Lessons Learned

Initially, I never had an issue with PayPal. Being an honest seller, I was usually able to work out any disagreements that I might have had with an unhappy buyer. Yes, over thousands of transactions, I did have a couple of buyers who were not happy with a transaction. This is just a fact of life selling and buying on eBay. For the first few years of working with PayPal, I don’t ever recall ever getting to the point where PayPal had to intervene.

Then one day – it finally did happen. There was a SNAD sale that I could not work out with the other party and PayPal was called in to mediate. The funny thing is, I was a buyer and not a seller in this transaction!

I purchased a used digital SLR, and paid slightly more then the going rate because this came with an extra new battery, still in the OEM packaging, at the time a $60 value. As I always do, I tested everything upon its arrival, and found that the new battery was DOA. The seller’s attitude was “tough luck” – no offer of a return or even a partial refund for the bad battery. It got to the point where I decided to contact PayPal. After much deliberation, PayPal decided that the seller was in the right and they did not have to accept a return or offer a credit for the bad battery, Lesson learned

Ultimately, I was OK with this. Even though I paid extra for the battery, I still got a great deal on the camera if I compared buying it from a local retailer. That’s really what eBay is about – you can get great deals on lots of different items, but you do assume a little extra risk. Again, it’s like I bought the camera from a guy in the next town at a yard sale instead of paying full retail at the local photo shop. I was able to save significant money, but I shouldn’t expect the same level of customer service that I would expect at a local retailer. If I discovered a little something wrong with the camera a few weeks down the road, I don’t think I would bring myself to knock on this stranger’s door to demand a refund or credit. Maybe I set myself up with bad karma when I complained to PayPal – I should have kept my mouth shut.

A few years down the road I purchased a new updated digital SLR. The old one I bought on eBay started acting flaky – the shutter button did not work reliably and I had to resort to using a remote shutter release. Other than that, the camera still worked fine. So I sold it on eBay AS-IS, with a detailed explanation of what was wrong with the camera. I even included a price quote from the manufacturer detailing what the repair would cost. I listed and sold the camera for about ½ of what similar models were selling for, as it had the shutter problem. You guessed it – the buyer never read the listing, snapped up the camera at the bargain price, and then was upset about the shutter issue. They admitted to me ‘I never read the listing and didn’t know’. Well, not to be too unreasonable, I explained that the item was sold AS-IS, as described, and he really received exactly what he paid for. Not good enough – he filed a SNAD complaint to PayPal and even though he admitted that the camera was accurately described, they still gave him his money back. It seems that at this time, PayPal had adopted the attitude that the buyer can return anything for any reason within the first 30-45 days. (Actually, I have my suspicions that there are 2 classes of PayPal users – I’ll discuss this in my next post.) He returned the camera, but it was missing several accessories that were part of the auction. When I complained to PayPal, they said that so long as he shows that we received the item back, the case was closed. (Yet another post topic)

Lesson learned again.

You’d think with me learning all of these lessons, I’d be getting smarter.