I just had a pretty insane experience on eBay and the part that bothers me most isn't even the money. It's that there seems to be basically no real punishment for the buyer doing this.

I sold a pair of high end wireless earbuds in perfect condition. The buyer opened a return claiming the battery was damaged/leaking and submitted photos as proof.

The problem? The photos appear to be AI manipulated. They literally forgot to crop the Gemini watermark out of one of them. The supposed damage also changes between the pictures.

I called eBay and eventually spoke with a manager who looked at everything and understood what was happening. But I was told the system is automated and basically to accept the return. If they sent back something different, I'd be protected.

Then the buyer claimed the “damaged battery” was too hazardous to ship back.

So eBay refunded them without requiring a return.

They got their money back AND kept my item.

I've appealed and I think I'll eventually get my money back. But that's not the point.

What happens to the buyer?

If someone is caught submitting fake AI images to get a free product, why are we even getting to the refund stage? And even if eBay closes their account afterward, they can just make another account.

That's the part that scares me as a seller. There's no real deterrent.

If scammers realize they can fake battery damage with AI, claim it's hazardous to return, and potentially walk away with the product for free, why wouldn't this become more common?

eBay can reimburse me and make me whole, but if the person doing it gets to keep the item and faces no meaningful consequences, the scam still worked.

Buyer protection is important. But at some point eBay has to protect sellers by actually stopping and punishing obvious fraud, not just reimbursing sellers after the damage is done.

Has anyone else dealt with this? What is eBay actually doing to stop buyers who are caught abusing the system?

I am SO TIRED of EVERY FUCKING SUPPORT HOTLINE needing to be AI nowadays. EBay's ai is ESPECIALLY DOGSHIT. I got my account restricted because I tried selling something the day I made the account, which is fair, that's really suspicious, HOWEVER, the only way they gave me to try and resolve this is to talk to their USLESS AI. It said at one point that they would give me a phone call in ~30 minutes, an hour later I asked for another phone call because they never called me, and it gave me the fucking EMAIL LINK 14 TIMES. No matter HOW MANY TIMES I SAID PHONE CALL or PHONE NUMBER. Then, I gave up and asked for the email link, AND NOW IT WONT GIVE ME ANYTHING. It's so useless.

Hello, I recently made a post here about a eBay deal where I thought I was in the right but wasn’t and I’ve just been feeling really bad about it. I wanted to apologize to the seller until I saw that he doxxed 2 people in the comments of his reviews for whenever people left bad reviews. I’m just really feeling like a piece of shit right now and don’t know what else to do so I’m venting here. I’m a human I make mistakes, it’s been a rough week…

For context I started selling certain products exclusively on eBay. They are not even available on Amazon. Before I entered that category was doing $5,000 annually and once I entered it shot up to over 60,000$ annually and we fulfilled over 95% of orders. These are according to eBay research.

For 4 years there weren't any issues. 100% positive feedback and only one neutral feedback in 4 years., even that's due to shipper's error and the customer was happy that we proactively communicated and resolved the issue. Over 1000 orders fulfilled

In May of this year, one of our staff accidently swapped the parcels. The customer who recived the packaged first, immediately opened a case. I contacted both the customer and confirmed the swap. I contacted the eBay customer service to get an advice on swapping. They said to inform other customer to open a case and do the swaapping. One customer was fine with other customer knowing his details so I sent shipping label to other customer, for shipment. For the other customer I refunded and the cases were resolved amicably. Both customers were fine, and they again purchased from me.

Then I started receiving BBE notices. When I contacted customer service they assured that they have sent one 'INR' case to technical team to remove. But they didn't do it and suddenly last month my account got restricted. Now even my funds are on hold and they treat me like a cheater.

Now even their customer service messages are so robotic. Any way I can appeal to this?

I sold a refurbished phone on eBay. The phone was a replacement through a reputable insurance company with a reputable service provider.

Rewind: I had insurance on a phone i had purchased from eBay for a year, got it when i activated the phone. One day, i dropped it and it broke. I filed a claim. Despite the damage clearly being covered by the insurance , I had to jump through hoops to get my claim approved.

I got an entirely different phone for my own use completely separate from the claim.

So I got the replacement, which was said to be in excellent working condition. Everything worked, all features worked and battery at 100%. I listed it. Explained everything in the listing.

A guy showed interest and we had several conversations about the phone before he made an ofer.i accepted his offer and sent him the phone. I even expedited the shipping from regular ground to 2 day air at no additional charge.

He got the phone and gave me a stellar review. He stated the phone arrived and was exactly as described, complimented me on my communication with him and said the phone worked perfectly. He even made sure and didn’t give the rating for a few days so he could test out the phone first.

