My Own Tale of PP Hell
Hi All
A dishonest eB buyer killed my PP account and stalled my business.
I have 3 retail websites and 1 wholesale site. I've been working on them for almost 2 years and one of the retail sites was finally getting some traction. I was running a few small PPC campaigns, generating sales, getting some repeat customers. Wonderful, right? All that hard work paying off. Now a bad eB sale has killed my PP account and I had to take my sites down. They’re going to be offline until I can get a PP account JUST for my websites, and hopefully the eBook and this forum will help me get my sites back online ASAP.
So what happened to me? I only sell stuff on eBay from time to time. Not a lot, just every so often I’ll have a selling spurt. 10 years and close to 200 positive feedback. Then I sold a 25 year old vintage blender on eB about a month ago. A popular brand that generally goes for around $200 used. Mine was still in its original box, never been used. Pristine condition. Even had the 1985 postmark from when the manufacturer shipped it! The only time it had been out of the box was when I took the pictures. Never used, never turned on, and I said so in the auction. I also marked the auction No Returns.
The buyer bid it up to $300 (!!). Amazing. First communication from her was that she didn’t want to pay $30 shipping (flat rate, stated in the auction). The freaking thing weighs almost 20 lbs, I said the shipping stands. So she paid. I shipped. Once the tracking showed the blender delivered I took her money out of PP, so all that was in the PP account was my web revenues. I use a drop ship company so when I get an order I spend 50-80% of the take fulfilling their order, so there’s a constant flux.
Next communication was that she was “very disappointed: there was a dead bug in the box! What are you going to do about it?”. ??? She wanted a partial refund for A DEAD BUG. Next communication was “the smoothies aren’t smooth enough”. WTF??? I told her to contact the manufacturer or take it to a repair shop and have the motor greased. The company is still in business, still cranking them out, still in the USA. And the blender had been sitting still for TWENTY-FIVE YEARS and had NEVER EVEN BEEN PLUGGED IN. As the auction stated. Got more complaining emails, then she started whining about home-schooling 6 kids and needing a partial refund. My first thought was, “why is someone with 6 kids buying a $300 blender you idiot??”. What if I had TEN kids? And home-schooled FOURTEEN foster children? I told her she didn’t have to bid, the terms were clearly stated, and it isn’t fair to the losing bidders if she got money back. IMHO, if it was worth $200, then someone who bid $200 should have won it. Seems to me that she planned to out-bid everyone else, then squeeze and threaten me after the fact to get her cash back.
SO, 3 weeks after the auction she filed a “Substantially Not As Described” complaint in eB and PP and requested a full refund. PP swiped $340 from my account immediately, wiping out payments from my website so I couldn’t process my dropship orders and get the products out to my web customers. Now I’m negative $$$ and I had to take down my websites to stop them from feeding into PP.
The orders that came in the day of the freeze were sucked up by the negative balance. It was really, really horrible: I was at work, decided to check my email before I went home. Right in a row: 3 New order emails (YAY! Woo hoo!) PP complaint email (WTF??), PP negative balance email (Oh C**P!). I almost shat. Once I realized I wasn’t dreaming and this wasn’t going to be cleared up anytime soon, I covered the DS charges out of my own pocket ($200+!!) and took down my sites. PP was my only payment method, I only have 1 PP account. I’m screwed.
Initially I was just concerned about my eB account: the blender was exactly as I described and I didn’t want to risk a bad eB reputation. The eB rep checked my auction text and pics, agreed with me, cancelled her complaint and negative feedback, made a notation saying that the auction was honest. Fine. Then I called PP. They said “F*** You”. I offered to forward the emails where she tried to get me to send her money right from the start. Didn’t want to pay shipping. Wanted money for the bug. Wanted money for smoothies having lumps. Obviously, this “Not as Described” complaint was spurious. She’d used the thing for 3 freaking weeks!
And my auction said “NO RETURNS”!!! PP said I can mark the auctions however I want, if someone uses PP they can return anything and I have to refund them. The fact that eB says her claim is unsubstantiated means nothing to PP. They act like 2 separate companies and I think it’s illegal. If I choose “No returns” under auction conditions, if I also choose “Accept PP” there should be a flag that the two are not compatible. They have all kinds of can’t-pick-this-and-that, but PP and no returns is fine, until they force you to refund and accept a return.
I closed the bank account connected to PP. No way am I giving back one red cent to that cow. If PP says she gets a refund, let THEM give it to her. I want a PP account just for my websites, a new eB account, new mailing address and phone. I’m walking away from 10 years of history on my old account, and I say good riddance! They’ll never get me again. I closed the bank account yesterday, opened a new one and my bank printed my new ATM card there and then. By tomorrow the CC# will be active, and I can start working through the steps in the book.
|