Scammed on eBay.....

[tim0409]

If you discounted ebay sellers on the basis of poor spelling/grammar you would struggle to buy anything. It paints a bleak picture of our education system (UK).

I have found selling high value items on ebay a painful process in the last few years. I received a fraudulent charge back from a buyer after he returned a different ipod (much older and badly scratched). Paypal did not bother to investigate and I ended up serving them with a small claims action which their legal department settled out of court. When I sold my 3GS the buyer sent fraudulent postal orders (luckily I had not sent the phone before the bank contacted me as I waiting for them to clear) - ebay weren't interested and the buyer was still registered two weeks after I forwarded the letter from the bank.

It's a pity as ebay was a great place to sell when it started as it was much more of a "community". There are as many bad buyers as there are sellers, yet you can't leave negative feedback for a buyer. I am looking to sell my 13" MBP (6 months old) but the thought of listing it on ebay is just too painful!

 

[nicegoogly]

I think the Chinese underwear thing refers to all the bogus Calvin Klein stuff from Hong Kong. I got hit with that. When it showed up (some boxers and tank tops) showed up, they were clearly fake. So I then sent him a complaint about the fake stuff and he told me I was scamming him. He offered a refund plus $20.00 to resolve the issue. I took funds and still reported his auctions to ebay. He is no longer, but there is so much fake **** from China.

I put a macbook pro on ebay last year, three nigerian bids within less than a minute of posting. Totally sucked. Ebay did not charge me for the listings.

About the Judge Judy episode, I used to appear before her when she was a Family Court judge in New York. She is a jerk. We know that the blonde tried to scam the mother and daughter duo (read the comments on youtube, refers to the plaintiffs as hot mom and daughter and defendant as fatbitch rather consistently), but if you are buying from an anonymous source like ebay, read the fine print. Obviously, the defendant worded her ad poorly with the 4.90 oz. which screwed up the offer. I still think that Judge Judy would have thrown the book at her because it is not real. But a contract is a contract. Funniest thing was they didn't even print a photograph, they printed the ****** webpage photo. White trash at its best. At the end of the day, the defendant should not be rewarded for being a scammer, but the plaintiffs should be a little more careful about clicking bid on an item that, as far as they know, only exists in cyberspace. If this was not small claims, the plaintiffs would probably lose to a technicality if the weight was correct.

 

[kdoug]

I should have known better. 64GB WiFi 3G for $500 buy it now. Only 1 picture, less than 5 feedback, location Flint Michigan.
I knew I was in trouble when the seller responded to a question I had about the picture and shipping. Here you go........

"yes it is the 3g. yes that is the acuial picture and i do not expidite shipping. sorry. but i can assure you i will ship it out either today or tomorrow morning."

It didn't ship and this person is no longer a registered member. Surprise!

Good news, received my refund! It took approximately 10 days. I had to wait 1 week for the seller to respond, which seemed odd since the seller was no longer a registered eBay member. After 7 days I escalated my case which takes another 2-3 days. Here's a copy of the email:

"eBay ruled in your favor in your dispute case, and a full refund of $505.00 USD was sent to your PayPal account for your purchase from ________. It may take 3-5 business days to receive the refund in your account. eBay will then consider the dispute closed. If you have any questions, please go to the eBay Resolution Center."

 

[Jack97]

That's awful. Maybe you'll be able to get your money back somehow?

 

[kellen]

That's awful. Maybe you'll be able to get your money back somehow?

Read the thread, especially the post right above yours.

 

[AppleGoddess]

I have to say I loved eBay when you could send a check and then send out the item, wish yahoos was still around.

 

[det2004]

Good news, received my refund! It took approximately 10 days. I had to wait 1 week for the seller to respond, which seemed odd since the seller was no longer a registered eBay member. After 7 days I escalated my case which takes another 2-3 days. Here's a copy of the email:

"eBay ruled in your favor in your dispute case, and a full refund of $505.00 USD was sent to your PayPal account for your purchase from ________. It may take 3-5 business days to receive the refund in your account. eBay will then consider the dispute closed. If you have any questions, please go to the eBay Resolution Center."

Glad to hear that you were able to get your money back. I have always been a little wary of buying and selling expensive items on ebay for fear of being scammed.

