Lee (Albert Li) sold his mattress on eBay, but it didn't. Still, Li was required to pay a transaction fee of 65 yuan. He felt very angry about it.
"for me, it's not about money, it's the principle of what they're doing, and I don't think it's fair."
The Melbourne father and businessman said he sold his mattress on eBay in April, but he almost regretted it, although he had already received requests and inquiries from people who wanted to buy it.
One of them had already offered a bid, and Li told himself why he had changed his mind, but the buyer seemed unhappy.
"I think they might have to complain about me, so I said,'it's okay, if you're willing to pay a certain fee, then take a look, I remember saying 600 yuan 'because I wanted to make sure they weren't just saying it. They came to test the mattress, and they didn't like it, because the mattress was so soft that the deal didn't go on. "
After that, Li said he and his wife had been using mattresses for several months, and he thought things had been settled, but he didn't expect to receive a $65.37 bill for spitting on his PayPal account.
"I said, 'how can we charge a transaction fee if we haven't sold it?'
A spokesman for eBay Australia said the company would not allow buyers and sellers to arrange sales outside eBay's online system because they would use it to avoid paying fees.
The spokesman said: "all sales carried out using the eBay platform, the seller has to pay transaction fees. Whether the product is ultimately sold or not, the buyer who shares contact information and arranges for offline transactions, as well as the sellers who display their contact information in the product link, Or you may have to pay a transaction fee to ask for information about the buyer and other news items before removing the link. "
The spokesman said eBay's website should be a safe place for buyers and sellers.
"when a deal goes offline, the security of the platform will be compromised because users will no longer be protected and refunded by the eBay protection policy."
The spokesman added that if sellers did not sell goods outside of eBay, they could re-hang them on the website and sell them, and then contact eBay to refund the first transaction fee.
But Lee said it was unethical for eBay to refuse a refund in the knowledge that he had not sold the mattress.
"I think they should be more reasonable, they should be in direct contact with interested buyers, because they obviously monitor the entire conversation, for them, it is very simple to confirm whether they bought a mattress. I told them, if you can talk through FaceTime or Skype, they can see, the mattress is still in my bedroom, right there. But they say, 'this is the way policy is,' and I think it's bad. "