A Bad Apple Buyer - Opened My Vintage Tins and Wanted a Refund from PayPal

[menuhin]

Hi all,
I haven't been too active on the forum in recent years due to being busy at work.

Indeed I took a year or two away from enjoying the pipes, because there was no space in life for me to sit down and relax. Anyways, I returned to my pipes recently, and did some trading online.
I put my tins on the online auction site, with the tins sealed by cellophane, not opened by anyone. I could not make out the condition of the content, so I described that the content was not guaranteed. A lot of buyers asked me many questions such as the weight, and asked me to shake the tins, etc., but there was this buyers from the far east, who asked me nothing but won all of them with his top bids. After paying and receiving the tins, opening them, and touching and smelling the content, he changed his mind - he decided he did not want them anymore.
PayPal has a default policy of protecting the buyers: now this buyer, under PayPal's rule, is on his way to get a full refund with these opened and touched tins sent back. The filed the claim under "Item not as description", and on private communication, he said he doesn't like the tobacco, and it is not "new" - as in "factory new" and "fresh"; while I showed him and showed PayPal the photos of its unopened and unused - which is a definition of "new" used by eBay. I didn't know if this buyer made any other statement to PayPal, but I used quite some time writing and collecting evidence I have to the PayPal centre to resolve this case. At the end, I believe PayPal did not read into my material at all - there is simply no reason given and no feedback on my materials.
This totally deterred me, as a seller in this case, from trusting PayPal.
Edited by jvnshr: Title capitalization (please check Rule #9)

 

[sablebrush52]

Hi Menuhin,
Welcome back! That's pretty screwed up. You got an unethical buyer who gets a pass on being unethical. It may not be PayPal, or only PayPal, that is driving this decision. According to eBay policy, selling tobacco is very specifically not allowed. Now I know that a lot of vintage tobacco is sold on eBay and you see a lot of items up for sale, but the sellers have absolutely no protection if anything goes wrong. eBay doesn't automatically cancel tobacco sales, in part because eBay is a bit crooked and unethical, too cheap to adequately police their sites, and in part because some of their international marketplaces do not have a ban on selling tobacco. eBay USA does have such a ban. So in the event of a dispute, the seller of the tobacco is the automatic loser because they are selling a restricted item, contrary to eBay "policy". Your problem may be as much due to eBay, or more likely due to eBay, than to PayPal.
You would be better off using a third party, like Pipestud or 4noggins, to sell your vintage tins, or to post them here and see if there are any buyers.

 

[nevadablue]

I don't sell on ebay for lots of reasons.

 

[cortezattic]

I'm not too familiar with eBay, but couldn't you publish the buyer's name and encourage other sellers to "block" him from bidding? If that's possible, legal, etc., that would give such people pause when contemplating similar actions.

 

[admiral]

In the same fashion he can buy a vintage car, crashed and have it sent back cause not his taste (not the online broker cares).

But if someone is pushing me like this and ruins a set of vintage cans and aged tobacco.

I would keep his money and and the tins he have sent back - I know this makes me a bad person, but seems no one cares to protect what is mine.

 

[timpiper]

This is really appalling.
So if I buy a $100,000 bottle of wine or champagne, break the seal and open it, then taste it and its not to my liking, then I can get a refund.
no way !!!
Cant even open a fresh tin of tobacco from any online retailer and return it because you didn't like it.

To think anyone even has the gall to do this !!!
-Tim

 

[Briar Baron]

Sorry to hear about your trouble and frustration for you but also since it gives international buyers a bad reputation. I like to buy vintage tins from the UK and USA but being based in Australia I am sometime not permitted to bid due to troubles folks have with international buyers.
When I was selling international I used to only accept bids from my home country, USA, UK and a select few additional countries and I think that helped me not have to deal with that type of POS you have there.

 

[brightleaf]

If they were sold as unopened vintage tins then you should be protected by ebay. If you sold it as tobacco, or mentioned tobacco as being the item listed then I think sablebrush52 described the situation well. You should be entitled to a review of your case, even if a decision has been made. Ebay and Paypal are cut from the same cloth. Ebay is the most likely source for final arbitration.

 

[alan73]

Damn, that’s shitty. I feel bad for you . I wouldn’t do business on eBay with foreign countries. I consistently hear complaints about foreign buyers.

 

[5star]

Horrible situation. As a buyer, I appreciate some of ebay’s protection policies. But they assume that both parties are ethical & reasonable. Your buyer was neither.

 

[sasquatch]

Menuhin, use paypal's rules to your advantage: agree to a refund when you get your unused, undamaged items back. As you will not do so, you put the shoe on the other foot.

 

[joeman]

eBay is a great selling channel...so long as you follow their guidelines, and know the ins and outs. I'd say that anyone wanting to sell there should consult with another eBay seller friend whose done so for years with similar products. Sorry to hear about your unfortunate transaction.

 

[deathmetal]

Menuhin, use paypal's rules to your advantage: agree to a refund when you get your unused, undamaged items back. As you will not do so, you put the shoe on the other foot.

This seems intelligent to me. Since he has altered the items, you cannot refund.

