Thank You Mercado Libre

[AmigoArtistico]

Out of curiosity: aren't there consumer laws that cover cases like this in general? Or is it just too difficult to enforce them in practice?

A few years ago, my wife tried to take AR$2000 out of an ATM owned by Banco Galicia. She got an error message on the screen, and no money, but her account was debited by the 2000 (at the time, this amount was equal to about US$500, and almost half her monthly pay).

She went to the defensa del consumidor and made an appointment, and a few weeks later, she had a meeting with someone from the defensa del consumidor and 4 people from the bank. They asked if she had any proof that she never received the money, which, of course, as described, she did not. They all told her there was nothing they could do.

Seriously.

 

[wongjoh]

Thanks to the OP for posting his experience. I work for MELI so I'll also provide a few comments/clarifications, with hopefully a balancing perspective:

• MercadoLibre made good on the buyer purchase protection => even after the seller "gave him the finger" (according to the buyer), MercadoLibre made sure the buyer was reimbursed for the returned product. Short of having the seller apologize, I think most would consider full reimbursement a good outcome. However, if this is still not a good outcome to the buyer, he can reopen the case and request additional reviews -- we do take every case seriously
• This specific seller actually has a good stats (11K+ sales in 9 years of operations with 98% recommendation rating) so I would not say it's a "fly-by-night" operation. As we can all grasp, sometimes bad products get delivered and bad service can be given (we're human after all), but there is a distinction between a consistently bad seller (which doesn't seem the case to me) and a bad experience (which is what unfortunately happened). Regardless, MercadoLibre works hard to minimize either and to help the seller community get more professional over time. Believe it or not, this experience actually will make the seller think twice from giving the finger, or imposing random rules again.
• MercadoLibre asks buyers in dispute to return the contested item within 3 days, but if this is too short of a timeframe ("because I am out of town"), buyers can always ask for more time, or just reopen the case. There is no time-trap setup for anyone here. Common sense should prevail

Finally, MercadoLibre doesn't have a phone number or person (certainly not me, sorry I have a day-job ;-) to speak with in the same way that brick and mortar businesses do, but in turn, we try to make our customer service / mediation processes and products get better at scale. That's why MercadoLibre developed MercadoPago (to prevent money fraud), MercadoEnvios (to fight delivery fraud), provide buyer purchase protection (what applied in this case) and we are building other products to tackle other common pain areas. Of course, there is still much to be done, but I can say we strive to be better and very much feel the feedback given by our users.

 

[Gringoboy]

The returns policy works very well.
I sold a used mobile phone to someone in Santa Fe, but when they received it they realised it was the wrong model.
I returned the money through MercadoPago and they returned the phone, scoring each other as neutral.
It wasn't the outcome I wanted financially, but at least because of the improved system, everyone was satisfied with the outcome.

 

[jeff1234]

I try to make all my purchases on American Express. In the US if there is a problem they immediately refund your money then begin an investigation.
They tend to favor the vendor but having American Express holding their money for 6 months encourages the vendor to cooperate with you.
I'm not sure how American Express handles disputes here, likely the same way.

 

[wongjoh]

There are actually at least 3 Amex's here: (1) international (e.g., US) Amex, what you described; (2) Argentinian Amex; and (3) Argentinian-bank Amex (e.g., through a local bank like Santander Rio). They all are handled differently (ever notice in Carrefour how they say that there is 15% off for Amex, well, that's #2 Amex only) ;-)

Either way, MercadoPago only works with #2 and #3 (and have different deals with each, as they were separate negotiations). Brick and mortar businesses that can charge credit cards in theory allow all 3, but refund rules likely differ (though not absolutely sure).

So, unless I'm specifically told that things are the same here as in the US, the default is that they are not ...