eBay - report an unpaid item

This is a post about my recent experience with eBay. A few weeks ago the gloom of the crisis caught me up. I wanted a pcmia wireless card for my laptop. I decided that instead of forking out my hard earned cash, I would earn that money first. I looked around and I found a router that I never got to use and whose box was occupying some place in my cellar. Well, you saw it coming, I posted an offer on eBay for the router.

To my surprise, the item sold by a few pounds in addition to the cost of posting the thing. However, instead of the usual immediate notice from PayPal with the details of the payment, I got an email from eBay with a question from the winner of the auction. Ah oh, ominous sign of trouble ahead. And trouble it was: the eBayer wanted to pick up the item in London. Why no, the bid didn’t include local pick up and it stated the cost of the post in the third line of the description of the item.

A few emails later, the seller menaced me to give a negative feedback because my address wasn’t in London. By then, the scammer and I exchanged two or three emails daily. I welcomed his offer to “write a feedback as negative as he deemed pertinent but in the meantime please proceed to pay for the item, thank you in advance”.  This prompted a change in tactics. His next email claimed that he had tried to PayPal me but the payment was refunded because my address was wrong.

I admit I had to smile to that. The guy showed some cunning ability and to me it was clear that he was ready to go to the end. Unfortunately eBay give 7 days time to the buyer to pay, five too many in my view, so I had to wait on my unpaid router until the sad idiot got away with it.

Payment period expired, I relisted the item for auction and tried to report the unpaid item several times without success. The checkout process broke a few times in different consecutive days. Only today, more than 15 days after my original listing, I got to the ResolveDispute&DisputeId URL with a notice “Unpaid Item case is now open“.

eBay haven’t refunded by the Insertion Fee of £0.10 despite the fact that eBay have a pretty vigourous language for this eventualities:

If you list an item and it doesn’t sell, or if your buyer does not pay, you may qualify for a credit by relisting the item. If the item sells the second time, eBay will refund the Insertion Fee for the relisting.

Note: This offer applies to only the Insertion Fee and not other fees for options such as Bold, Highlight, etc. After your relisted item sells, you will be charged the applicable Final Value Fee.

You must use the official Relist feature in order to receive the Insertion Fee credit. (See Requirements for Insertion Fee credit.)

If your original listing resulted in an Unpaid Item, make sure that you filed an Unpaid Item dispute for the original listing and requested a full Final Value Fee credit for that listing. This credit must be posted to your account before you can receive the Insertion Fee credit.

Tip: If your item didn’t sell the first time, you may want to come up with a different title, lower the starting price, or add a more detailed item description. Read our tips for selling relisted items.

Important: Relist credits are automatic, so you do not need to send a request to receive an Insertion Fee credit. eBay automatically issues the credit to your account as long as your listing meets the requirements below. Once your item sells, the credit is posted to your account.

Requirements for Insertion Fee credit

• The relisted item must end with a winning buyer. If the item doesn’t sell the second time, the Insertion Fee is not refunded.
• Only the first relisting of an item is eligible. Subsequent relistings of the same item do not qualify.
• You must relist the item within 90 days of the closing date of the original listing.
• The starting price you set for the relisted item must not be greater than that of the original listing.
• You must use the official Relist feature in order to receive the Insertion Fee credit. Copying and pasting the content of the original listing into a new listing, for example, will not enable eBay to track that you are relisting the item and will prevent you from receiving the credit.
• Both the original listing and the relisting must be in Online Auction format.
• Both the original listing and the relisting must be single-quantity (not Multiple Item or “Dutch”).
• The relisted item must not have a reserve price if the original listing didn’t have one. If it did, the reserve price you set for the relisted item must not be greater than that of the original listing.
• Qualifying Unpaid Items that are relisted and close successfully will receive a standard relist credit automatically if the item is relisted and sells. Read more on the Unpaid Item Process.
• If you originally listed the item during a promotion and your original Insertion Fee was lower than the Insertion Fee for your relisted item, you’ll be credited for the lower of the two fees if your item sells the second time.
• If you lower the start price when you relist your item, you will not receive a credit for any difference in insertion fees. This policy applies to listings where there are no bids and the start price change results in a different tier for insertion fee pricing.
• Buy It Now and Classified Ad listing formats are not eligible to receive the relisting credit.

I now I filled the contact form at eBay to claim the fee back and all I got was this message:

Your question has been submitted

Your enquiry has been sent to Customer Support. We will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible

Regards,
The eBay.co.uk team