Legal Issue with EBAY

[Shedding]

Hello

Long time reader of the forums here but not posted for a long time.

I was hoping for some advice on how to deal with a problem with Ebay. To summarise, Ebay are billing me £200 for sale of an £180 item. If I had followed their system, the cost to me would have been £1. I have paid this £1. Read on for a more detailed version.

I recently advertised a set of wheels on ebay at a buy-it-now of £200 but open to offers, collection only. I did this during one of Ebay’s offer periods of maximum selling fees of £1 which I signed up to before placing the advert. I received an offer for £180 for the wheels which I was happy with. Rather than accept through the ebay system, I agreed with a prospective buyer that he come and view the wheels and pay in cash if he liked them. This was agreed through the ebay messaging system. I later received a message from ebay to say that it was against their rules to share contact information before an offer was accepted. Later, I sold the wheels in person and went to ebay to end the advert. I couldn’t immediately see how to do this, so to prevent a sale, I increased the buy it now to an unrealistic £2000 (ie I added a zero). Subsequently I found how to end a listing and did so.
At the end of the month, I received an invoice from ebay for £200 selling fees ie 10% of the £2000. I explained (in writing) to ebay what had happened and offered to pay them £1 which is the amount they would have received had I accepted an offer through their system. They insisted (in writing) that I owe them £200. I later paid them £1 and followed up with an email saying £1 paid in full and final settlement without prejudice.

Ebay have continued chasing for the other £199 with frequent emails even though I have emailed back saying that I don’t agree with the charge. They have now passed it onto a debt collector who have added another £20.

If it makes a difference, I am in SCOTLAND.

What happens next?

Am I correct in thinking that ebay / debt collectors have no power to do anything without a court order?
If ebay / their debt collectors choose to apply for a court order, will I get a chance to defend myself and can I have that hearing moved to a location local to me?
Ebay are relying on the fine print in their user agreement. To me, the fine print must be unfair and therefore unenforceable. Is this correct?
Preferably I’d like this closed down straight away, but if not, how can I cost ebay the maximum hassle and can I reclaim the costs of my time dealing with this?

Thank you for any advice.

Edited by Shedding on Wednesday 20th June 11:33

[Camelot1971]

Firstly, you sold something outside of Ebay and broke the T&Cs of selling on their site.

Whether you think that's unfair or not is irrelevant. All you needed to do was let them BIN then mark as payment received once you had the cash. You chose to try and be "clever" and that's come back to bite you on the arse.

Second, Ebay might pursue this through the court but probably not. They will, however, close your account and you will never be able to use them again. You might not be bothered about that now but they have long memories and are clever at linking accounts.

[xjay1337]

Camelot1971 said:

Firstly, you sold something outside of Ebay and broke the T&Cs of selling on their site.

Whether you think that's unfair or not is irrelevant. All you needed to do was let them BIN then mark as payment received once you had the cash. You chose to try and be "clever" and that's come back to bite you on the arse.

Second, Ebay might pursue this through the court but probably not. They will, however, close your account and you will never be able to use them again. You might not be bothered about that now but they have long memories and are clever at linking accounts.

Yes this.

I would ask them if they would perhaps accept the £200 you actually sold them for.

It's very easy to mark an item as sold, 3 taps on the mobile app

[spookly]

Unless they actually go to court then they won't be able to enforce anything.

Ebay seems to have got increasingly aggressive about their T&Cs since they have been under pressure with other sales platforms. Personally, I used to use Ebay a lot. Buying and selling. Now I won't touch them with a bargepole. Too many scamming sellers and buyers, and aside from special offer days their fees are laughable.

[storminnorman]

Shedding said:

Hello

Long time reader of the forums here but not posted for a long time.

I was hoping for some advice on how to deal with a problem with Ebay. To summarise, Ebay are billing me £200 for sale of an £180 item. If I had followed their system, the cost to me would have been £1. I have paid this £1. Read on for a more detailed version.

