Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about a $6,250 return request on eBay and how they handled it.
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eBay Return Request For $6,250!And How We Handled It
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about a $6,000 return that we recently had come through.
Melissa: We're gonna walk through what happened.
Rob: All right guys, so what do you do when you get that dreaded return request from a buyer on eBay? We are gonna walk you through that process today.
Melissa: Yeah. Nobody likes to see you have an open case or you have a return request or even before it gets to a return request, you know, a problem with an item or a buyer.
So, we had that happen recently and it was, we talked about it before, but we were gonna wait until we had it all resolved or figured the whole, like it was all finished before we talked about it. So today we're gonna talk about a return. Well, we it wasn't a return request necessarily right away for $6,250.
Rob: That's it, over $6,000 for a single sale that we did. And the gentleman had an issue with it and he just last week, requested a return on the item. So we wanna walk you through that process. Every, the first thing I will note out is every single process is different for a return request. It depends on how the buyer reacts to you will determine how eBay will either back you or they will back the buyer, through that whole process. So we're gonna give you this instance because this is a big return over $6,000. Typically over, I think it's a thousand dollars. eBay has a different department, that's called the high value department, and everything goes to be.
What's it called? Decided. Decided or they go to, a delegate? No, not a delegate. Anyways, they didn't, they decide what is gonna happen with that return, if they're gonna, side on the buyer or the seller side. That's where it goes to the high value market or the high value department in eBay actually decides that.
Melissa: So yeah, and I think that what you said be also is the biggest thing is everyone is different. Each return request is different. And like our people ask us, well, what do you do if you get somebody asking for a return for that many thing or that high value? And we don't get these a lot, so a couple here and there.
Yeah. But that's why we wanted to walk through this one. And we don't accept returns on our items, so we sell them as is. But eBay does have a 30-day policy that you could be forced to accept a return if obviously if something's broken and whatnot.
Rob: So typically the only way that a buyer can force you is if they say it was not as described.
So that is one of our mottoes is definitely to under-promise over-deliver on our items. We want our buyers to be very happy with the items that they're getting. And it's worked so far, so good for us, that we have very, very few people that, respond back and do this. Now, in this instance, I'm pretty sure that the buyer.
There was something going on with him, using parts from our unit to fix his unit or something was weird. And we'll tell you guys the whole process, so you guys have an understanding of how it all happened. I'll, and I'll make some notes if some different things had happened, the outcome could have been a little bit different for sure.
Melissa: Yeah. So first thing to note is he, never, like when you, his first message to you was never like, hey, this doesn't work. I need a partial refund or whatever. Like it, the whole communication back and forth was a little bit strange. Yeah. So, so go ahead and walk through what was like the, his first message to you.
Rob: Yeah. So the first message I got from him was, Hey, I, hooked the thing up last night. It shorted out my whole entire kitchen. And I'm having a service guy come tomorrow and look at it. That was the first message that I got. Now before I even shipped this out, I hooked it up, made sure that it was working properly.
I took a video the day that I shipped it because it was sitting in storage for a couple months. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay with it. So I have even an ease of conscience knowing as well that I sold him something that was working, nothing wrong with it. And I like to do that just for myself.
And I'd like to have a watermarked video the day that I ship something out showing that it is working properly. So I did do that when he got it, my, the interpretation of what happened? Well, well, I, I just have a feeling that he tried to hook it up and hooked it up wrong, and therefore he shorted out his kitchen because of that.
So, that's what I think happened and that's why I think this whole thing went a different way versus him actually, responding and saying, hey, shorted out my kitchen, something's wrong with it. I need a refund. He didn't do that. He told me he shorted out his kitchen. He was having a service guy come and look at it tomorrow, and then I didn't even respond back until his next message on top of it saying, service guy, service guy was there and doing something to the unit.
Yeah. Now this is the first thing, red flag. You cannot alter an item. So when somebody opens up any item that you sell or you ship, eBay should side with you because the item has been tampered. The first thing this gentleman should have done is responded and said, it's broken. Do you want me to call a service guy to come out and look at it and you got, you can foot the bill for it or do you want me just to return it to you?
It's broken, it's not working. That's what he should have done first. He didn't do that, and this is not a new eBayer either. He said he's been on selling on eBay and buying on eBay for over 20 years, so he knows this. He knew the process. That's the other reason why I think some crooked stuff was going on on the back end that I wasn't getting notified of what exactly was happening.
Melissa: Well, he also, one of the messages, he just didn't even say anything. He sent a picture of your unit next to his same unit, so that was kind of odd too.
Rob: Like it was so in his unit powered on and my unit not powered on. And so it's like, how do you know which is which anyway. Exactly. And that was one of the things that caused another red flag. I didn't know that, why he would send that picture and what was going on with that. So, couple red flags through the whole process.
