As we all know Unpaid Item is a huge problem in eBay and some buyers play with the eBay system, place order for fun and never pay. A very large of orders remains unpaid. Earlier in Baazee, the unpaid item strikes are shown against user’s id & sellers were alerted seeing bids from such fraud buyers. In eBay that facility is not available.
Now, I am shocked to note that eBay is actually helping those non paying buyers who play with sellers’ time, energy (& money also since international listing fees of unpaid items are not refunded) rather than punishing them. These only encourage those non paying buyers.
I shall tell my experience. A buyer from UK on 08.07.2006 placed order in six of my items (item id: 330005309719, 330005309589, 330005309281, 330004275435,230005656251, 230005623884 . Since the buyer did not pay for any of the six items, unpaid item process were initiated for all six items and unpaid item strikes were given on 12.08.2006. The buyer throughout was maintaining that items will be paid by cheque, which will be posted from UK (though I mentioned clearly that I do not accept cheque payment). I offered PaisaPay, Paypal apart from ATM/DD. The payment never came & finally unpaid item strikes were given. The buyer was subsequently suspended from eBay.
It may not be out of place to mention that during baazee days (in 2004-05), same buyer bought several of my items, but insisting that payment will be made by cheque sent from UK by post which never came. The buyer was suspended by Baazee after many unpaid strikes from various sellers.
Now I find buyer is reinstated. Very surprisingly, when I saw the history of my unpaid items in My eBay, I found the GREEN TICK (which shows FVF granted) for all six items was replaced by -- (FVF Not applicable) without my knowledge. eBay reversed all the unpaid item strikes (six) without my knowledge, to reinstate the buyer.
I wrote to eBay with reference to ‘written down eBay policy’ which clearly states that unpaid item strikes can only be reversed only under the following three circumstances:
1. eBay is provided proof of payment.
2. eBay is provided with proof that the seller excused
the buyer from their obligation.
3.The seller removes the strike themselves.
Nothing of the above three happened, still eBay
removed the strikes (not one strike but six strikes.)
It is surprising that eBay is violating its own policy
eBay replied that:
“There are other unforeseen circumstances in which we will remove an Unpaid Item Strike. Unfortunately, due to privacy reasons, I won't be able to disclose the actual detail. I can assure you that we have taken the appropriate action in this case”
Now see, where it is written in the policy that under unforeseen circumstances unpaid item strikes can be removed by eBay. This type of encouragement to non paying buyers only embolden them to play with eBay system, since there is no punishment for non paying bidders only awards.