 

[menuhin]

Thanks for all the responses.
PayPal is the company (that split from eBay a few years back) that has the authority to freeze my money as long as my money is in PayPal's account. It, as developed by Elon Musk, provides a lot of online transaction convenience, but it has a big flaw of not being able to monitor what actually happens in the real world, so it has a policy to bias towards buyers, and many scammers make use of this decision bias of PayPal.

eBay no long has this power of freezing money, and one can only affect a user by making claim and leaving feedbacks. Unfortunately, there is no way in the eBay system to leave negative feedback to on a Buyer's profile.
For this case,

I spent well over an hour gathering all the communication history with this buyer, making the screenshots, and collecting the photos of the tins in unopened condition, and wrote line-by-line arguments against each point of the seller. While the buyer just declared one line with no detail "item not as described", I uploaded these photos and PDF files to my case on PayPal as my response, and patiently waited PayPal for their reply.

What came back from PayPal was an unchangeable decision they made - according to their protocol. The decision for this case is the buyer will get full refund as long as he has the items sent back.
I felt furious, and I tried calling eBay first, but their response is - in the virtual online world they had no proof and they could do nothing for me right now, and urged me to contact PayPal instead. When I called PayPal, the customer rep seemed understanding, but I am really frustrated that it seem that they have never read the uploaded files from me, not at all. And what this means is, it is going to be a full refund, and there is no even leeway for a partial refund. I can leave a "positive feedback" to this buyer saying that he is a scammer, but what he can do is really leave me a negative feedback on my otherwise over a few hundred 100% positive feedback profile.
The only chance for me to keep my money is that this buyer failed to provide tracking of return shipment in 10 calendar days, and then the case will close. But such a chance is slim.

Menuhin, use paypal's rules to your advantage: agree to a refund when you get your unused, undamaged items back. As you will not do so, you put the shoe on the other foot.

I will be willing to provide a refund if the tins are in undamaged unopened original condition - but it is difficult to tell that the tin has really not been opened and in this case, obviously the buyer opened the sealed tins and then sent me messages about the content. For pipes, I am always happy to issue full refunds if buyers do not like the pipe when the pipes arrive. I received happy feedbacks about getting nice tins and nice pipes all over the world when I am trimming my collection; this case, the lesson will potentially cost me a few hundred euros.
I live in Germany, and on eBay.de, people can set a listing to accept only Bank wired transfer. This is certain very secure for sellers, but there is no protection at all for the buyers - and I got scammed one time as a buyer this way.
So the lesson is, if one wants to buy, buy with PayPal; but if one wants to sell, bank transfer or cash is king, and one has to sell with PayPal as a way of transaction - which opens the door to many international customers - make sure to filter who can be the customers if possible.
First of all, controlling one's appetite for collecting pipes and vintage tins will be the first caveat. But when I acquired a good high end / rare / artisan pipe in bargain price, or a rare vintage tin, I still feel a bit of a victory of my pipe and tobacco life...

 

[menuhin]

@balkisobrains
(Laugh out loud) very very true. The number one rule in the civilized world (in an uncivilized way) is that, one is right not always when one is really right, but one is always right when he has enough legal knowledge or enough money to hire lawyers to speak for him that he is right.
I may try this trick - I may have to talk to my lawyer friends first as this is a trans-continental transaction.

 

[ben88]

Since the buyer has to return your tins before getting a refund may be you can "not receive" the package? Don't sign for it. May be it'll work?

 

[sablebrush52]

If they were sold as unopened vintage tins then you should be protected by ebay.

Not so. eBay changed the rules a year or two back and unopened or sealed tins are not allowed to be sold on eBay USA. I know, I know, they're there by the dozens and I even get "reminders" from eBay about the unopened vintage tins I'm watching, that eBay says in their guidelines, I'm not allowed to list. In fact eBay stipulates a requirement to post an image of the interior of the empty tin, to prove that there is no tobacco involved in any auction. So sellers have zero rights since they are selling banned products while eBay is complicit in allowing it.

 

[ssjones]

Yep, the seller is at the mercy of a dishonest buyer and Paypal.
I recently had to press for a return on Ebay, for BIN where returns were not accepted. I had bought a "Genuine, New" pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. On delivery, they were clearly counterfeit, which I documented to the seller with photos and links. He declined, so I called Paypal. They immediately put in the refund and the seller reluctantly took the return. I was in the right, but realized that Paypal never asked to see the photos and only took my word that the sunglasses were fakes. That's a tough place for sellers. Even tougher, as Jesse mentions with vintage tobacco tins.

 

[menuhin]

So here is the perfect plot of trying out all the greatest vintage tobacco for free (of just paying shipping):
1. Have a few hundred dollars in one's PayPal account;
2. Win the auctions at the highest possible price;
3. Jar the tobacco after receiving and opening the tins, and then call or message PayPal for a refund / return by "item not as described";
4. Return the tins empty or with dirt or any other replacement, and receive authorized refund by PayPal.
5. Repeat 1-4 on another seller.
Caveat:

i) Try not to run this plot on sellers from the same state or same country

ii) You can have this plot work out perhaps only once per seller

iii) Try to figure out if the seller is a lawyer of has a lawyer spouse / close relative / friend who will help him to force PayPal to change decision to save legal cost.

 

[brightleaf]

Sounds like Ebay isn't what it used to be. Good thing we have options as sablebrush52 said

You would be better off using a third party, like Pipestud or 4noggins, to sell your vintage tins, or to post them here and see if there are any buyers