Melissa: So, and he never, once, never a like, flat out said, hey, I need, you know, or, or opened a return request. So, yeah, until the very end, so.
Rob: Well, and that's his thing, so he went through it, never asking for any money, just telling me what's going on with the whole situation.
Then finally, I think I got a response from him, hey, you're not helping me out with anything, which I sent a response back. The first thing that we always do for anything that happens, when a buyer's unhappy with an item, whether it's a refund request or they're just unhappy for whatever reason it was.
Be a detective. So I sent a message and said, oh, I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. Please let me know, was it damaged? Was there something wrong with the pallet that it came on? Could you, were there broken boards? Anything like that? That's my first message to him. Immediately he said, no, it arrived beautiful. Pallet was great. No issues with the pallet period. And that's where I stopped my communications right there to see what else he was gonna send. And then that's when he sent pictures of the item saying it wasn't working. And then he said a service guy was out there. And already spent. He didn't get a, a, a price from the service guy of what it was gonna cost.
He said it was coming within the next week. This whole thing just, it, it, it screamed shady. Yeah. Of what's going on. You don't have somebody work on a, a piece of that. You don't know how much it's gonna cost. Exactly. And just tell me approximately endless money, you just go and put whatever money at it that you want and I'm gonna pay for it.
So, like I said, just really weird whole situation. So finally I got a message back from him after I sent him that message about detecting what was going on, and he said, it was a week later saying, hey, I am not getting any help from you. I'm a little upset. I don't even think you tested this item before you shipped it.
Which, that's when you wrote back, which was another, I mean, a slap in the face because not only did I do a video of the item working the day that I shipped it in the listing itself, I had a video of the item working. I had videos of the item powered on with different modes that it was in. So you could clearly see there's nothing wrong with the item.
So to me, I wrote back and said, listen, this feels like a slap in the face. I absolutely did test the item. And if you're in question about it, you can go back to the listing, see the video that I posted, which is a, a minute video along with pictures of the item powered on and different modes that it was actually in.
So yes, it was tested and it was working just fine. So whatever happened from the point where I had it shipped to you, it went bad or whatever happened to it, that's not my deal. I, I, and I wrote this out in a nice email and that, and then that was the last response I did to this guy. I messaged eBay and said, hey, this seems or sorry, I called eBay and said, this seems shady.
How do you guys, how should I proceed? Suggest I proceed? And they, they said, listen, he's already had a service guy open it up. You are covered. And this is what the first rep told me on eBay, that you're covered under they're not allowed to alter an item in any way.
Melissa: Did you get to a supervisor then, or was that?
Rob: That was a normal rep.
Okay. But I knew from the past, this is not gonna be a normal rep that deals with this is gonna be the high value department. So I said, can you get on the phone with the high value department? Talk to somebody and let them ask them if it's gonna be the same outcome. If it goes to them, is it gonna be the same outcome for what you're telling me?
They altered the item. You guys will not force me to take the return. And he got a person in the high, high, high department or the, whatever it is, high value, high value department. He got a person on the phone and they said, absolutely, it's already been altered and you do not have to take the return if he opens a return request.
And I said, okay, what do you expect me, or what should I do from here out? Should I respond back to him? And the guy told me, no, don't say another word back to him. You're perfectly fine. Until he opens that case or goes past the 30 days, then you're perfectly fine. Don't respond back to him because he was trying to, I feel like if I had responded back, I would've, started a a like argument back and forth, and he might've escalated it a lot quicker than he did, which I didn't. I just left it alone, left him doing what he wanted to do. Sent me, he sent me a couple messages throughout, saying, hey, the people got me the first bill. It's like $1,500 or $2,000. And I'm like, and I didn't even say anything.
I just left it alone. And then 30 days had expired and then I think another 10 days or seven days went by and he reached back out and said, hey, you're forcing me to go to my credit card now for a refund. And when he did that, he opened up a case and I called eBay and said, what do you guys suggest me do?
They said automatically. I mean, they said, close out the case, decline the refund. And he left me negative feedback at the same time that he did that.
Melissa: Well, he threatened you with negative feedback first, didn't he?
Rob: You're right on one of those, but I didn't respond back to that either.
Melissa: He threatened you with negative.
Rob: He said, if you don't offer to pay for some of this bill,
Melissa: did he give you a number either?
Rob: No, he still said if you don't offer to pay for some of this bill, he's waiting to see what you would offer him. Yeah. I never have given negative feedback before, but I am totally gonna do it on this one if you don't pay this.
And that's another thing, you can't strong arm people into doing what you want them to do. I do.
Melissa: It's extortion if they're, if you, somebody threatens you with negative feedback for you to have to do something for them. Yeah. It's extortion and eBay won't let that go through, so Absolutely. So eBay will side with you.
