Post by svart on May 7, 2014 23:00:27 GMT -6
I sold my Phoenix a couple weeks ago on eBay. He offered a price, I countered and he accepted. Guy had 700+ positive feedbacks at 100%. Didn't pay right away, so I messaged him to see when he was going to pay. He gave me some story about losing his wallet and to give him a couple days to sort it. Couple days go by, no messages or anything, so I message him again. Then I find him on Gearslutz and message him there. Tells me he needs another day. Next day, still don't hear from him so I opened a dispute with eBay. He responds immediately then saying he would pay the next day. No payment. 4 days later, I was able to close the case with eBay, get my fees refunded, and relist the item. In the meantime, I had a couple people inquire about it and told them that it was sold. Ended up losing those buyers and lost a week of listing time. Huge pain in the balls and he's still out there with his 100% feedback and a strike against his account that nobody, except eBay, sees.
I got scammed on a set of speakers not too long ago. About 200$ or so. The scam is that someone buys something and pays through Paypal via a credit card. Once they have the items, they wait until the feedback cutoff date and then claim the item is "not as described". When they use that specific excuse in conjunction with asking their credit card company to do a "chargeback", Ebay/Paypal will recoup the money immediately out of your paypal account, or leaving you with negative dollars in your account, which you MUST replace with your own money or else the account gets locked and removed after a small amount of time. By the way, Ebay/Paypal confront you with this AFTER they've taken the money, not before. Oh, and you also get charged by the credit card company a fee as well. Oh and that item that had "seller protection"? If the buyer claims "not as described", that protection that you expected to have is taken away immediately. All your rights and protections as a seller disappear immediately because YOU are now the fraudster in their eyes, not the person who bought the item. So much for all the advertising that Ebay does to attract sellers.. It's BS. All of it.
Once this happens, you have a few days to state your own side of the story. Since it's "not as described" you essentially only get to say "it was as described" in a he-said-she-said argument. You fill out a form and you don't hear jack shit from anybody about how things are actually going. You get "updates" via Paypal in the form of "customer replied" and "credit card company replied" and absolutely nothing more.
Paypal also gets sole discretion in deciding whether to back you or not. Once they make a decision, you have absolutely no recourse. IF they take your side, the credit card company has 180 days to then decide what they are going to do. There is nothing more you can do but wait. To hear paypal tell this, they are bound by whatever the credit card company decides and cannot do anything else (essentially they explain why they have absolutely no liability to you or anyone else).
In my case, the credit card company found the dispute in my favor. They said nothing more and didn't admit it was fraud. They also didn't refund my "chargeback fee" of 20$ that they levied against me, even though they found that this was a scam, which I'm assuming simply because they refunded my money.
Paypal then closes the dispute immediately and you can't ask questions about it nor ask about getting your chargeback fee back.
It truly sucks, and I've had this done 3 times over the last couple years. Fortunately it's been fairly low $$ stuff and they've found in my favor every time, but I know a lot of people get hit with this on much more expensive stuff and end up losing their money AND the items they sold. Paypal won't tell you where the fraudulent buyer is located so you can contact the local police either.
