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I got banned from eBay as well. I bought a part for my dishwasher and received a counterfeit part. I collected evidence, posted the photos, and requested a return. Next thing you know my account is banned. I think the seller reported me in retaliation.

I have no idea where to go next time I need something. AliExpress would probably be even worse when it comes to counterfeits.

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If this is recent, please file a chargeback with your bank. That's the only way to deal with such scum, otherwise they've still won - the scammer got their money and eBay got their commission.

The only thing that matters is money and this is why these bans are a thing - it's cheaper to screw some customers over than to have a competent human analyze the situation. Hitting them in the wallet is the only place they'd actually feel it.

The interesting thing is I still got refunded, about a week after my account was banned. Their backend must be a total mess, but it worked out in my favor somehow. If not for that I definitely would have done a chargeback.

> Their backend must be a total mess

The URL structures on the website are scary and indeed suggest the backend is a horrible dumpster fire.

Not only a mess but they seem to have been halfway through modernising things for years.

They built a new API but are probably never going to be able to get rid if the old one.

Can confirm, been working with many eBay APIs for a while now and it's completely and totally a massive dumpster fire. Most API versions are in the thousands, and there's so many random gotchas and contradicting docs and daily bugs and breakages you don't want to go anywhere near it. Not to mention their only recourse for contacting them about bugs or developer issues is via prepaid premium support, paid only via paypal, in which the link for it frequently goes down too. If you check their dev forums it's filled with nothing but people complaining about all sorts of random issues and never getting real responses.

The history of EBay is long (in internet commerce terms) and complicated. At one point 100s of millions of customers on a single oracle db. A colleague of mine was working on this around 1998/9

https://web.archive.org/web/20070104021557/http://www.addsim...

The terrible quality of their APIs does suggest it's a mess behind as well yeah.

Kinda makes me wonder if the person handling the case on their end got confused and banned the wrong party.

This is what I did in a very similar predicament. They sent me to collections after the chargeback and dinged my credit.

This only works if your bank is on your side. I asked for a chargeback with my bank at the time (Square) for a fraudulent transaction and they terminated my account.

Thankfully, banks in general are in a stricter regulatory environment with a government-level watchdog you can escalate to, though that might not apply for electronic money institutions (or whatever the US equivalent is).

No, why do people think this? In the US banks have a right to refuse to do business with you for (almost) any reason and refuse they do. They are more likely to ban you than eBay. There's no right to have a bank account, there's no right to keep your back account - full stop.

This happened to me recently when American Express sided against me when Expedia essentially stole money from me for services it didn't deliver.

Now there's two companies I'll never do more business with.

Oh so far I've always found American Express to be much more reliable than all other banks when it comes to Chargebacks

Me to up until this incident. It's worth noting that AmEx has acquired some businesses from Expedia Group and Expedia Group itself is now a major shareholder in AmEx Global Business Travel.

I've also been permabanned from eBay. Buyer for 10+ years, occasional seller. Went to sell something alongside lots of listings for the same thing. Permabanned my account and my parent's accounts as I had logged in from their house previously. No recourse. "Banned without appeal" they called it. "Because of the nature of the ban we cannot tell you anything about it". Many frustrating calls.

Years later, my only thesis is it was due to having HTML in my product description, I linked to the vendor website. Maybe that's against the rules or something.

>To protect our members, listings or products can't contain links that direct customers to a site other than eBay, even if the link is not clickable.

I think they mean "to protect eBay's profits."

>Maybe that's against the rules or something.

Maybe you should read the rules for the service you are using?

I've received damaged products from AliExpress a handful of times and found their resolution team/procedures to be fantastic.

You can submit a claim which the seller responds to. If the seller doesn't respond fast enough, AE steps in and suggests a couple resolutions (usually something like a partial refund with no product return, or a full refund if you send the product back). You can then negotiate or just accept one of the suggestions. Absolutely 0 hassle or talking to a person. You click a few buttons and get your money back.

In my experience, Aliexpress takes claims seriously and is on the side of the customer.

I actually like Aliexpress, but I wouldn't expect them to sell parts for American market appliances. I searched now for the old part I needed, and I see "fits <model#>" and "compatible with <model#>" but not the genuine part. Call me old fashioned but I'll pay an extra $20 for first-party components.

Call me old fashioned but I'll pay an extra $20 for first-party components.

...which are made in China, probably in the same factories contracted by the original manufacturer. Aliexpress just lets you cut out the middleman.

You don't know that for certain though. I'd rather pay extra if an appliance is broken, than wait for a gamble on what may or may not be a decent replacement.

You're old fashioned.

In my experience, I ordered a fake USB3 capture card (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001773724519.html, check the 1-star reviews, also debunked by Marcan at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906127), filled out comprehensive documentation of it being fake USB3 and unable to capture stable footage at 1080p60, and AliExpress sided with the seller. I had to file a chargeback to get money back for the fraudulent product (and I hear chargebacks can be reversed by the seller, not sure if it happened to me).

Chargebacks can only be contested by the merchant if they have enough evidence you talk your bank into reversing.

For what it’s worth, I have successfully reversed a chargeback. I had a customer who ordered a downloadable product then did a chargeback. I presented evidence that they clicked the unique link for their download and the email exchange we had about the product. That seemed sufficient to satisfy the card processor.

This can happen. We won a lot of chargebacks as a seller, but it’s a huge hassle that you really don’t want to deal with.

That is absolutely not my experience. During the height of the pandemic, many AliExpress sellers failed to deliver orders. The tracking numbers that some sellers provided showed "delivered" even when the item never arrived. During the disputes, AliExpress would request proof that the item never arrived, which is not possible to provide. Filing a chargeback or PayPal dispute is only an option if you don't mind being banned by AliExpress.

eBay and Amazon Marketplace put the burden of proof of delivery on the seller instead of the buyer when the shipment is not protected with signature confirmation. Many AliExpress-style items are also listed on eBay and Amazon at similar prices, and I've mostly switched over after my bad experiences with AliExpress. AliExpress still has a different selection of items, so I haven't stopped using it completely.

Ehm, nope. Unless your complaint is a very obvious one (i.e. seller didn't send anything at all or the item has visibly not been delivered from the tracking info), good luck.

E.g. I had obviously fake EEPROM chips delivered, they weren't even new (they contained data from the previous use!). I have opened a dispute, posted the evidence that the chips are relabeled fakes - and promptly got it rejected both first time and on appeal. The grunt handling it had absolutely no idea what my complaint was about, I have received my goods, so what more do I want?

Fortunately it was only a few euros worth so not big deal - I have opened the dispute mostly to point out that the seller is a fraudster, not to recover my 15€ or so back. Tough luck ...

Over the years I had more luck sorting complaints out on AliExpress directly with the sellers because they are afraid of losing their ratings and thus a large portion of business (people usually sort by price and then by ratings). The support staff is hopeless in these cases.

You wouldn't have been banned from eBay for a single return like this. It would have to be a pattern that makes you at least appear like an undesirable buyer.

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