Rob: But still, I didn't respond back to him, didn't mess with it. Because that's what eBay told me to do. I talked to them before I you know, went forward with my plan of what I was gonna do. And then finally, like I said, seven or 10 days after the 30-day benchmark hit, he opened a request, put a negative feedback on my name, and then opened a request for a return request, called eBay up.
And they said, close it out immediately. You can, decline it, close it out, and as soon as you do that, we will take the negative feedback off. They had it off within like, yeah, less than an hour. Negative feedback removed. Case, case closed, and that was it. Now I have a feeling that this guy is gonna go outside of eBay to his credit card and try to get the money from his credit card saying that the item was not as described.
Melissa: But eBay has every ability to fight them and absolutely so, and win that case if they choose to do so. Absolutely. So they have all of the proof, they have, all the communication they have everything to go to the credit card and win that case if they choose to do so. I don't know what they, their department as far as, it seems like a $6,000 would be a worth actual amount to to go, go for.
But yeah, so.
Rob: So we don't know on that aspect of it how it's gonna go, but I already know from past, what's happened in the past with me, if he does, it's already been closed out through eBay's, their, their category or through them, they will not reopen it back up after the credit card, gets opened up, a credit card, dispute gets opened up.
They won't come back to me and say, all right, you owe this money. If anything, they'll come back and say hey, we paid out this money, just so you know, but we had to pay his credit card, but you don't owe us anymore money because they've done that to me in the past for a high value item as well, or a high, I sold multiple items.
Yeah. That this happened with, and it, it valued up to like $2,500, $3,500 and the guy fought it with his credit card and he got it approved with his credit card. And then eBay said they had to go back, but eBay could have won it. Like, like Melissa said, they have all the all the information there to win this case with the credit card.
But whether they actually have people to do it, I, we have no idea. So, yeah. But for us, the item is closed out, negative feedback is removed. The, it's done. eBay, blocked the buyer from responding to me or any other messages that they might send to me, they block the buyer. So we can't do anything like that.
And it's all taken care of. Close out in our favor.
Melissa: Yeah. Now I was gonna add, say yeah, a couple things to point out is, like if you get a a message. It wasn't even a return request in the beginning, but it was just a message. Don't panic like that is the first thing is to not panic. And it's hard. It is hard because you want to, you're like, oh no, something's wrong.
Like, that's a lot of money and you wanna panic. But if you just stop and gather your thoughts and then really figure out what happened, because this could have gone a lot of different ways. Yeah. If that guy was, if he wasn't, it didn't seem so shady and something legitly broke. Like we would've either done a shipping claim if it was damaged in shipping, or, we would've had to accept the return if and got the unit back.
Yeah. If it was broken, and then we would've found out. But that's not what happened. He wanted to keep the unit because, and he wanted to get some money off of it, is what he wanted to do. And he tried to do that. So who, who knows why if, if he really did blow up his kitchen, I don't know. Yeah. But you would think if you already had one, he'd know how to hook it up.
Rob: Exactly. But these units also come, come with plugs that you just plug it in. This one actually had four bare wires, so you had to wire it to do it, and he could have not known how to do it. And there's no telling. I don't, we don't, we can only speculate what happened after it left us. But we know that the unit absolutely worked and worked well, before it left us, for that guy.
So the only other unknown is either how he hooked it up or if it was damaged in shipping. And he said it was not damaged in shipping. So the only other logical thing is he hooked it up wrong and it did blow something which, not our problem. We didn't do anything with it. But like Melissa said, if he had reached out immediately and said, hey, I wanna refund, return, refund for this item because it's not working, it's not as described, we would've had to take the refund because eBay would, would've required us to do that.
Now that goes back to us under promising and over-delivering. Something did happen to this, whether he shorted it out, whether, whatever it was, eBay could have forced us to do that, and I would've be, I would be on a different trajectory had that happened. Had that happened, that he did that and reopened a request immediately after he got the item.
I don't know the outcome of that. I don't know if I'd have been able to fight it, but he wanted to keep the item. He didn't wanna return it, so he did because it was a $25,000 or $30,000? No, I think this one is actually $32,000. Really? $32,000 oven that he got for $6,250. So, he got an amazing deal on it and he knew if he had to put a little bit of money into it, it was still worth it for him.
But I, I think he was just trying to see how far he could push us. Because we actually came down on the price on this too, because we had it listed for $9,000 and he came in with a $6,000 offer and I had it sitting for a couple months, so I was like, forget it. I got a hundred bucks into this, I'm gonna sell it and make my money on it.
And that's what I did. I got him up to $6,250 and then we did the deal.
Melissa: Yeah. Another thing I wanted to add is, you've been, you've communicated with eBay a lot over the last 20 some years. 27, I don't know how long. Yeah. Years. And we've always noticed a swing with eBay. Like they're the middle man. So they are the ones that have to figure out who, like, you know, there's two sides and then the truth to everything, right?
