Shame on the sweller

We’ve written about interesting interactions with people on eBay quite a few times, but one of Adam’s most recent experiences as a seller really takes the cake.

Back when Adam and I started our Christmas eBay Battle (he won, by the way), he listed an old TOKYObay watch that nobody seemed to want.

Finally, a few weeks ago, someone purchased it. And a few days after shipping, Adam woke up to a case opened against him from a clearly insane person.

He also discovered that this crazy person had left him negative feedback:

Adam messaged the person and let him know that the listing did in fact state that the watch needed a battery, and that if he replaced the battery, the watch would work fine. The person responded, saying,

All fine and good, right? Wrong. Because when someone opens a case against you and does not close it after it’s resolved, the amount that they paid for that item is “held” in PayPal, which means that you don’t have access to that money. In this case, it was only $35, but I’ve had people do this to me for items that cost well over $100.

Anyway, Adam kept asking the guy if he would close the case, and the guy just didn’t respond. The other problem was that even though the buyer seemed satisfied, he had already left negative feedback. Adam prides himself on his “over one thousand positive feedbacks” (NERD) and so this was really grating on him. (Fun eBay fact: The feedback percentage that shows up is calculated based on the last 12 months. So even though he had one bad apple, it was calculating as 98.2% positive feedback, which, if you do any buying or selling on eBay, you know is pretty freakin’ bad!)

I asked Adam if he had ever followed up with eBay to get the case closed and feedback removed and he hadn’t, so one day I logged into his account and decided to try to take care of it myself–I figured I would just tell them that we share the account.

Just in case any of you ever wondered about actually talking to a human at eBay–you can! Here’s how:

So I did this and they immediately told me that I had to officially be added to the account to do anything related to it. I hung up and thought about how I could go around this. Since much of their customer support is outsourced, I decided to just call back and say my name was Adam Kempa. Would they really know that it can’t be a woman’s name? So devious, I know.

Well, it turns out that NO they don’t know that Adam is a man’s name. Because when I called back and told them my name was Adam, the customer service rep didn’t even flinch. The best part about it was that the woman kept referring to me as Adam, which I was loving. She told me that the best solution was to have them contact the buyer to get them to close the case. I reiterated that I was also concerned about the negative feedback and this is where the story gets INSANELY GOOD. The woman could tell how upset I was about the negative feedback, and provided me with some words of wisdom.