I recently advertised a set of wheels on ebay at a buy-it-now of £200 but open to offers, collection only. I did this during one of Ebay’s offer periods of maximum selling fees of £1 which I signed up to before placing the advert. I received an offer for £180 for the wheels which I was happy with. Rather than accept through the ebay system, I agreed with a prospective buyer that he come and view the wheels and pay in cash if he liked them. This was agreed through the ebay messaging system. I later received a message from ebay to say that it was against their rules to share contact information before an offer was accepted. Later, I sold the wheels in person and went to ebay to end the advert. I couldn’t immediately see how to do this, so to prevent a sale, I increased the buy it now to an unrealistic £2000 (ie I added a zero). Subsequently I found how to end a listing and did so.
At the end of the month, I received an invoice from ebay for £200 selling fees ie 10% of the £2000. I explained (in writing) to ebay what had happened and offered to pay them £1 which is the amount they would have received had I accepted an offer through their system. They insisted (in writing) that I owe them £200. I later paid them £1 and followed up with an email saying £1 paid in full and final settlement without prejudice.

Ebay have continued chasing for the other £199 with frequent emails even though I have emailed back saying that I don’t agree with the charge. They have now passed it onto a debt collector who have added another £20.

If it makes a difference, I am in SCOTLAND.

What happens next?

Am I correct in thinking that ebay / debt collectors have no power to do anything without a court order?
If ebay / their debt collectors choose to apply for a court order, will I get a chance to defend myself and can I have that hearing moved to a location local to me?
Ebay are relying on the fine print in their user agreement. To me, the fine print must be unfair and therefore unenforceable. Is this correct?
Preferably I’d like this closed down straight away, but if not, how can I cost ebay the maximum hassle and can I reclaim the costs of my time dealing with this?

Thank you for any advice.

Edited by Shedding on Wednesday 20th June 11:33

what does the fine print say? You may find it unfair but if you contravened it then it doesn't matter how you feel.
Agree with others, at best you will lose the account, from my experience (different issue) they don't care if you open a new one though.

[Shedding]

Thanks for the replies so far. My thinking is that the charge for breach of contract is disproportionately high (£200 versus £1 loss) and is therefore legally unfair. I'm not sure of the legislation relating to this though.

[rfisher]

Telephone or livechat them and explain the issue.

As long as you always say to prospective buyers that you are happy to sell through Ebay, but take cash on collection, they won't get excited by your Ebay emails.

It's not worth getting your account closed down over this.

Worst case scenario is that you offer them £100 and move on, but it's more likely that you can resolve this by talking to them.

Can you prove that you only made £180 on the sale?

[Durzel]

Shedding said:

Thanks for the replies so far. My thinking is that the charge for breach of contract is disproportionately high (£200 versus £1 loss) and is therefore legally unfair. I'm not sure of the legislation relating to this though.

It's not a charge for breach of contract though, it's not even a charge. It's a fee for using their services (Final Value Fee), which is made abundantly clear during signup and when creating an auction.

If I understand it correctly:

- You had an item listed with BIN with Best Offer for £200
- You received a formal Best Offer on the item for £180
- For reasons unknown, even though you were only on the hook for £1 Final Value Fee, you accepted the offer informally via eBay's own messaging system

Can you explain the thought process that led to you not just accepting the £180 offer via eBay?

It seems like your best hope is to get on live chat and try to feign ignorance that you couldn't work out how to accept the offer online, and that after you had received the money from the buyer you also couldn't work out how to end the auction early, and hope that they cancel it. The fact it's gone as far as debt collectors though makes that seem unlikely.

[Shedding]

To explain a couple of things.

I didn't go the formal route as there were a number of offers at £180 which I didn't want to decline in case one fell through. Also I didn't want to open up the possibility of being paid via paypal as that seems a can of worms.

I am not a frequent seller on ebay. I'd rather keep my ebay account but I'm not that fussed. I intend to use Amazon to buy things now.

I have no proof of the sale of the wheels but they were advertised at £200 for a while and were not sold so unlikely to sell at £2000.