Like they have to figure out what really happened and how to manage the situation. Yeah. So they're the middle man. And we've noticed, you know, in the, sometimes they swing towards the buyer or they swing towards the seller and each. Each individual one is different for sure, but we noticed for the past couple years it's been very heavy on the buyer side.
Like it doesn't matter what you do, especially since managed payments came in. Yeah, it's been like, okay, no matter what, it's the, like the buyer pretty much always wins, but now we've noticed a little shift. They're starting to swing back. There's like, and then not just this situation. And a couple, like even in our group too, we've noticed a little bit they're taking hits on stuff that they wouldn't have done in the past.
And so that's a good thing as a seller Absolutely. To know that they are having our backs. So, because we've seen where like, yeah, a lot of people I think probably started to leave because they were so much for the buyer. But we've seen it that happen over the years too. Absolutely. It swings back and forth because they, they have to know, like if they don't support their sellers then there's no sellers left, then they don't make any money.
Rob: And the sellers are where they make their money, not the buyers. Right. So, but it's a catch 22 because if you don't have buyers, you can't have your items sold. So you definitely it's a catch 22.
Melissa: It is, but I feel, but that is nice to have their support and to know that they backed you and you did everything.
And I think another thing that in this whole thing and anytime you get a request or a message to like something's wrong and you need to find out what's going on. Always start out by being polite, like you said. Yeah, I'm so sorry this happened. And ask all these questions and just be polite even. And when you're talking about on eBay, when you're frustrated.
Yeah, like always start out being polite because you'll never get anywhere by being mean, rude, or mean, mean being.
Rob: I mean, just think about it. Had he wrote that and I did check it in video the day that it was shipped, so I could have automatically jumped on him and said, I don't know what you're talking about.
This thing was working. I have a video proving that it was working the day it was shipped. That automatically puts his guard up and he is like, all right, this guy's gonna fight me, tooth and nail to get this where I, he's not gonna gimme any money back. I didn't do that. I told him, oh no, I'm so sorry you're dealing with that.
So it shows him I'm here trying to work stuff out with him, and that just drops his guard immediately. So no matter what return you have, you really have to respond to them very, very, cordially and figure out, try to figure out what exactly happened in the situation so you can figure out the best way to proceed and really get it handled.
And our goal is not to, you know, screw anybody over with any sale that we do. That's why we tried to under-promise and over-deliver on everything so the buyer's happy, but at the same time, we have to be a detective and figure out where the problem actually happened. Was it in shipping? Was it the buyer hooking it up wrong?
I know on our side there's nothing wrong with it. I hooked it up the day that it was shipped and it was working perfectly, and I did a video of it just to prove that there was no issues with it. So that's where you really have to be very cordial when you're responding and do not jump back on them. Even though every, everything in my, you know, my normal response would be like, what the heck are you talking about?
This was totally working. Why did you break it? You hooked it up wrong. You did something wrong. That's what I wanna respond. But you can't do that. You have to totally no, act like you're on their side until you figure out what's going on, and then you figure out what what lane to choose, and then that's where you, operate down that lane.
Melissa: And then there is being like, you can't let people walk on you either. Absolutely. Like I feel like, you know, people, they think that they have the upper hand because they can get it returned or they know like whatever. And it's like if you are threatening somebody with negative feedback, that's an automatic, pretty much like eBay's like, nope.
That you're not allowed to do that. Yeah. So, and then, I don't know, it's just people are nice sometimes. Yeah. So, so I, we don't wanna say this to scare you either. No. So we wanted to walk through the, because I mean, we did win the ca I mean, but there wasn't really a case open, but there was, it was after.
Oh yeah, that's right. It was after the 30 days. But, but it, every problem is solvable, so you can always, yeah.
Rob: Figure out the best way to walk through it. Figure that's what we did. Hopefully this will help you, and we're not here to say, you'll never end up with a return request on eBay, because that's impossible, right?
I mean, the way that we sell stuff is in no returns. We still, there's still people every once in a while that will open a case for some, for some reason. Typically it's for damaged in shipping is when it actually happens. But, for the most part, that's it. We just want, hopefully this will help you navigate it when it happens to you and you'll be able to figure out the best possible way to actually choose and proceed how you're gonna handle it.
So that was our goal with this podcast. Like I said, $6,250, still in our bank account. Because of the way that this whole situation went down. Every situation is different. Just know, be cordial, handle stuff very, very nicely. Be a detective in the beginning. Be detective. Yeah. And then you can figure out the best way to proceed with these processes.
Melissa: Yep. So thanks guys for listening. We appreciate you so much. And if you want some more help getting started on eBay or reselling, check out freeflippingcourse.com.
Rob: You guys rock. We will see you on the next episode.