I think a buyer on ebay is lying to me.

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Need some advice: I sold a teapot on ebay. When I packaged it I wrapped the lid in about 2-3 layers of bubblewrap and taped that with packing tape. Then I wrapped the teapot itself in red paper and I literally filled the box with newspaper tightly enough to where the teapot didn't move, shake or make any noise when I shook the package. But now the buyer is saying that it arrived "in pieces" and says that I didn't put any bubblewrap in it. I'm suspicious that they're lying to get a refund. My boyfriend suggested that I look at their rating and it says that they only have one and it's the one the positive feedback I left (before the package had arrived) of them being a good buyer and paying promptly. I've only sold three things on ebay. I'm just starting on their. Because of "her" rating I'm suspicious that this is a scam and I guess people do this kind of stuff on ebay. Does it sound like I did enough packaging? Would you be suspicious? I asked her for the pictures. She said that her daughter got the package and that her daughter is the one who said it arrived "in pieces".

Your packaging certainly sounds adequate, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that it could have been broken, regardless. They don't expect you to issue a refund without returning the alleged broken item, do they? Never do that!

I've sold on eBay periodically over the years and a couple of similar complaints, but the items were always returned before I issues a refund.

Tell them that, in order to get a refund, they'll need to ship the item back to you. If they're truly trying to scam you, then that should deter them.

As a former ebay seller, to me this has scam written all over it (left because of unfair policies and dead sales). Request to see pictures of the damage (if any), that should deter any possible scam or say that you will refund upon return of the item.

It definitely sounds like it was well packed. How did you mail it? Was it Priority Mail? If so you should have $100 or at least $50 worth of insurance included. If it really is broken file an insurance claim with the post office.

Scammer buyers LOVE to try and rip off new sellers with little feedback since a new seller may not know what to do or how to handle the situation and may act rashly by giving a full refund without requesting the item back. If you have lets say less that 20 feedback there is a good chance that you have a scamming buyer on your hands. I made that mistake once in my early days, lucky for me it was a computer game that sold for less than $5, but I have since learned the proper way to handle a situation like that.

Also, the reason that you didn't notice any bad feedback from sellers for the buyer is that sellers CAN'T leave anything other than positive feedback. It has been this way since 2008 which is the first of many 'revisions' done by the current CEO which has unfortunately killed a once great site.

Wow, that’s incredibly frustrating that sellers can’t leave honest feedback about scammers.

Fortunately, the teapot was only $30 and not over $100. They got a deal on this teapot though, as it is normally about $60 in value.

“She” claims that this is her first purchase on ebay and that she “doesn’t want it to be her last”.

The last message I sent her was that I was sorry if this really happened, that I need to see a picture and the next step for her to take would be to file a return on ebay. “She” hasn’t written to me since I sent her that one.

I really hate that people are so damned dishonest. It just ruins everything for everyone. Now I’m paranoid about whether I should mark everything as no returns allowed because I found out a bunch about ebay fraud and how people will return items that they didn’t really buy for the sake of getting something for free. Just terrible.

I know all to well about that, it is part of the reason I left and went to eBid and Bonanza.

In a way, no returns might be worse because with a no returns policy a buyer can still claim something is NAD (not as described) and possibly get ebay themselves to refund the buyer without sending the item back since you take 'no returns', all without calling, messaging, or consulting you in any way, shape, or form.

On evilbay, everything, even mistakes made by the post office, is the small sellers fault. Ebay, the buyer, big company sellers, box store sellers, and Chinese sellers can do no wrong.

I'm going to look into those two websites that you just mentioned.

Are there any other e-commerce sites you'd recommend?

There is Amazon Marketplace but I just buy from them and never have been a seller.

This entity still hasn't written back to me. The last message I sent her was 1pm yesterday and it was about how she could return the item. I guess that wasn't what "she" wanted to hear. Or who knows, maybe she just doesn't really care about getting "her" money back.

Give it a few more days. If by then you haven't heard back from them chances are their scam plan backfired on them. This is kind of like one instance where I sold a script emblem for a Mazda car and the buyer sent a message saying "how it was not an exact fit for a 96 Miata and the chrome was worn and discolored and how he didn't leave bad feedback to give me a chance to refund purchase price". I replied saying that I never said anywhere that it was for a 96 Miata and that I did say the chrome was worn and that I said that the buyer should make sure this is the correct part they needed. Even though I didn't have to, I said they could send it back for a refund. Never heard from them again.

Though I haven't been on these sites for very long, I would recommend eBid and Bonanza (Bonanza actually took 1st place in overall customer satisfaction over ebay and Amazon in a recent survey for 2014), but be aware that you can't just list your items, sit back, and relax and wait for the sales to role on in. You have to take a part in advertising your items. I have a Google+ page and have joined a page for this on Facebook to help advertise as well as pay for Google Shopping on my listings. Also, from what I have researched, the more items you have for sale, the more likely they are to be found and purchased.

Does ebay charge a fee for every item you have listed that hasn't sold per month? I didn't realize this when I started. I got billed $24.70 and I thought that each listing (for the first 50 listings) was without the listing charge.

Do they really charge monthly? So if you have like, 1,000 things on there you have to pay a fee for each thing? And then that takes away from your profits too. So I feel like I should add ALL of this to my items prices.

If you list something using one of your free listing and it doesn't sell, then you are not charged anything. Sorry if there was any confusion. If you added any special features to your listing then that would no longer make it free. Check your listings again and look at the bottom of the page. If you see a price that is something other than $0.00, then you have something checked off which costs you money each time you relist weather you sell the item or not. If you are out of free listings for the month, then anything else you list will cost a listing fee. Feebay's fee structure as I understand it is this:

A listing fee (if there are no free listings)
A fee for any extras (bold title, enlarged photos, etc)
A final value fee when for what the items sells for (10%)
A final value fee for whatever you charge for shipping and handling if any (10%)

Since Paypal is the mandatory method method of payment, they have their own set of fees.

2.9% of the total price of the item (the sale price and shipping cost)
A 30 cent processing fee

To get a better idea of the fees, here is a link that factors in ebays and paypals fees in one setup that I used on ebay for a while. Hope it helps.

http://www.newlifeauctions.com/calc.html

For all I know any of the above has changed, but this gives you an idea of how much of a cut feebay takes. Mix that in with little to no seller protection, ramped buyer fraud, preference to large sellers, big box corporations, and Chinese sellers, fixed search results towards mentioned sellers, a number of site crashes, a major security hack, unhelpful and untrained CS, unfair policies, and dead sales makes a once great site to sell very tough or impossible for us small sellers to actually succeed and make money.

I have one more question for you. I've been trying to search on the internet to figure out if eBay is charging me for having more than one photo. All the articles I find saying that they charge $.15 for each extra photo are over a year old. That seems to be the only other fee I can think of that is why my monthly invoice was so high.