Grandma Marilyn's

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The beginning of November, I was looking for a way to earn money through Freelancer to help with the finances since my husband had been unemployed for quite some months.  I received an invitation from one of the Freelance Project Managers which stated

“_____ has invited you to place a bid on the following project:
eBay Seller Needed from Worldwide.”

I thought I had come up with a wonderful way to earn money.  So I followed the link to the project description.  It says:

“We are new marketing company having partnership with some realy populer brand company and we are looking honest and hardworking sellers to sell our items online sites like ebay amazon ioffer and other you prefer.

all we need is a hardworking seller who can work honestly.who can spare a 3 to 4 hours a day to do this work only.

there no special requirments we are looking for this all you need is seller account on any site listed above.

we will provide all info about the items you have to market and sale..

to know about more on this project kindly bid on it and feel free to ask .

thank you.”

I sent him some questions which he gladly answered.  It all sounded above board and the guy seemed really honest.  He wanted me to post listings for Ugg Boots and Ray Ban glasses.  He gave me the listings (words and images) that I needed to post.  I asked him numerous times if they were real.  Ugg boots are being made in China now so when he reassured me, I believed in him.

Why would someone want someone else to list the items for them?  This seller can have a number of people listing for him.  He doesn’t have to do the listings, answer questions, troubleshoot, and relist when the listings end.  He has his minions to do that.  All he has to do is send out the invoices to the minions and ship out the products.  I can fully understand that and took it into accounting when I accepted this deal.

On November 3 at 3 a.m., I listed the items that he had sent me.  Ugg Boots in Black and Chestnut in sizes 7, 8, and 9 and Ray Ban glasses in 3 different lens colors.

I sent him a spread sheet for the items that had been ordered.  He sent me an invoice through Paypal which I gladly paid.  I was able to keep 30% for the fees and my efforts.

There was a great response to these listings which he only wanted listed for something like 3 days for each listing. Then we waited a few days and I relisted them.

The Ray Ban glasses didn’t make it to the end of the listing period.  eBay pulled the listings the morning of November 5th at 9:44 p.m.  They said that they had concerns with the listings and that the listings were a Trademark Violation – Unauthorized Item.  Again, my distributor assured me that he had the right to sell these items and that he had a brick and mortar store that he sold them out of.  Of course, this caused instantaneous requests for refunds because eBay had closed the listing.  A couple of the people decided to hold off until the glasses arrived since they had already been shipped.

My horror story did not end there.  Then people having second thoughts started requesting refunds for the Ugg boots.  I gladly gave them the refunds if the order had not been shipped.  The bad thing is that they were claiming they hadn’t received the item 2 days after ordering them.  They told eBay that they had not talked with me when they filed the dispute but it didn’t make a difference with eBay.  The people got their money back anyway even though the item had already been shipped. 

At this point, Paypal limited my account to where all I could do was add money and give refunds.  They felt I was a risk to my customers because I was receiving so many requests for refunds.  When I called them, they told me that I had made a bad business decision and I had to live with it.  I sent them all the information that they requested and it did me no good my appeal was denied and in 6 months I would get whatever money was still left in the account.  I had lost my good reputation that I had fought so long to get.

Once people started receiving the boots, I got messages from a few that did not like them.  They were told that once I received the boots back, I would refund them.  I received 4 of these and I refunded them their money.  In one case, and I am not sure how this happened, the boots were a size 5 and not a size 7.

All the monies have been refunded and that part of my horror story has ended.

Then the bill for the eBay listings came due.  I thought no problem…eBay and Paypal were owned by the same people.  Wrong!  They refused to pay the eBay bill.  I even called Paypal trying to get them to release that money. They still refused to pay the eBay bill.  I wrote and explained what had happened to eBay and that I wouldn’t be able to pay that much until the money was released.  But, just like any other business, they want their money now.  I would be glad to pay them off if I could.  Hubby now has a job so I wrote them that I could pay them $50 a month until the money was released and then I could pay it all back.  I now need to call and talk with them over the phone.  I dread that phone call.  What other horrors am I going to run into with eBay now.  Of course, my account on eBay has been closed because I can’t pay them.  They were already saying that I might not be able to make any more listings before the money issue came up.

The distributor and I talked back and forth.  He agreed to give me back 50% of the money that I refunded so that each of us only lost that much.  Then I tried to get my part of the money back from the distributor and he kept coming up with reasons why he couldn’t get it to me.  I even suggested that he send me a check.  He said it had to be refunded to the account that the money had come from.  This went back and forth.

Finally, I called Paypal on November 9th to talk with Limitations about the refund situation.  They told me to contact the distributor and have him make a refund that he was allowed to do that.  I sent the information to the distributor and he told me that they refused his refund and that they told him to wait until the account was reinstated.  The account will never be reinstated so that made me question that comment.

I called Paypal again on November 11th, the Paypal representative from Limitations finally patched me over to Disputes and Claims.  I explained the situation and the representative said he would help me.  He filled out a complaint and requested a refund from the distributor. 

When I went to look at the Paypal resolution center yesterday to find out what was going on, I noticed that the representative had put that I had not received the item and that was why I was filing the complaint.  The distributor had requested a tracking number so that he could refund the money.  I knew that this wouldn’t work as there was no tracking number.  So I called the Disputes and Claims department again.  I explained the situation to him and he told me that he would take care of it for me.

Now, 2 months later, everything is resolved.  I still can’t have a Paypal account anymore and I no longer have my eBay account but I guess I can live without those.  I still feel that my reputation has been shattered.  I am hoping and praying that no more horrors will come.  I think I will live in fear of that for a long time.

I am rethinking my online activities. But, I will talk about that in a post tomorrow.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Do not list copyrighted items for other people.  Make sure that you have them in your hands before you sell them.  Make sure you have the right to sell them.  Also, If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.  I didn’t listen to my mind when I realized this.  I wanted it to be the real deal so bad that I trusted too easily.

Right now, I want to recommend to all of you out there that are thinking about listing items for other people that you make sure they send you a copy of the documentation allowing them to sell the products of the company.  Even then, I would suggest you have second thoughts.  I know there are honest people out there that want you to do this for them.  But, how do you know the scam artists from the real deal.  DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE THAT I DID AND LOSE YOUR REPUTATION.

Tags: bad business decision, beware of offers to list products, eBay, freelancer, Paypal, Ray Ban glasses, refunds, trademark violation, Ugg boots, warning to marketers

This entry was posted by GrandmaMarilyn on Saturday, January 14th, 2012 at 8:47 am and is filed under General Business, Scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.