Got screwed on eBay, need some advice

[yellowperil]

About 6 weeks ago I bought this item from what at the time seemed like a legitimate seller. I paid via PayPal with about $140 of balance that was already in there (from selling something on eBay) and an additional ~$15 from my credit card. Long story short, I never got the item, seller tried to pull a bait-and-switch, and now won't answer my e-mails/disconnected phone/won't refund. In the past few weeks he's gotten a bunch of negative feedbacks from people claiming it took too long to ship or that he won't ship at all or refund.

Anyway, I found out that I can't go to PayPal's fraud protection policy because of their ridiculously short (30 days) time limit for filing a claim. eBay's is longer (90 days) but if you paid by credit card, they require you to dispute the charge with your CC company first. Thing is, I'm not sure if my payment falls in that category because technically I paid part of it through credit card (through PayPal) and I don't see how disputing the charge will help if it shows up on my statement as 'PayPal' (and not the name of the company). I tried e-mailing eBay but they must be backed up because it's been a few days and no real response other than the auto-response. Just curious if anyone with some eBay/PayPal know-how knew what to do. Thx

 

[badluck]

Call the cops in the city he lives. I did it once and the cops went over to the guy's house and got my item back. BTW: I shipped any item to him that he paid for using a stolen credit card....He is essentially stealing from you, so why not give them a call?

 

[ThePresence]

Sorry to hear about this man. Seems like I read about another PayPal problem everyday. That's why I never used PayPal and I don't think I will.

 

[NokiaDude]

This is almost what happened to me but I didn't get to pay for a month and then when I did, he said I didn't, I paid with Paypal, so long story short he sent me my item but he only sent the case for the game!!!! So paypal says that as long as he sent something they can't cover it. I was only ripped off $25 tho.

 

[MC]

wow, a "Power Seller" even, that sux man.

GL.

 

[wnied]

Well looking at his feedback it looks as though the last 6 sales were bad. I'm more inclined to think that this guys account at ebay has been cracked and someones jipping people in his name....I mean lets be serious here for a second, he does have over 11000 ratings here and it seem that just only recently he's gone bad...

I would complain to ebay, and lodge a complaint at the very LEAST.

~wnied~

 

[kranky]

His feedback already had serious problems when yellowperil bid that auction. Looking at the last 6 months (and subtracting the last month's feedback, which was after yellowperil won that auction), 10% of the feedbacks were neutral or negative. That's way, way too many. And since many, many people won't leave negative feedback because they are too scared they might get one in return, if I see 10% unhappy people, I assume it's really 30%.

That feedback rating for the last 6 months should have been a red flag to stay away.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: wnied
Well looking at his feedback it looks as though the last 6 sales were bad. I'm more inclined to think that this guys account at ebay has been cracked and someones jipping people in his name....I mean lets be serious here for a second, he does have over 11000 ratings here and it seem that just only recently he's gone bad...

I would complain to ebay, and lodge a complaint at the very LEAST.

~wnied~

I doubt this is fraud or a cracked account. I'm far more inclined to believe that this "seller" is in essence a company that lives off Ebay and is slowly going out of business. They are having trouble filling orders and/or issuing refunds.
Once again, we see futher proof that Ebay is just dying to be regulated. Online fraud is way, way up and the primary cause is Ebay. The Feds have taken notice, action will be soon.

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: wnied
Well looking at his feedback it looks as though the last 6 sales were bad. I'm more inclined to think that this guys account at ebay has been cracked and someones jipping people in his name....I mean lets be serious here for a second, he does have over 11000 ratings here and it seem that just only recently he's gone bad...

I would complain to ebay, and lodge a complaint at the very LEAST.

~wnied~

I doubt this is fraud or a cracked account. I'm far more inclined to believe that this "seller" is in essence a company that lives off Ebay and is slowly going out of business. They are having trouble filling orders and/or issuing refunds.
Once again, we see futher proof that Ebay is just dying to be regulated. Online fraud is way, way up and the primary cause is Ebay. The Feds have taken notice, action will be soon.

Regulate it? If people would stop purchasing off of it, then we wouldn't need to regulate it. Why does it seem that we always need to the Feds to save us, when we just won't use common sense.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: CPA
Regulate it? If people would stop purchasing off of it, then we wouldn't need to regulate it. Why does it seem that we always need to the Feds to save us, when we just won't use common sense.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, which is why my Ebay and Paypal accounts were closed months ago. I wasn't stating what I wanted to see happen, I was stating what is going to happen if Ebay doesn't clean their sh!t up. That's all.

 

[yellowperil]

Originally posted by: kranky
His feedback already had serious problems when yellowperil bid that auction. Looking at the last 6 months (and subtracting the last month's feedback, which was after yellowperil won that auction), 10% of the feedbacks were neutral or negative. That's way, way too many. And since many, many people won't leave negative feedback because they are too scared they might get one in return, if I see 10% unhappy people, I assume it's really 30%.

That feedback rating for the last 6 months should have been a red flag to stay away.

You're probably right, but I usually only look a page or two back when I check feedback before bidding. At the time the first couple pages were clean, and his positive rating was around 99%

Re: Feds, I doubt they would get involved here but it seems to me that this is possible mail fraud

 

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by: NokiaDude
This is almost what happened to me but I didn't get to pay for a month and then when I did, he said I didn't, I paid with Paypal, so long story short he sent me my item but he only sent the case for the game!!!! So paypal says that as long as he sent something they can't cover it. I was only ripped off $25 tho.

Wow that's pathetic. So he could have sent you a turd in a box and that would have been good enough for paypal?

 

[ucdnam]

I got a deck from the guy... i won the auction on 4/11 or so and received it 4/23. He/she shipped it on 4/16 and I got a tracking number. I read his comments before I bid and it seemed that they didn't respond to emails, are slow, but that was ok as the price was cheap.

If you hang in there, you may get your deck.

 

[NokiaDude]

Originally posted by: PipBoy

Originally posted by: NokiaDude
This is almost what happened to me but I didn't get to pay for a month and then when I did, he said I didn't, I paid with Paypal, so long story short he sent me my item but he only sent the case for the game!!!! So paypal says that as long as he sent something they can't cover it. I was only ripped off $25 tho.

Wow that's pathetic. So he could have sent you a turd in a box and that would have been good enough for paypal?

Yep. he could've sent me a dead bird and pp wouldnt give a hoot. pp ain't going to see my money anymore, back to good old money orders!

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: yellowperil
Re: Feds, I doubt they would get involved here but it seems to me that this is possible mail fraud

I was not referring to this individual case, I meant the massive amount of fraud that is occurring on Ebay in general.

 

[hergehen]

I'm also 90% sure that this guys' account was stolen and thief used a good ratings to sell stuff. It is a very common practice

If the thief was smart you never will be able to catch him.

 

[RossMAN]

I would like to see some regulation (not necessarily by BIG BROTHER so don't worry) but at least for eBay which now owns Paypal to take some accountability and even greater steps to cut down on the rampant fraud.

 

[kranky]

What in the world makes people think this ebay account got hijacked? The seller has 137 auctions running now, plus has an ebay store. There are still some positive feedbacks coming in (one from an April 8 auction) - what scammer would bother to ship anything once he had the money?

When accounts get hijacked, you see a few high-value auctions, they collect the money, and nobody gets anything. They don't take the time to set up 137 additional auctions.

 

[ucdnam]

If you read my post, I said that I just received a deck from the guy, from an auction I won mid april and it arrived about 2 weeks later, so his acct isn't hijacked. It's just that they never respon to emails, other than with their autoresponder. Their phones are also on autoanswer, but I did get my deck new and it works.