Strange ebay purchasing policy

[Martin Whybrow]

OK, not so much an ebay watchers post, but it's ebay related. I need to buy some servo connectors and cable; one seller on ebay sells all of the items I need and has reasonable prices. I put several connectors and 2 type of cable in my basket, checked out and found I had only purchased 3 of the 4 items; went back to the basket, tried to check out the last item and was told it's not available; went back to the item page and tried to buy it using 'Buy it now' and got this message 'This seller only allows a buyer to purchase 10 items within 10 days.'

Have you ever heard of such a daft policy? Why would a seller want to limit what people buy from him?

[kevin b]

Simples. As a seller, if you sell more than 100 items in a month, you automatically become a business seller. You don't have a choice and you can't go backwards the following month.

So sell 99 items at £1.00 and earn £99.00, or 99 items at £500.00 and earn £49,500.00 and it's ok. You stil aren't a business seller !

Don't you just love e-bay.

kevinb.

[Martin Whybrow]

Well, he is listed as a business seller, he's had over 3500 +ve feedbacks in the last month and has a big ebay shop, so it can't be that.

[adrian lawrence 1]

I would imagine that's it's to limit financial damage to himself if someone makes purchase using a stolen credit or debit card or even a hacked PayPal account  

I know someone who sold several items totalling several thousand pounds over several days to one person, turns out the credit card he was using was stolen. The loss of the goods with no payment crippled his business. Unlikely to happen with small items I know but still distressing should it happen

 

Edited By adrian lawrence 1 on 28/03/2015 17:41:02

[Martin Whybrow]

Adrian, maybe that's the case, but I'm sure my tenner's worth of wire wouldn't bankrupt him!

It's worrying that a seller can lose money due to a stolen credit card, surely Paypal are liable as they accepted the payment (I'm assuming this was via ebay); failing that, shouldn't the CC company cover the losses themselves?

Edited By Martin Whybrow on 28/03/2015 18:10:24

[John Privett]

You'd hope that would be the case Martin, but you hear rather too many stories of paypal "protecting" the buyer by refunding money for spurious reasons, or protecting themselves by not honouring payments to sellers in cases like the one mentioned.

I just 'googled' "Paypal seller protection" and clicked on the second link listed. It's a link to the paypal site, but the page is headed;

Sorry,

that page doesn't exist.

I don't know if that's somebody's ideal of a joke, or an indication of what paypal's seller protection really is...

To be fair though,  there are links that do produce seller protection informatio, including this one.

This starts with;

If you are the recipient of a payment made by a customer ("Payment Recipient"), we may reimburse you an amount for Claims, Chargebacks, or Reversals made against you based on the following reasons:

1. A Chargeback or Reversal was issued against you for the reason of an “Unauthorised Payment”; or
2. A Chargeback or Claim was issued against you for the reason of “Not Received”,

where PayPal receives from you proof that the item was posted or delivered in accordance with the requirements set forth below, subject to the further provisions of this section 11 (including, without limitation, the Eligibility Requirements at section 11.6).

I'm a bit unsure about the bit in the first sentence "we may reimburse" - doesn't that mean that they just as likely "may not" ? 

 

Edited By John Privett on 28/03/2015 18:26:33