I paid, the product stayed.

The product delivery was delayed initially by a vendor error, then by a systemic glitch which required human intervention. Undisclosed to me until today, was that the product was returned to the vendor. The jury is still out whether the return tracking number I was given by ebay was bogus as it comes up as invalid.

There are conflicting questions. Is the system actually at fault? Did Ebay today behave fraudulently by providing the return tracking number to incriminate the vendor to make me go away? Has the vendor behaved fraudulently by receiving the goods back, keeping the cash and keeping mum about it?

I have to check my paypal statements one more time to make sure a refund hasn't been slipped in there quietly to trip me up on the "facts" such as they are.

The eBay system appears to be manipulated as to passively discourage clients from seeking redress in matters which fall outside of an easy fix. Who is really going to waste so much of their productivity time running down elusive justice on a $99-00 item. Very many will simply will suck it up and go away, count the cost/benefit as acceptable and continue to trade on eBay.

Passive avoidance behaviour in terms of customer support smacks of an enterprise where there are too many suits on the board pulling hefty management fees and too few grubby fingers on the shop floor carrying the weight.

Dismissive and avoidance behaviours are sometimes harbingers of the demise of an enterprise that has been stripped too lean and is in danger of collapse when confronted by a crisis.

Don't get me wrong on this. Ebay has provided me with a mostly fault-free service. One vendor legged me over some time ago and got away. The jury remains out on the current vendor.

For myself, the balance of convenience is beginning to fall very quickly in favour of doing business outside of ebay and soliciting the vendors to match by discount, the bank fees which are normally paid for by the buyer wiring the money versus the vendor swallowing the cost via paypal levies and listing fees of an eBay/PayPal transaction.

 

[Elsie N]

I confess I would have eaten a loss of this size and charged it off to "lesson expense." Currently, for me time-use is more productive when otherwise spent.

Bad on me.

But your challenging a wrong to the bitter end is beneficial to everyone.

Good on you!

 

[Robert Hart]

My history is that I am a older git who normally keeps a deep peace but with a history of being bullied around a bit at school and with Catholic Irish and Proddy Irish on opposing sides of the family I get a bit cranky when I am put upon, taken down or otherwise got at. A furthur little update on this adventure.

I observed some inconsistencies in the way eBay was displaying, information which has apparently hung and had not updated since November 2013. This indicated something was awry somewhere so I girded the loins for battle and began the access campaign again.

The interaction this time could not have been more the polar opposite. There were immediate on-line means of access which had not emerged before.

I was referred to an operator who was totally on the ball, compentent, examined lines of enquiry, noted suggestions, navigated the whole site without difficulty and set certain investigative actions in train.

This event does not have effect on outcomes. Monday will see how that pans out. If all the chopsticks fall in place, the proposed statement of claim posted here will be removed.

Whether or not dictating my proposed statement of claim for relief under Australian law to two different monitor recordings, sending it on two occasions via feedback and publishing it on several web forums had any influence, I do not know.

Whether or not I was flagged as a troublesome old git who needed to be headed off at the pass, I do not know. It is probably a height of conceit for me to believe so.

 

[Robert Hart]

Cut to today. I notified the vendor that a chain of evidence determined that the item was in his possession with tracking number and a .jpg screengrab provided.

This morning a paypal notification came in to advise of a payment by the vendor to me. The person is immature. He still wanted to get a last snark in. He harped on the point that he was not refunding the shipping component as he had fulfilled his obligations from his side of the deal (my paraphrase).

That's not quite right but it will do. I never paid a shipping component in the second transaction. I wanted to. I am content to leave it at that.　

The fine print in the ebay/PayPal/Pitney Bowes combination defines that the follow-up is the vendor's responsibility. It has been me doing the legwork. However, the refund is in full, less US$4-00 claimed as the vendor to Pitney Bowes portion of the cost.

With the tanking of the AU$, provided I do not buy anything else from offshore which is now unlikely for that reason, I am no worse off in Aussie dollar terms.

What really gets me is this guy stonewalled on the responsibility issue, put up a barrier of denial and took it right to the wire.

It was edifying just how the will to make it happen, can suddenly become motivated by apprehension of getting caught out, remarkably discovering a returned FedEx package this far past the Christmas rush?
　

Yeah, right. - Unthoroughness and expediency in the long haul are not a substitute for efficient business practice.

This vendor ventured very close to a serious reputational setback. His eBay enterprise is only a small iron he has in the fire of commerce and profession. I won't detail any further as dots might be successfully joined.

Anyway. There endeth the saga. It is a pyrric outcome in terms of the value of my time invested in this investigation.

 

[Marc Wielage]

After pulling an allnighter trying to navigate the obfuscatory process of ebay/paypal customer support, then an international phone call marathon that went from 7-15am local to 9-33am local, the upshot is in a few words that I paraphrase - "too bad mate, stiff bix, 48 days has elapsed and that's your lot cobber".

You waited 48 days?

I go absolutely ballistic if I don't get the merchandise in 10. I'd be way ahead of you in making complaints to eBay, PayPal, and my charge card company. The charge card companies are usually very good at immediately slamming the door and getting your money back. Non-delivery for an item is pretty straightforward -- you either received it or you didn't.

 

[Robert Hart]

On this side of the big flat rock, this side of the ditch, things can take a bit longer to find their way over, especially with Christmas-New Year in the mix. Yet I have also received items quickly, the best being three days non-eBay from the US, faster than things shift within this country. Stuff from China and former Soviet Union may push right up to the line. In my instance, when it looked like the deal had definitely fallen over, I tried to get things to happen through eBay. Only then did I discover a whole new world of vexation. The "charge card" was the next move this coming Monday. I had all my screengrabs ready to print off to cart over to the bank. Then I received notice of the refund via PayPal.


Said Henry to Gladys after he returned from the outdoor privy in the backyard after a long ordeal. ( From "My Name's McGooley. What's Your's".)

"Everything comes to he who sits and waits - long enough."

Patience is a virtue but in this modern "now already" world can complicate things a bit. People have become so accustomed to foot stamping and impatient hassling, that the normally patient person becomes overlooked. The new subculture seems to be one where you are disregarded if you don't make a big fuss.