Terrible experience with eBay support - customs duties | Questions and answers among users

venox_22 · 2024-12-30T17:37:20.565000Z

Good evening everyone, I’d like to report what happened. I sold a prescription eyeglass frame to a Swiss buyer, so I shipped it with EBay Shipping (Packlink) with UPS, paying a hefty 25 euros for shipping (for a tiny package) and sent it to Switzerland. When it arrived in Switzerland, I saw in the tracking that customs fees were due; since the buyer was pressuring me because he needed the package by a certain day (and that day coincided with the package’s arrival in Switzerland), I immediately called EBay to make sure they weren’t my responsibility. The EBay assistant, a woman, unexpectedly told me that the customs fees were owed by me, the seller, because I hadn’t set up the sales rules in my EBay account. So, regrettably, I also paid the customs fees (45 euros!!!!)Unfortunately I couldn’t even contact packlink because they only reply by e-mail with painfully long delays, and given the buyer’s pressure I had to rely only on what EBay customer support told me. So I pay, the customer is super happy (of course), and I write to Packlink right away, complaining about the fact that I wasn’t told customs charges were expected. They reply after 3 days and tell me that I SHOULD NOT HAVE PAID THE CUSTOMS FEES, because they were the buyer’s responsibility.I immediately call EBay and ask for an explanation, and they also confirm that I should not have paid them, and that I should sort it out with the customer myself by asking him to reimburse me the amount. Obviously the buyer doesn’t want to cooperate, because he says he didn’t receive any contact from eBay to pay this amount. I called EBay several times, including today when I got angry and said that all of this happened because of their mistake, and they tell me they can’t refund money paid outside eBay’s channel.They also say they can’t even contact the buyer to tell him to reimburse me. I then asked to be contacted by an EBay supervisor, but obviously as of today I haven’t received any contact. So all of this is to warn everyone to be careful with whoever is assisting you through EBay, and to point out what happened to me, because this is unacceptable: that the customer (me, the seller) has to deal with recovering the amount on my own without any help from them, since the mistake happened because of EBay supportBest regards

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