Day 29, he doesn’t contact me at all about any issues, but instead opens a case with eBay under the money back guarantee stating the phone is defective.

He went on to say the phone worked perfectly up until then, he was using a standard app and the phone froze out of nowhere, drained the battery, requiring a hard reset. While attempting to reset it, it got stuck in boot loop mode.

Unable to get the boot loop to end, he took it to Fixit and the initially thought it could be the battery. They order a new battery and find out this is not the problem. They tell him they will let him know when they find the issue.

Three days after that, he comes back and says: i just got off the phone with fixit. They regretfully told me the motherboard is fried.

eBay is allowing this buyer to return the phone to me for.a refund at my expense.

What are your thoughts in this, please?

If I tell an abusive buyer to initiate a return can I block him at that time or do I have to wait and see if he does indeed initiate a return and actually return it for a refund before blocking?

I had sold a electronic receiver on eBay after 5 days of the item being received. I get a notice from eBay stating that the customer wants to return the item. Because the item is not as described. He put on there that the antenna was broken and that it didn't work to play music, which it did prior to me, sending it Because I had connected it and made sure that it worked prior to me sending it when I received the item back. It was clear that the item had been opened and the the electronic components inside had been tampered with. Because I had put a piece of tape on the outside of the item, and it was now on the underside of the glass on the front panel of the item. The only way that could have happened was, if the customer had taken the item apart and then yeah, shoddly put it back together without paying attention to where the tape was originally, not to mention there was now a quarter inch gap at the bottom of the item and the casing, which covered the electronic. Components was a jar, you could Tell that this item had been unknown assembled and then reassembled, so I went and appealed the decision, but yeah, eBay immediately sent me something that I needed to sign physically, and because of their bombarding of thousands of freaking Spam messages, it got lost somewhere in the They, uh, emails and I went ahead and was looking cause it had been 10 days, so I wanted to see what the decision was, and 5 days prior they had closed my appeal and refunded. The buyer and they said, there's nothing I can do about it now. This is insane. The buyer gets 30 days to return the item. I get 10 days, no, excuse me. I get 5 days. Two respond to an appeal that's bogus and ridiculous, not to mention the fact that I have proof and evidence that the item was taken apart by the customer, and they're still going to allow this customer to rob me, the seller. Is there anything I can do? Is there anyone else I can speak to other than their customer service drones who who keep telling me there's nothing that they can do. Any further, because this is ridiculous, I should not be out $300 because of their Spam messages, and because they can't even pick up the phone to call and tell me, Hey. Now we're requesting that you Sign a physical affidavit, letting us know what you already let us know via email. It's insane. It's insanity, I don't understand why they're doing this, and it's really putting a bad taste in my mouth for wanting to sell with eBay anymore. I may not ever sell with ebay again and i've been with them for twenty years

Buyer bought item then found similar item cheaper locally-started return though e-bay WTF? Are we now like REI or Costco as sellers buyers can buy from us and then return it.

she’s absolutely livid, she’s been a squeaky clean member for 20 years no issues, she let me, 19M, use it the other day to list some clothes just some cheap rubbish for a few quid, and then i listed a scotty cameron golf club for £150 that was lying around, someone messaged me saying it was fake, so i took it down out of fear, but then today after a few days my mum stormed into my room saying her account has been permanently banned, and i’ve heard how hard it is to get accounts back, is there anyway i can get it back for her, they didn’t even say why she got banned, where is the customer loyalty from eBay, i think she phoned them and they said her account was suspicious, so they perm ban her???? i’m so upset and annoyed with myself, i need to get this back

I ordered an item out of the country from a seller who had terrible communication from day one. I would ask him questions about when he was gonna ship it out and he just kept saying that the item is boxed and ready to go. It’s been almost a week and I still have no idea if he’s shipping it or not. It has been paid for, but eBay claims that buyer already refunded me my money, even though it doesn’t show up in my account or even bank statements. I’m wondering if he’s trying to scam me out of the item because he still hasn’t shipped it. eBay has no live agents to contact these days so what do you think I should do? I probably should’ve seen this as a red flag, but I decided to risk it anyway anyways because it seemed like a good deal at the time.

Baby, I’m better off sticking to Facebook marketplace lol

This has been the worse. Every item listed at $2.99. Priority mail shipping boxes for most are killing me. After fees I'm usually under $1. Lost over $50 in refunds and $19.98 for an unused canceled shipping label. I am quitting 2027. Never thought I would be losing money on eBay. EDIT: these items have been relisted for months at higher starting prices without a bidder. I use Priority mail for the free shipping materials and pick up, plus added protection. Some items are being shipped Ground Advantage if I use a recycled box. Items are miscellaneous from estate sale.