ebay is a scammer paradise. I just lost $2000 because of them

[mikeymikec]

Ebay will always always always side with the buyer.

Except when they don't

 

[WelshBloke]

I mean I'd totally be "I've sent your refund through, I'll be round on Tuesday to pick up the goods. Cheers"

 

[Pohemi]

@mikeymikec did the seller you got the (mostly) refund from try to dispute the return/refund?

I mean I'd totally be "I've sent your refund through, I'll be round on Tuesday to pick up the goods. Cheers"

That could be difficult if he's 1000+ miles away lol.

 

[mikeymikec]

@mikeymikec did the seller you got the (mostly) refund from try to dispute the return/refund?

No. However eBay was evidently happy to uphold their dishonesty from start to finish, no doubt because internal policy boxes had been ticked.

I personally would regard ebay as being no more secure an option as a private ad with cash on collection.

 

[igor_kavinski]

$1400 worth of hardware that works fine ? and you are not required to return it ? Yea right..... I will return it to be a nice guy after I screwed you out of $1400

I hope you left a glowing review about the buyer's "honesty" before deleting your eBay account. That should help other sellers take preventive measures.

 

[Markfw]

I hope you left a glowing review about the buyer's "honesty" before deleting your eBay account. That should help other sellers take preventive measures.

ebay disabled feedback for this person for me.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Sellers have not been allowed to leave negative FB (or Positive FB with negative comments) for buyers for several years.

 

[igor_kavinski]

ebay disabled feedback for this person for me.

Now that's positively scummy of eBay. So every seller needs to have insurance for whatever they are selling!

 

[mikeymikec]

ebay disabled feedback for this person for me.

yup, they deleted the feedback I left for the scummy seller in my situation too.

A lot of online systems corrupt feedback and ratings these days.

 

[brianmanahan]

Never sell on ebay ever again.

i quit ebay 15 years ago after getting screwed while selling some software

guy receives my package in the mail, immediately contests it as "not working", gets his money back, won't give a reason as to why it doesn't work, won't ship the box back, and threatens me with negative feedback if i try to make him send it back or escalate it

i probably should've escalated it but i didn't have time for the hassle, so i ate the 50$ loss and decided to never sell anything on there again

 

[Brainonska511]

With all the horror stories I've heard about eBay, I never bothered going there as either a buyer or seller.

I either just stick to putting stuff on CL/local marketplace, using a store trade-in, or rarely selling through a forum.

Sorry this happened to you OP.

 

[WelshBloke]

That could be difficult if he's 1000+ miles away lol.

Fair point. I don't live in a country that big. Or one where you might get shot turning up at a strangers door.

 

[repoman0]

How can they make you give the money back before you have the item back in hand? Not even Amazon works like that, the loosest company I know of when it comes to customer returns.

 

[Pohemi]

How can they make you give the money back before you have the item back in hand? Not even Amazon works like that, the loosest company I know of when it comes to customer returns.

They can do a clawback on the payment in your bank account. I know PayPal does/did this.

Amazon is a retailer. Fleabay is an auction site. I'd expect return policies to differ considerably, especially when they can change from seller to seller.

 

[Markfw]

How can they make you give the money back before you have the item back in hand? Not even Amazon works like that, the loosest company I know of when it comes to customer returns.

As of a few years ago, ebay changed on how you get paid. They have direct access to your checking account. You can't stop it. This is how they do it. I could try to keep my checking account at zero, but eventually I will get reported to the credit bureau.

 

[repoman0]

They can do a clawback on the payment in your bank account. I know PayPal does/did this.

Amazon is a retailer. Fleabay is an auction site. I'd expect return policies to differ considerably, especially when they can change from seller to seller.

I wouldn’t. Not to the extent that the buyer keeps both the item and the money.

 

[Pohemi]

I wouldn’t. Not to the extent that the buyer keeps both the item and the money.

Agreed, even for Ebay this is a ridiculous outcome. It can't be SOP, but then again...it was this kind of BS that made me stop using it years ago.

You can't trust the company to keep buyers and sellers honest, when Ebay only cares about collecting those fees and not about the integrity of users on their auction site.

 

[repoman0]

Agreed, even for Ebay this is a ridiculous outcome. It can't be SOP, but then again...it was this kind of BS that made me stop using it years ago.

You can't trust the company to keep buyers and sellers honest, when Ebay only cares about collecting those fees and not about the integrity of users on their auction site.

It’s hard to believe enough sellers are willing to sell there anymore to keep the marketplace well stocked and useful, but here we are. It must really cater towards large volume sellers and businesses now. They can take a tax write off if the BS that happened to the OP happens to them.

I stopped using it as a seller as well many years ago once the selling fees hit like 15%. It ends up being way easier to sell locally for the same 15% less than whatever the ebay going rate is.

 

[Pohemi]

When I was still using Ebay, my issues started when attempting to sell $1500+ items. Buyers would bid on and win an auction, then fail to pay. Ebay would still charge me the sales fees, and it'd take several weeks to get it credited back.

The last straw for me was after a sale I made for a $1900 item (a full mountain bike). At this point I was already triple-confirmed with PayPal because of their past BS and delaying and demanding ID verification that they already had. They had my Driver's license FFS.

Anywho...I had been selling and buying high-end bicycle AND computer parts for several years already. These higher $ sales were not a rare thing for me, nor was this anywhere near my first. I was selling the bicycle in order to get money towards a vehicle.

