Saturday, June 10, 2006
Keeping Money Available For Refunds
When selling on Ebay, you need to keep some money in your accounts for refunds. Some are legitimate refunds and others are not. I have had two request in the last week for refunds. One changed their mind. The other is returning just over $200 in precision tools he says are bad.
The first bought three items and said one of the three was the wrong part. Earlier he said he needed four of that part. He asked for his part, another part or a refund. He said I sent him another brand of the same type item with the same part number, but the part was wrong. When I said the other company did not make that model part, he said he did not want to argue, gave me positive feedback and did not want to pursue his $50+ refund. I think I was being scammed. This guy said he did not have a camera to take a picture of the supposed wrong part so I could see what he was talking about.
On the second refund, I think I may be being scammed again. The guys says the parts are bad. There is not much to go wrong and I tested them before being shipped. Some people exchange their bad part for your good part. They use your part to repair their part and ask for a refund. Sometimes they damage your part and claim you shipped a bad part.
You can protect yourself from scammers who do switch part, claim damage or otherwise claim you item is not what they expected and return a different or damaged item. One way is to mark everything you sell with invisible ink pens. We had some that whet dry. I just ordered more on Ebay.
Another way to protect yourself from scammers is to take detailed pictures of your items, especially scratches, flaws or other marks that identify your item. Save these pictures full size. Use copies of the pictures in your auctions.
If you list a $10 item that sells for $100 or $500 (yes, it happens more often than you think) and did not take extra pictures, take a few before you pack the item.
Since 1998 we have had a number of people ask for refunds that were obviously trying to scam us. So, an ounce of prevention can help prevent being ripped off by dishonest buyers. HEY! Most buyers are honest and you will have very few problems, but a few try to take advantage of you.
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