The buyer is always right! (a much-debated topic over and over again!) | eBay Coffee

ciappelloni87 · 2025-10-15T09:24:02.182000Z

More than a question, mine is a small rant, or at most a rhetorical question open to a civil discussion, if that were even possible.I’m not a professional seller, but over the years I’ve still built up my respectable and costly history on ebay with over 500 100% positive feedback ratings, and a good chunk of those, especially lately, are as a seller with customers who are extremely satisfied and almost surprised by the level of service and attention they received (a hobby seller, basically always consistently at a loss, modestly enough... but I do something else for a living! ) .Well, at the end of September a person (with zero feedback, who if I could, without knowing how to read or write, I’d happily block) bought a smartphone from me, and after a couple of days claimed that the package arrived empty. He takes a photo and a video of the package, which by any logic have zero value, absolutely none, just as an eventual video made by me while packing the parcel would be worth zero. If I were a scammer, nothing would stop me from then shipping another empty one and not the one shown in the video. As proof it is worth less than zero.Well, it really seems that Ebay decided to protect the buyer, zero feedback, no history on ebay. But not to protect him at his own expense, which would also make sense. Fair enough, you want to show buyers that ebay protects them, and you invest your own money in this thing, making them feel safe on your platform... fair enough!No, ebay wants to protect him at my expense... moreover without EVER consulting me throughout the entire dispute, having consulted ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY the buyer. In practice, the buyer decides what happened.I therefore gather that selling on ebay is a huge risk, if the word of a buyer with zero feedback is enough to make you lose 700 euros despite your sales history and the sums you’ve made ebay earn in seller fees. And what if the next customer also says that an empty package arrived? What am I supposed to do, hand out money and smartphones left and right, do charity???To this is added a very nice new development, just to complete the picture. It seems that for Poste Italiane it has become illegal, for retail customers, to ship smartphones. So for years I’ve been throwing 16.90 euros of insured express shipping down the drain every time I pay to send them.Then again, in the rules they linked me to from Poste, they talk about lithium batteries and never explicitly about smartphones, so one would also have to be an expert in the internal components of smartphones.Years ago I received a couple of reimbursements for lost smartphones, reduced by 10% of the invoice value... today it has become illegal, but only when they have to reimburse you, because nobody tells you in plain words that a SMARTPHONE cannot be shipped! They let you ship it just fine, but if it gets lost, it becomes illegal!I really ended up in a crappy situation, one I honestly would never have imagined... ebay or paypal (I’m not sure whose smart idea it is) showing off their buyer protection, but at the seller’s expense...And the postal service that considers shipping smartphones illegal on a par with weapons and drugs! (they are in the same list as lithium batteries, this is not a joke) .October started off really badly... but it can always get worse!

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The buyer is always right! (a much-debated topic over and over again!) | eBay Coffee | eBay Italy