A while back, I used to care about Ebay TOP RATED SELLER STATUS, but after they started to require you to take returns for 30 days, I gave up on it. Back then also, they wanted you to do FREE SHIPPING, so I had been in a habit of always doing free shipping on my listings. However, something I learned yesterday has changed my mind going forward.
Around 2 weeks ago, this buyer with ~1500 feedback and also sells items on Ebay bought a Fire tablet from me. I shipped it to her, and then earlier this week, she complained that her mom said it had locked her out. I asked her for the serial number since I thought it was locked to my account or so. She complained that she’s gone to her mom’s house 3 times already and that her mom has called Amazon about it, blah blah blah. If this was a low feedback person, I would have waited, but due to her ratings, I went and said, “Just take it back from your mom and return it and I’ll deal with it.” So I bought her a return label $10 on Ebay and she shipped it back. The tablet was locked with a pin, so I asked her for it. She then basically screamed at me, “THAT’S THE PROBLEM.” At this point, I didn’t want her to leave me bad feedback, so I went ahead and refunded her money. Later when I got home, I learned that you could reset the Fire tablet by mistyping the pin 5 times. After I did that, it showed me the person’s Amazon account name and was asking for the password. I then Google’d the buyer’s name and the name on the tablet, and you WON’T BELIEVE IT, BUT YES, THAT’S HER MOM! I then sent her a message with the photo of the tablet and asked, “Is this your mom?”
After doing so, I called up Ebay to see what options I had. The nice rep said that usually in these cases, Ebay would refund the return shipping costs back to me. However, for some weird reason, the buyer paid shipping on her own, so there was no need to refund that. Also, Ebay could have refunded me the shipping cost to the buyer as well! However, because I did ‘free shipping,’ then they can’t do it. This makes absolutely no sense since they can see how much I paid since I used them to buy the postage. To make matters worse, if I hadn’t refunded her yet, then they could have actually returned my money if I showed proof that there was a lock screen on the tablet, which there was. I’m guessing this wouldn’t really apply to Fire tablets since you can hard reset them, but I know Apple watches can be locked out if the buyer doesn’t disassociate their account. That’s what I get for being too proactive with her refund.
Lessons Learned
Always charge shipping from now on. Plus, the actual shipping cost is usually ~20% cheaper than what the buyer pays due to the Ebay discount, so extra gravy. Yes, I realize most people take a look at total cost and not pre-ship cost. I do wonder if this will ding your record if people start rating your shipping fees are too high. The risk may be worth the reward though.