I got payment (through PayPal of course) from the buyer, thought everything was good. Welp, that was until PayPal decided that this "high value sale" needed to be frozen so it could be investigated for fraud because reasons. Then they started asking me to verify my ID. Again. For the 3rd or 4th time.

PayPal attempted to freeze my checking account, and was blocked by my bank (thankfully). In the end, it took me SIX weeks to get my money from PayPal for the sale. Of course, I missed out on purchasing the vehicle I planned on at the time.

So I boycotted Fleabay, PayPal, and any of their services (like Venmo now). This was a decade and a half ago so it's not like this is new behavior or policy for them.

 

[manly]

With all the horror stories I've heard about eBay, I never bothered going there as either a buyer or seller.

I either just stick to putting stuff on CL/local marketplace, using a store trade-in, or rarely selling through a forum.

Sorry this happened to you OP.

I buy from eBay a few times a year. A lot of legit merchants sell on eBay, so that's fairly reliable. I bought a Quest 2 from Meta a year ago and IIRC eBay threw in a 2 year service plan.

Horror stories aside, eBay works because the vast majority of people (buyers or sellers) are not crooks. They clear about $80B of merchandise per year.

 

[purbeast0]

That really sucks.

WIth services like Paypal, Venmo, etc, I ALWAYS pull the money out immediately.

I had a scammer try to scam me with Paypal 2 years ago. I made a post on here about it. Basically after 3 months he did a chargeback with his CC and ebay said I owed them $415 ($400 for item and $15 for the case fee since he opened a case). I did F&F payment because I met the guy in person locally and was fine with it.

Anyways, my account was negative $415 and they threatened me multiple times about sending me to collection. They would call every few days about me owing them money, after sending them proof of chat and text messages that he intended to purchase the item and received it. They did not care. I flat out told them I will never pay them and I know it will never effect my credit because I didn't agree to paying them this in the first place. The calls finally stopped and my paypal account is in a weird state where I can't login and if I try to reset password it says there is an error. So fuck them.

With ebay, you can't pull your money immediately?

 

[purbeast0]

As of a few years ago, ebay changed on how you get paid. They have direct access to your checking account. You can't stop it. This is how they do it. I could try to keep my checking account at zero, but eventually I will get reported to the credit bureau.

If they made an unauthorized transaction from my bank account, I would call my bank and dispute it.

When I had my paypal issue, I actually called them and had them block any transactions to/from paypal.

 

[purbeast0]

It’s hard to believe enough sellers are willing to sell there anymore to keep the marketplace well stocked and useful, but here we are. It must really cater towards large volume sellers and businesses now. They can take a tax write off if the BS that happened to the OP happens to them.

I stopped using it as a seller as well many years ago once the selling fees hit like 15%. It ends up being way easier to sell locally for the same 15% less than whatever the ebay going rate is.

I recently bought a lot of stuff on ebay, but it was cheap PC parts.

I am building a MAME PC for one of my arcade cabinets and basically built it with 10 year old hardware. Ebay was a great place to get a lot of the stuff i needed, like a CPU, GPU, and motherboard that is no longer manufactured. And I needed an old Radeon 5450 card for very specific drivers written for it to work on an arcade CRT. And I needed a PC -> JAMMA interface board.

But ... I probably spent like < $150 for everything over 4 transactions. I did find RAM for it at Microcenter though.

 

[dullard]

Sorry that you are out your CPU and some cash, but as others have mentioned, it was probably illegal for you to have purchased it and illegal to sell it. You won't get far in any attempt to recover it from eBay or the scammer. That would be the equivalent of someone calling the cops because their drug deal went poorly.

I couldn't immediately find the info on AMD's site, but here is Intel's site mentioning how they own any of their ES chips. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000056190/processors.html#:~:text=If I receive an engineering sample (ES) processor, what should I do? This is the type of information your scammer would follow: "Contact your vendor or place of purchase if you have received an engineering sample processor in place of a production processor. If you feel misled by your vendor or place of purchase and they refuse to assist, consider contacting your local consumer agency or civil authority for assistance." Meaning, your scammer could technically call the authorities on eBay or on you.

 

[Markfw]

Sorry that you are out your CPU and some cash, but as others have mentioned, it was probably illegal for you to have purchased it and illegal to sell it. You won't get far in any attempt to recover it from eBay or the scammer. That would be the equivalent of someone calling the cops because their drug deal went poorly.

I couldn't immediately find the info on AMD's site, but here is Intel's site mentioning how they own any of their ES chips. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000056190/processors.html#:~:text=If I receive an engineering sample (ES) processor, what should I do? This is the type of information your scammer would follow: "Contact your vendor or place of purchase if you have received an engineering sample processor in place of a production processor. If you feel misled by your vendor or place of purchase and they refuse to assist, consider contacting your local consumer agency or civil authority for assistance." Meaning, your scammer could technically call the authorities on eBay or on you.

I bought the CPU from ebay years ago. I have bought like 10 ES CPU's (Intel and AMD) from ebay. No matter what that document says, if you look at the quantity of ES chips that are advertised and sold by ebay, there is no way its an offense that will be prosecuted, and possibly not illegal. (not a lawyer)

If its that illegal, how could thousands of chips be sold for MANY years (like over 15 at least) by ebay ?

Edit: NOTE: If you search for ES CPU on ebay right now, its says this about the results

1,000+ results for ES CPU​

And if you scroll down, they are computer CPUs, mostly Intel