Auction Fraud

[Mears]

Ok, 25 days ago I purchased an item off of an Auction website. The seller was quick to respond after the transaction and gave me an address to paypal the money too, which I did the same day. After two weeks of not receiving the product I e-mailed the seller and 5 days later their was still no response. I looked up the name the Auction's webpage and found that the seller had been suspended. I e-mailed the seller once again and still haven't received a reply. The item was only $15, but I'm a poor starving college student and $15 is a lot to me and it pisses me off that someone ripped me off like that. Does anyone know what I can do since the Auction's insurance is not an option? I used a check card to transfer funds so I don't think I can have the bank do anything about it. I've heard that a couple of people have gone so far to contact the police department in the sellers area, but I don't know what that would solve. Any suggestions?

 

[fdiskboy]

I only have one recommendation--don't buy from sellers without LOTS of positive feedback, and I mean LOTS.

 

[Mears]

Unfortunately, this seller had a feedback rating of 497! I didn't even bother to look at the comments and notice that 15 other people left negatives though.

 

[luv2chill]

Yikes... that's almost unheard of. Are the positive comments all legit? I mean, did you check out the auction numbers and they seem to be normal?

Maybe it's a misunderstanding??? Or maybe the seller had some unforseen issue all of a sudden? How new are the other negative comments?

Was the guy a buyer as well as a seller? Maybe you can e-mail some of the other people who left him feedback to see if they have any insight.

Also, you do know that you can obtain his address and phone info from e[/b]bay, right? It may be bogus, but it's worth a shot. Also, he might have recently changed his info to be bogus if he didn't want to be contacted, but then maybe some of the people he's dealt with in the past would have his real info.

Your best bet at getting anything out of this is to find a way to contact the seller. Who knows... maybe he had to leave the country unexpectedly or something?

Anyway, just some suggestions. Hope you can get it worked out.

l2c

 

[Emulex]

Unless the seller committs fraud, fleabay will not suspend a customer until the # of negatives == number of positives.

Folks with like 100 positives and 40 negatives run rampant there!!

Its important to not only look at the positive, but also look for ANY negatives that are justified.

 

[Frenchie]

Was the seller a verified paypal member? If so, contact paypal.

 

[Azraele]

Contact paypal and the auction site owner to see what can be done.
You may also try contacting your bank regarding this charge. They might be able to help.

 

[Mears]

Yeah, the 15 negatives I referred to were all in the past few months. He took up to 22 days to deliver to a few people, but it has been longer than that for me and I fear that since he got da boot he probably doesn't really care if I got what I paid for. I think he ran a business on e-bay since he sold so much.