At the beginning of the month we blogged that sellers were not receiving automatic final value fee credits when auctions were cancelled due to a hijacked account. When eBay restore the account to the rightful owner they cancel all auctions that have been won, and email the seller to inform them. Currently eBay have no process in place to refund final value fees though.
Having contacted support for a final value fee credit at the beginning of the month (only a paltry £3 odd, but it’s the principle that counts!), today I checked my account and no fee has been applied. I’ve contacted support again and apparently it can take a few days as credits have to be applied manually, and they’ve now promised to process them immediately.
A quick browse on the community boards reveals there are an awful lot of sellers who have received TKO notices recently, significantly more so than usual. Unless these sellers each apply individually for final value fee credits they’ll all be paying for sales which never took place!
3 Responses
Hi
This is an extract of an email I sent to ebay concerning ebays failure to credit sellers with FVF when purchases are made by a hijacked account.
There appears to be no deterrent to buyers buying items with no intention of paying and ebay seems quite happen to condone this behaviour provided they get their FFV. It is morally wrong and I suspect wrong in law that ebay should profit from a fraudulent transaction. I would request that ebay lawyers examine Section 5 of the Theft Act 1968 as this piece of legislation appears to apply.
The Theft Act 1968 Section 5 (4) ‘Belonging to another’
Where a person gets property by another’s mistake, and is under an obligation to make restoration (in whole or in part) of the property or its proceeds or of the value thereof, then to the extent of that obligation the property or proceeds shall be regarded (as against him) as belonging to the person entitled to restoration, and an intention not to make restoration shall be regarded accordingly as an intention to deprive that person of the property or proceeds.
I just plucked this piece of legislation out of the ether, not sure if its right or not. Would welcome advise from anyone who actually knows the rights and wrongs.
Many thanks
PS Love the site
Hi Andy, I don’t know the law, but I do know it’s wrong to cancel a sale and keep the fees. They’ll get it automated…. one day 🙁
We had it bad 2 weeks ago. I had 4 items with BUY IT NOWs totalling over $200,000.
ALL 4 were bought up in the 2nd day (of a 10 day auction).
Each winner was a different user ID.
Of course, you could imagine the excitement, until I immediately emailed all of winners to for verification (common practice for us to make sure they are not memorex)
Well, don’t you know? 2 days pass with no response. So, I do the ole chat with the puter thing and they say there is nothing they can do, but to send an email to T&S. So I do.
Well, I have about $3000 in fees with the eBay billing day on the next day. This now makes me frantic that my Paypal account (tied to my bank account) is about to get slammed $3000 (yes, 10 days after billing, but they collect what is on the bill. NOT credits after the billing date. those are reconciled the next billing).
So, I send 3 more emails DEMANDING that they remove these auctions.
I am then told I have to wait the 7 days to file an unpaid item dispute. THEN, I CAME UNGLUED! How the hell can they let something like this happen, then make ME pay?
Well, GUESS WHAT PEOPLE?!! Just like ANY bank account, EBAY ACCRUES INTEREST ON THEIR ACCOUNTS! So, the more money they can have and the longer they can keep it, the more they make! So, they will credit you, but are in no hurry to do so!
Needless to say, due to MY OWN FOOTWORK(calling and emailing the bidder accounts), ALL of the bidders were hijacked!
So, after 6 days of non-stop emails, chats, emails, chats, they FINALLY removed the auctions.
Now for the kicker!
TODAY, my account has been limited! Due to supicious selling activity of the past 2 weeks!
ROFLMAO!! WTF?? I DIDN’T ACTUALLY SELL ANYTHING!
I wonder if others might be up for calling on the Govt to investigate the internals of the eBay T&S dept for RACQUETEERING!
BTW, I later found out that one employee of the T&S dept also have a very similar item being auctioned at the same time! HMM, getting the competition out of the way maybe?
It isn’t always the sellers or the buyers ripping each other off. IT IS MOSTLY EBAY RIPPING US ALL OFF!