I feel for you! I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum being a seller. Usually it's the buyers getting taken advantage of, this time it's the other way around.
I had a customer order almost $1500.00 worth of merchandise from my online store (not ebay), and as we are in Canada, and he is in Australia, the shipping for the order needed to be worked out. Our site generates shipping on orders according to $ amount, but they are not applicable to international orders, and this is stated in several places on our website! Anyway, the first thing we did when receiving the order was to inform him that the shipping did not apply to Australia for obvious reasons, and told him it would be likely a few hundred more. He replied that he was ok with this, and to go ahead and find him a rate. He also insisted he wanted the stuff by air in a shorter time period, rather than sea which would take two months. Obviously, the latter is the cheaper option.
Long story short, Canada Post came up with a ridiculous rate of $1500 to ship the items (oversize and overweight), and as I had promised the customer a response that evening, I emailed him to let him know this is what I had come up with so far. I also told him that when business hours resumed, I would continue searching to find a reasonable rate. He replied very politely that $1500 was way too much and that we needed to bring the rate closer to what we had told him before (not what was on the original order), and that he was "looking forward" to receiving an update of more favourable rates. Does this tell you that this customer is either disgruntled or upset in any way? Well, no sooner had I sent a reply to that email, I get an email from PayPal that he had opened a dispute and escalated it to a claim - reason - NON RECEIPT of items. And all of this has transpired withing ONE DAY of his ordering his items! The notes he had written in the comments section were so nasty and slanderous claiming that he had paid his money in good faith and that we had tried to "take him for another 1500". I could hardly believe this was the same man that just minutes ago had sent me a perfectly nice email thanking me for looking into the shipping rate and that he was looking forward to receiving the update. I am so enraged by the nerve he has to go behind my back and open a claim on me when I am busting my chops and spending the better part of a day getting quotes for him. This involved me trying to pack and repack the boxes to make them smaller so maybe the rate would be more favourable. At no time did he ever communicate dissatisfaction to me, nor did he ever ask to cancel the transaction and receive a refund, which I would have gladly given him had he just told me that he felt he was in over his head with this order. I have not been in this business for close to four decades by swindling customers! Anyway, I contacted him asking for clarification of this dispute, and he has not responded to me again. I contacted PayPal immediately, and gave them my side of things, and they advised me to just cancel his transaction because they could see that he would continue to cause trouble down the road. They said that it was apparent by his extremely quick filing of a claim that he was a trouble maker. In fact, I had already decided I no longer wished to continue dealing with this person, and the next morning, I wrote him an email stating that I was cancelling his transaction and refunding his money. I then phoned PayPal and instructed them to release his funds back to him, and they agreed.
What REALLY aggravated me was that when I went to the case resolution place online, it said that after careful review of the case, the case was decided in favour of the buyer, and his money was refunded, and the case was closed. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? In favour of the buyer? PayPal did NOT make a decision in this case. I made a decision in this case. I instructed them that I no longer wanted to deal with a buyer who had no integrity to go behind my back and make a claim while playing nice to my face, and then refusing to respond to any of my emails. I know this is case closed now, but I don't want this judgment against me to appear on my file! I did nothing wrong, and if people see that, they will think that I was in the wrong and the case was decided in favour of the buyer. Can something not be done to show otherwise? It's a matter of principle here!
I don't feel that PayPal looks out for people the way they are supposed to. They called me and convinced me to start using PayPal as a payment option when I had been just fine without it all this time. There are lots of things about PayPal that don't work with the nature of our business and I am now having aggravation because of it. Sorry this is so long. I just can't stand being taken advantage of!
