Am I in the wrong? Or is this eBay seller a f***ing moron?

Hey Guys,

So I ordered a front grill for a 2016 off of eBay to have a look at and possibly prototype a couple products for it. I won the auction and quickly submitted payment over my phone.

The seller is called thediscountdepot. It is an eBay "power seller" with 4,000 something reviews, 99.8% positive feedback. He sells mostly truck/motorcycle parts, motorcycle gear, and crappy harbor freight tools. He seems to have quite a few Tacoma grills listed.

Moments later, when I was at a PC instead of a mobile device, I reviewed my order confirmation and noticed that eBay defaulted my shipping address to a prior customer that I had drop-shipped something to months ago.

So I wrote the seller a message through the eBay message system (since it was my only option), and informed him that the shipping information on the order was incorrect and provided him with a new address.

Mind you, all of this took place within less than 40 minutes.

Then an entire day went by before I received confirmation of the shipment having been created... heading to the original address, 4 hours away from me.

I contacted eBay to obtain the sellers phone number and gave him a call on what was clearly his cell phone. I explained the situation and his immediate response was: "Wooooowwwww..." (he sounded like he was half-baked) and then he went on to explain that, in a nutshell, that he doesn't check emails, and he just goes through PayPal Click-and-Ship. Sounds like a great operation, right? I asked him to call UPS and have the shipment rerouted. Both locations are in southern California, the package was coming from out of state, and my location was closer (and closer to a UPS distribution center) than the incorrect location, so this seemed fairly reasonable and it, in fact, IS reasonable.

The next day, I get this eBay message from him;

First of all, I call bullshit. The business that I work at has to reroute shipments mid transit ALL THE TIME. I think this guy is just lazy, and he never even bothered calling. But acting in good faith under the reluctant assumption that he did call, I responded with this:

Then he said:

After getting this message from him, I was pretty much baffled. I gave him a courtesy phone call and he didn't answer. Called back an hour later and left a voicemail and basically said that I encourage him to settle this with me, since my next course of action would be to dispute it with eBay and PayPal in order to get my money back, at which point he would have a very difficult time retrieving the item that he was trying to sell, since he would only have an address and a name of the (wrong) person that it went to.

He responded to my phone call with this message:

Wow. So I initiated a return request under the status of "item was incomplete / missing parts" since, technically, it was missing parts. All of the parts. Since it was shipped to the wrong address. This is the message chain that summarizes the request for a return:

I called eBay tonight to try and initiate their involvement, but even though the representative agreed that the seller had an obligation to change the shipping address, and is being unreasonably uncooperative, they can't get involved until the 27th. At which point, they will be able to issue a refund to me and I can file a complaint against the seller.

Am I truly in the wrong here? Or is this seemingly feckless eBay merchant unqualified to be a "business" owner?

What a frustrating ordeal.

/Vent.

 

Well, you did provide the shipping info. It's always best to review it...but then again it seems like an easy fix. I don't always check my emails after selling something. I expect the buyer to provide that info, and once obtained that's what I use a shipping address

 

Yeah, I can see how someone that sells a lot of items on eBay can become accustomed to the ease of using an automated process like that. But, as with anything involving human interaction, there will always be errors and exceptions, which is why a messaging system is necessary for both parties. Completely ignoring emails from a paying customer is very irresponsible and careless.

 

Sounds like 2 morons to me.

Better luck in the future.

 

Haha, thanks.

There's a difference between making a simple mistake which you correct immediately, and being flat-out uncooperative and oblivious to common communication methods.

 

eBay and PayPal requires that you keep your information (address and phone number) current.

For the seller to ship to an address not verified by PayPal, he would lose all of his seller protection. He shipped to the verified address known to PayPal, so he should be covered.

However, as anyone who sells on eBay knows, eBay is slanted towards the buyer, so you will probably win your case, no matter how fraudulent.

Checking emails/messages is not a requirement of eBay.

 

Well by that logic, it should never have shipped to the wrong address, since it is not verified. Like I said, I don't even know how it defaulted to that address. It was only used once. My current address is the only verified address in my PayPal profile.

 

Sure.

My assumption is that UPS charges him for a reroute, which adds to his shipping cost, and then he may incur additional charges again shipping to a different address. That's all fine if it was his mistake, but you did give him the wrong address, after all. I don't sell on the internet as a business practice because I can't compete with guys who don't care if they only make $5 of profit on a $400 item, but I imagine his profit margin wasn't stellar enough to eat money on shipping to fix what is a buyer mistake.

In a perfect world it wouldn't be a problem, but I see his side. Your side is obvious also and also not incorrect, his communication kinda sucks and he conducts his shipping in a lazy manner that is prone to errors, which isn't good for business.

I guess you could surmise that both are wrong, and neither are right.

 

Amen to not being able, or even wanting to compete with the penny-profiteers on the web. They are destroying certain industries with those practices.

I'd have happily paid any charges associated with rerouting the shipment, and I even offered to do so at that point. Even though, at such an early point in transit, I know for certain that UPS does not charge for the destination change.

 

Wonder if your prior customer will get a free grill? Isn't it true that you are allowed to keep anything shipped to you that you did not order?

http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchandise

 

I requested a destination change with Wheeler's Offroad, and IIRC they said no, because it was a $45 fee or something via UPS.

I have a business account with UPS but never needed to change a shipment like that.

 

For his sake, that would be cool. Unfortunately, I don't think it would be of much use to him since he doesn't have a 2016 and the grill is cosmetically destroyed. Fine for prototyping purposes, though.

 

Prolly depends whose name is on package. If it isn't addressed to him I doubt he can keep it.

 

Stuff like this is why I don't use eBay anymore

 

eBay sucks
Get stuffs from Amazon instead

 

None of the problems here have anything to do with eBay. It has everything to do with buyer and seller errors.

Tip: always keep all your communications of issues with eBay transactions through the eBay system. It becomes a 'chain of evidence' of who said what when. Once you step outside the eBay system it becomes 'he said she said'.

 

Prime ftw.