Another Wrinkle in the Ebay Selling Experience

I am not normally considered an ebay cheerleader so it will probably come as no surprise that I'm already fed up with their most recent round of unannounced changes.

Remember back in August when they announced that, indeed, Buyers would now be able to cancel a transaction without asking the seller to do it, as long as they changed their mind in the first hour?? Yeah well not so much actually.  If a buyer makes a best offer?? well that buyer is not allowed to change their mind.  So here's the backstory.

Buyer makes 2 offers on Sunday morning, my husband's items so I wait for him to wake up and decide.  He takes both offers.  Buyer pays for one almost immediately but...sends a note saying he looked at the pictures again and doesn't want the 2nd one. It's more than an hour later so I send him a message saying, Ok, this is what's gonna happen. I'm going to send you a cancellation request, you agree and we're both off the hook and because you didn't even pay for this yet, No harm No foul.  Yeah well again Not SO MUCH.

Buyer must have left immediately after paying so I didn't hear from him til the next day. Then he tells me he followed my directions but the system won't let him agree to cancel. He's being told to pay. 

What happened next is 5 days of dealing with the bureaucracy from hell.  Multiple calls to ebay with hold times in excess of 60 minutes. (I did finally figure out what to click to get them to call me back about it but that took 4 days too).   OH and ebay itself opened an unpaid item case again the buyer, who was actually, seeminly cooperating with me and actually apologized to me for causing so much trouble. Knock me over with a feather.

Finally yesterday - day 5, I got an reasonably intelligent and certainly above-standard, English-speaking, CSR, a miracle in itself, who took control of the issue, sent the buyer exact instructions, called the buyer multiple times and was able, finally overnight to get the cancellation request to go thru.  HURRAY for Jonathon!!  I'd personally authorize a raise for him if I could.  Why?

Well one, he explained what was happening, clearly, he attempted to call the buyer while I was on the phone. He did call the buyer several times and he called me back to update me on not being able to reach the buyer.

HALLELUJAH, just what I expect for my $500 a month in fees.   But here's the lesson, DO NOT LET BUYERS cancel if they make a Best Offer and you accept. Tell them it's much easier if  you pay, we wait an hour and I cancel this and refund because you "changed your mind".  Saves us both 5 days of bureaucratic red tape.

Now you and I know buyers use Best Offer a lot and a certain percentage never pay. I assume they changed their mind and don't bother to tell us.  BUT the ones who do change their mind? well that's not allowed any more. Probably a "buyer-side defect" in ebay's score book.  Talk about a bad buying experience, just in this one transaction of mine, ebay has created 2 new dissatisfed users.  BONUS Points for the ebay.