When searching for a car part, eBay will be the first place many people check. You can usually find the new or used part that you are looking for at a good price. However many people that are selling parts on eBay, whether they are vehicle dismantlers or the general public clearing out their garage, are finding out the hard way that eBay’s procedures have an unfair balance.
Let us remember, that when internet shopping started to take off, many people were unsure or worried about the safety of internet shopping and eBay came through as a safe method using their rules in conjunction with PayPal. They have come a long way to give the amount of confidence to the buyers that they have now, but it seems as though the scales have been tipped too far.
Sellers are finding that eBay seems very biased towards the buyer and if the buyer complains that the car part that you have sent is faulty, incorrect or not as described, then eBay simply refund the buyer and deduct the amount from the sellers account. Even if you appeal the dispute, eBay will simply say that their decision is final. A common problem is that the buyer disputes the item as faulty, eBay then asks them to return the item for a refund, but the buyer will have already replaced the faulty item on their car with the working item you sent them. So the seller receives the faulty item back from the buyer and in effect all that has happened is that the seller has swapped the working car part for the faulty one that led the buyer to find them on eBay in the first place!
In another example a buyer complained that there was a problem with an item so eBay requested the buyer to return it. The buyer had in fact only sent one part of the complete item back and even after the seller sending photo evidence of the returned parcel to eBay which was obviously smaller, the customer service at eBay still declared that they were correct to provide the buyer with a full refund and deduct the amount from the seller.
The problem is that eBay do not have any direct competition that can offer better customer service with a better compromise of rules for both the buyer and the seller. It is possible to sell items on Amazon but this is not always as easy. Usually what sellers have been dealing with here are dishonest buyers, which do not mean it is all negative. However this is definitely something that eBay needs to address soon to keep the serious sellers such as car dismantlers using their site.
