Buyer Protection, My Ass...More Like Seller Rape

There's a brand new "Money Back Guarantee" ad that eBay has right on the front page with the guy who looks like the guy from the Trivago ads touting eBay's lovely "buyer protection"

 "Get what you ordered or your money back"

What "you ordered" is all semantics. First off, did you really read the description? Did you look at the pictures? Or did you see a blurry picture and bid hoping for a bargain and then find out it wasn't all it was cracked up to be? Did you bother to ask any questions? The seller might not know how long Crissy's hair was supposed to be. My first neutral EVER, in 2001, was from some chick from California who bitched about the length of a Crissy dolls hair. I read her "feedback left for others" and cringed - she was a chronic complainer.

You should have notified the seller that their blurry picture sucked before you bid, but then the price would have gone too high, right?

Now look at your item, and imagine yourself losing your job over it. Because what you're doing when you return something is putting a strike on the sellers account.

In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter so much, but eBays lopsided "The buyer is always right" policies allow a small seller 3 strikes in a year. This means that this seller has to have it right 99.9% of the time...or else.

Sometimes you can't please a buyer no matter what you do, because they're looking for trouble.

I don't want a return, I wanted the item to be better. Now how you deal with this one, I don't know.

I don't care that you had a miscarriage and your grandfather died all in one week, you should have shipped faster than 48 hours. Granted, buyers would not know about that, I don't air my personal grievances to my buyers, but point being there are things going on behind the scenes in a seller's life that hinder eBay business at times.

This is exactly as described but I don't want it anyway. Okaay.

I had three buyers in the past year complain about something to me, but I really don't know why they were complaining because they didn't want a refund or a return, they just wanted to bitch about it. Thankfully only one opened a case...which she let close because she didn't mean to open it in the first place, but the ding was still there. I offered refunds in all three cases but only the woman took it, I forced it upon her because it was my husband's account and I wanted to make sure it stayed clean.

Sellers are not allowed to get sick, or to have emergencies, we're not allowed to accidentally leave a box checked that says free shipping and then rescind after when the auction ends and we find out about it (which recently happened to me twice, causing me to lose 50% of my profit on one item and about 80% on the other), we're not allowed typos, or blurry pics, we're not allowed to *not* have a smartphone in case a buyer needs to talk to you right away...not that they will answer you in a timely manner anyway once you respond...

These may all come back to bite us in the ass. Some predatory buyers look for these things and try to capitalize on it.

You don't know the person behind the other keyboard, so who gives a shit about them and their family, right?