 

[philipma1957]

I have bought and sold almost a thousand items on eBay. From one cent to 3 grand. I have been scammed on 1 item....a 32gb flash card that was supposed to be class 10 and was really class 4. There have been numerous attempts....recently sold a 16gb wifi ipad to a guy that attempted a chargeback. But I had followed paypal's policies to the letter and my money was returned.

Just be cautious when buying. This ipad would have thrown up big red flags for me and I would have moved on.

I am with you as low as a buck and as high as 4k. Thousands of transactions with 20 attempts to scam me I won every case.

 

[bobright]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

^What are the requirements to avoid chargebacks with Paypal as a seller? Usually I just make sure to take lots of pics, take a pic of the item with their printed paypal receipt and package all clearly visible, also I make sure always to get delivery confirmation. Signature even if the item is over 100 dollars or so.....would this all have me covered?

 

[JustSomeDude]

Just curious, and since there seems to be some experienced ebay sellers on this thread, if you sell something on Ebay, how do you protect yourself from a scammer who says you sent them an empty box? I like my MBP now, but in couple years I may want to sell it...

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

Just curious, and since there seems to be some experienced ebay sellers on this thread, if you sell something on Ebay, how do you protect yourself from a scammer who says you sent them an empty box? I like my MBP now, but in couple years I may want to sell it...

This very scam happened to me and I had even taken precautions against it. I sold a Garmin GPS unit via eBay. When I packed it, I took pictures of it packed but the box open sitting on the scales at the UPS store, had them seal it while it sat on the scales, and then took another picture of the label they placed across the taped seam showing the recipients address. All pictures showed the weight on the scale the whole time. I even had the Manager of the UPS store sign a letter and notarize it on the spot that the box contained the contents it contained. His employee co-signed it as witness. This cost me an extra $15.

About 3 weeks after the sale had gone through and I got a receipt acknowledgment via UPS, the scammer filed it with PayPal and claimed I shipped them an empty box. I had taken what I thought to be all necessary precautions to prove I shipped what I said I shipped. I sent it in, including the notarized letter stating the contents, as my proof that I wasn't the scammer, the recipient was.

Less than 2 weeks later, PayPal ruled in the scammers favor. I was out my GPS unit and the shipping/notary funds, about $350 total. There's some fine print in PayPal's "chargeback dispute" policy:

PayPal reserves the right not to dispute a chargeback even if the seller has provided some evidence, particularly if PayPal believes the dispute is not likely to be successful.

I never got an answer from PayPal as to WHY they chose not to believe me....just that line quoted above. According to them, the scammer's credit card company was "anti-PayPal" when I went over the case managers' head to his supervisor. Sounds more to me like pro-scammer.

This was my last time selling something worth more than $300 on eBay. Its just not worth the aggravation given how little protection they offer either party.

 

[bigbro1096]

How exactly were you scammed? Was the iPad wifi, was the no actual iPad?

 

[mikechan1234]

Hope you learnt your lesson about things that are too good to be true

 

[green86]

You see, the problem with paypal is that they are too narrow minded, and can't think outside their guidelines in case of eventualities.

I once bought a cordless phone from a power seller. The phone arrived and it was clearly faulty. You could hear A LOT of interference from the headsets. Plus the box was damaged, it looked like it was opened then sealed again (I supposedly bought a 100% new item).

Paypal asked me to return, on my charge, the item to the seller with a courier that supported tracking. I did, spent 30 euro in returning the item to the US (I'm in Spain).

You know what the guy did? He didn't pick it up until the paypal deadline was over!! So paypal CLOSED my case, the seller recovered his faulty item, kept ALL my money, and then I lost some more due to the delivery charges.

I kept trying to make Paypal understand that this guy was scamming paypal themselves as well as me.. but no way.. they would not stop to think.. all they said was "you haven't proved that you returned the item to the seller and therefore your case is closed".

I was WELL pissed after losing 250+ euro.

I'm not totally sure I understand here. I have had my money refunded to me more times then I can count (though I've been actively using ebay since the late 90's... first purchase was an eMate 300). I have had PayPal take myside on a lot of things I thought they wouldn't. One time I bought an item that was supposedly a 100% New Part (for my car) made in Germany with "OEM Quality" Well it was new, however it was obvious it wasn't a German made unit to me. There wasn't any proof of its origin of manufactuer actually. The guy had a ton of positive feedback too... and had a real tantrum about the whole ordeal. But in the end, I got my money refunded.