ebay managed payments -- the "why" (or one, at least)

The control element of the ebay move away from PayPal is obvious but a buying experience this week has shown me another side that I don't think is going to go down at all well with punters. In fact, I think it's going to bite ebay big-time.

I bought a sealed vintage LP listed as 'New' from a US ebay seller last month and, as I have my US purchases aggregated in the US by a SHF buddy and shipped in blocks of 15 to save on shipping, I only just received it. I was not pleased to see that the import decal was below the shrink and when slitting that shrink finding that the records (it's a double) were both 'nude' in the gatefold with no inner-sleeves. Moreover, one was scratched non-radially (i.e., in a way that couldn't have happened by rotation in the sleeve), and I didn't take too long to conclude that I had been had (and for $141 at that). So, off to Ebay Guarantee Land I went only to find that I had just missed ebay's arbitrary 30-day cut-off period. I could still apply for return apparently (if without guarantee) so I did so, describing the case to the seller (the appropriately-named 'warped-one') with documenting photos. The seller's response was simply (and cynically) to close the Return safe in the knowledge that the period of redress had passed.

Now, I was not just pi$$ed-off but mad. Ebay has an Appeal process and I appealed, describing what had happened, that I only missed the 30-day deadline by two-days, and that I thought the seller 'response' was entirely inappropriate. Outcome? Ebay flipped me off too, with a silly BS blah-blah excuse that auto-sided with the seller. Being mad, I had now to think if I could get even. What about the PayPal 150-day guarantee? I started a claim with them, not really sure that it would fly given that I bought the item from a US-seller, had it shipped to a US address and then forwarded to an EU address from where I proposed to return it. PayPal asked for details then asked the seller ('ebay' these days) for their details and then found in my favour four days later. I'm now sending this back to the US, post-free, for the 100%-refund that ebay has now 'offered'.

So here's the thing. What do you suppose will happen, based on my experience of ebay disallowing my return and then rejecting my Appeal, once 'Ebay Managed Payments' takes over completely in July 2023? I don't see anyone talking about this, and it might be all hunky-dory for sellers but buyers are going to get shafted -- getting rid of PayPal for buyers allows ebay to put a stop to this pesky Third-Party's intercession to do right by the buyer where Ebay prefers to side with shady sellers to just give them the finger, as they did in my case. It's that Guarantee that makes ebay what it is (being the principal difference with Discogs for people like us) and I don't see this shake-up ending well for buyers or for ebay...

 

Yeah I noticed this myself awhile back if you miss that 30 day guarantee period eBay allows. But I knew, PayPal still had me covered.

It's really only an issue if you miss that 30 day deadline. If you had received the record earlier and made the claim before the 30 days are up, they would've sided with you. Thirty days usually is fine, but in some cases, like yours, it isn't enough time and you didn't even go over by months, just 2 days.

I'll definitely increase my vigilance wrt to returns though. Often, by the time I get the record, I don't have much time to listen to it to make sure it plays as graded before the 30 days is up. If a record doesn't play as graded I'll give it a clean and play it again because if it plays as graded after that I'm ok with keeping it.

I won't have time to do that if I only get 30 days so I'll probably just start a return right away to get in before the deadline. If I have time after that, I'll clean and play, otherwise, I'll just send it back.

This will also impact my return costs. Generally, when I return an item to an eBay seller, I don't ask the seller to cover the cost of the return, even though eBay will make them, as I just use PayPal return postage service. But with PayPal out of he equation I'll have to enforce the return postage reimbursement. I had to do that once and had to get eBay involved. I'll be doing that again if I need to.