My first communications were via live chat. (It is the only way they provide on their site to communicate in writing).

I've just done a bit more research and I think Section 62 of The Consumer Rights Act 2015 covers the fairness aspect.

Edited by Shedding on Wednesday 20th June 13:04

[Marcellus]

Playing devils advocate here but can you actually prove that you didn't sell the item for the £2,000?

If I understand correctly you advertised an item for £2,000 and then you marked it as sold, therefore it's not completely beyond the realms of reasonableness for ebay to assume you sold an item for £2,000.

[woodyTVR]

Tell them you tried to mark them as sold as you'd sold to someone via ebay and that you didn't understand how to close the BIN for a cash buyer.

Say you tried to set it to £0 so there was nothing outstanding once the sale had completed, however you seem to have set it to £2000 by adding a 0 by mistake. You then tried to close the listing at a later date as you wanted to pay them their £1 fee and clear the account.

I think you're maybe stuck now it's with a debt collection service but you never know.

[davek_964]

Marcellus said:

Playing devils advocate here but can you actually prove that you didn't sell the item for the £2,000?

If I understand correctly you advertised an item for £2,000 and then you marked it as sold, therefore it's not completely beyond the realms of reasonableness for ebay to assume you sold an item for £2,000.

Exactly. And hardly unfair - given that the terms are a 10% charge, which might be considered expensive but is hardly unfair contract terms.

[Shedding]

I do have copies of messages where I agree to sell for £180 (as do ebay!)

[davek_964]

Shedding said:

I do have copies of messages where I agree to sell for £180 (as do ebay!)

I'm sure you both do. But if somebody decided they REALLY wanted them, even though you'd already agreed to sell them - and offered you £2000 to gazump - I'm sure you would have said yes. So that in itself isn't all that conclusive.

[Shedding]

davek_964 said:

I'm sure you both do. But if somebody decided they REALLY wanted them, even though you'd already agreed to sell them - and offered you £2000 to gazump - I'm sure you would have said yes. So that in itself isn't all that conclusive.

This is true but I'm sure I could find comparable adverts to show that £200 is the going rate for these relatively common wheels.

[Shedding]

davek_964 said:

Exactly. And hardly unfair - given that the terms are a 10% charge, which might be considered expensive but is hardly unfair contract terms.

In the extreme, if I had put a few extra zeros on, would you think it fair for ebay to charge me a fee for a £2M sale?

[Saleen836]

When you are contatacted by Transcom (ebay debt collectors) inform them the issue with ebay is in dispute, Transcom have to legally hand it back to ebay until such time the dispute is sorted, nothing will be added to your credit file unless as said it goes to court.

[pavarotti1980]

Saleen836 said:

When you are contatacted by Transcom (ebay debt collectors) inform them the issue with ebay is in dispute, Transcom have to legally hand it back to ebay until such time the dispute is sorted, nothing will be added to your credit file unless as said it goes to court.

And even if it goes to court it would have to be a judegement which is not satisfied before going onto credit file

[Shedding]

pavarotti1980 said:

Saleen836 said:

When you are contatacted by Transcom (ebay debt collectors) inform them the issue with ebay is in dispute, Transcom have to legally hand it back to ebay until such time the dispute is sorted, nothing will be added to your credit file unless as said it goes to court.

And even if it goes to court it would have to be a judegement which is not satisfied before going onto credit file

Thank you both. That is extremely useful.

[davek_964]

Shedding said:

davek_964 said:

Exactly. And hardly unfair - given that the terms are a 10% charge, which might be considered expensive but is hardly unfair contract terms.

In the extreme, if I had put a few extra zeros on, would you think it fair for ebay to charge me a fee for a £2M sale?

I think it is fair for them to make a charge of 10%, yes - and that is true regardless of the amount.

The reason you are claiming it's unfair is because you claim that you didn't sell it for that amount - but that doesn't make the terms of the contract unfair. It simply means that you have to prove that you did not sell it for that amount - even though the info you put in yourself on their website suggests you did.