Some of you may have read a post I made about a person doing a Visa Code 53 (Not As Described Merchandise) against one of my sales a few months ago. This person made an incredibly weak attempt to return a “defective” item by suggesting that I send a replacement to her in Russia before she sent the original back. Based on my refusal, she was able to succesfully get her CC to give her a code 53 chargeback outside of PayPal. My funds were stripped instantly, and she thought it was over with. She threatened harassment charges (she is back in the U.S. now) if I attempted to contact her any further regarding the matter.
For those of you who don’t know, this type of chargeback is not covered under Paypal/eBay seller protection. There was never a case opened, just the reversal. PayPal will go to bat for you with the CC company, but there is no guarantee (several reps told me I had little hope) of getting your money back, and the buyer is “supposed to” return your merchandise, but the general perception is that this is not heavily enforced.
There is little information on these types of situations around the internet, and the information that I found almost always ended with the seller losing the money and the item.
Well, I actually won the case, the entire $800 is back in my PayPal account as of this morning. A knowledgable PayPal rep told me that the only time he ever sees a victory in this scenario is when the seller documents anything and everything. I submitted all of our emails, tracking, the signature upon delivery, her positive feedback left, even some iOS text message screenshots. I literally had a page full of stuff for them to send to the CC and it really paid off.
The point of this post is this… if this ever happens to you – YOU CAN WIN! Don’t just lay down and give up, get any info you can from the buyer and forward it on to the CC company, there is hope for sellers in these situations, especially if you can provide lots of info.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/1eumis/update_not_as_described_chargeback_done_via_cc/