Ebay Refusing To Provide Money Back Guarantee

[Dangerous_Dave]

Essentially Ebay provides a money back guarantee in the case that the item you paid for does not turn up. Several items I've bought there have not turned up, and now they have declared out of the blue that they will not be providing the money back guarantee because I have made too many claims. Nowhere on the site does it say there is a limit to the number of claims you can make. All of my claims were 100% legitimate. What can I do?

[joko]

are all the items you buy insured or require a signature on delivery?

i agree its quite a high amount but then if you buy a lot of stuff i guess it would be

how long is the 'ban' for?

[ToraToraTora]

the guarentee will not be unlimited, there will be something in the small print that gives them a get out in situatiions like these.

[boxtops]

I have no idea if this is what they are invoking, but this is from the eBay User agreement (which I'm sure you are familiar with) - "When a buyer or seller issue arises we may consider the user's performance history and the specific circumstances in applying our policies. We may choose to be more lenient with policy enforcement, and to do the right thing for both buyers and sellers."

As hc says, there is a lot of small print.

[boxtops]

this is the whole document http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/user-agreement.html#abusing

[Dangerous_Dave]

This is the Money Back Guarantee page:

http://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/ebay-buyer-protection-policy

Of particular importance are:

"If we determine that the item wasn’t successfully delivered, we refund the full cost of the item and original postage via PayPal. The seller is required to reimburse us for the amount."

And

"Fraudulent claims may include:
A buyer opening excessive cases.
A buyer colluding with a seller to wrongly declare an item’s value for customs.
A buyer filing a chargeback after receiving a refund.
Buyers who file fraudulent claims are subject to consequences outlined in the Abusing eBay section of the User Agreement."

I would submit that:

a) Simply opening a large number of cases cannot be characterised as 'excessive' if that number is commensurate with the number of legitimate claims;

b) The word 'fraudulent' is incompatible with the opening of exclusively legitimate claims, regardless of number.

Therefore my claims can neither be described as excessive nor fraudulent, and therefore the Money Back Guarantee should apply.

Additionally, having no explicit quantification for the word 'excessive' must be highly suspect on legal grounds.

What do you guys think? Particularly anybody with legal experience?

[boxtops]

I'd pursue with eBay, dave, and ask for some more specific definitions.

[Dangerous_Dave]

Pursuing anything with Ebay is almost physically painful. You end up getting connected to their Filipino call centre filled with people with fake English names (the surname too) who can't hear you because the lines aren't very good, then you get passed from one department to another because nobody knows what the rules are. When this first happened, I got transferred from one department to another no less than eight times. The email they sent me explaining that they were essentially shafting me contained a link to a web page that didn't exist so that I could peruse nothing for explanation. In my opinion (and not only based on this incident) the company is a complete shambles, which is why I'm not all that confident that they really do have their legal house battened down like some commenters here seem to think.

[boxtops]

Perhaps you should do your trading through another platform, Amazon or Facebook. You do seem to have been extraordinarly unlucky with your purchases.

[EDDIE51]

You have given the answer yourself
'Fraudulent claims may include : A buyer opening excessive cases'
that clause gives them the way out.
They must consider the number of your claims to be excessive. I can't see that you can fight that.

[EDDIE51]

If I was an eBay rep I would consider that a buyer who claimed 1 in 5 purchases went missing to be making excessive claims .
Do the sellers you buy from have a good feedback? from what you say it would appear that they are 1st time sellers with no feedback. I would never buy a high value item from such a seller.

[Dangerous_Dave]

You should have read the rest of what I wrote Eddie. How can a claim be 'excessive' if it is 100% justified? That's like saying that we shouldn't have evacuated 300,000 people from Dunkirk because that's an excessive number. You evacuate 300,000 because there are 300,000 to evacuate.

[EDDIE51]

Dave look at it from eBay's view.
One buyer is making a money back claim on 1 to 5 transactions with a total of 20 to 30 claims so far. That has to be investigated as it is so unusual. They just can't afford to keep paying out.
From what you have told us these cases seem to be 'one off' where a seller , as you say, never visits the pay pal site again once the claim goes in.
There has to at least be the possibility that there is collusion between the 2 parties (NOT saying this is the case with you) 1 party sets up a new eBay site and the 2nd party makes an expensive purchase from that site knowing perfectly well that the item will never be dispatched and they can claim the cash back under the money back guarantee. Stranger things have happened!
If a person was making a series of insurance claims even if each individual claim was justified, after a short time the insurance would stop paying out as the they would say the number of claims was excessive. eBay's money back scheme is a form of insurance and it will not pay out if the number of claims is considered excessive. They have already said that. still interested in the feedback aspect of this , do the people you are buying from have good feedback? or are they all new sellers?

[EDDIE51]

^^ meant to add that the 'fake seller' instantly moves the cash out of their paypal account so that it can't be removed by ebay and the buyer gets the full cash back from the guarantee. Again NOT saying you are doing this but it has to be a possibility that has to be investigated.

[boxtops]

Dave seems to have extraordinarily bad luck with his purchases. I've been trading (buying and selling) on eBay for years (admittedly not in his categories) and only once have I had a non-delivery case. I can see why eBay might consider dave's number of claims well off the top end of the Bell chart.

[joko]

you say, how can it be excessive if it is 100% justified - firstly that is not what excessive means ... and secondly can you prove that justification?

only you know if you are telling the truth ... they have no idea, but they have seen every trick in the book and know all the scams so i dont blame them one bit being suspicious

i think you need to learn to assess and analyse listings better if you are constantly being fooled by them ...
i analyse all listings and look for various red flags - and certainly dont buy from people who are new users and have no sold before etc etc ...
and if you continue to do that despite being ripped off so many times, then as far as they are concerned, you are either daft or up to no good - either way they want to save their money ...

[Dangerous_Dave]

Sorry but that IS the definition of 'excessive'. Excessive comes from excess, i.e. in excess of something, i.e. a limit. In this case the only reasonable understanding of the limit that is being exceeded is the limit of appropriate claims (i.e. claims with merit). 'Excessive' is NOT a synonym of 'lots'. It implies that there is some impropriety at work, which there is assuredly not.

Anyway, I actually came on here for meaningful legal advice that could help take me forward, not for people to speculate if I may or may not in fact be a fraudster.

[grasscarp]

Oxford English Dictionary definition of excessive
More than is necessary, normal, or desirable

[EDDIE51]

Legal advice? There is none to give.
When you buy or sell on eBay you have accepted their rules. They say that they consider your claims to be excessive so they have stopped paying. That is it end of , you have no way to challenge it. Like it or not you have to accept it.
They are doing no more than any other company would do if it were motor or house insurance and you made what they consider excessive claims they would refuse to pay any more claims as well no matter how 'justified' they were.
Their is no 'Law' on it it is totally down to the company to decide what is excessive.

[starone]

If I had that many bad buys I would have thrown in the towel long ago. Once bitten twice shy is a very good attitude to adopt, I reckon.

[joko]

you are missing the point - the point being they have no idea whether any of your claims are justified or not - they only have your word for that ... so the fact that you have made so many is making them suspect there is something amiss.
you merely saying they are justified means nothing - because of course you would say that

their 'limit' is for excessive claims, not excessive unjustified claims