Yes, I can't believe this is even a question. In order to maintain accurate eBay feedback you need to return the phone and state what happened. Chances are they will send you a new, replacement phone.

I honestly can't believe people would buy electronics on eBay. I use the site for many things, clothes, patterns, household items, etc. Never for important purchases.

Um, why don't you try talking to the seller before you initiate a claim with eBay. Usually, if they say to contact them before leaving bad feedback, they'll be pretty flexible to try to make sure you're happy.

Used? Porny? I call it a wash!

I wonder what she means by "shocker porn". That seems to be a very limited genre if you're confined to variations of "two in the pink, one in the stink."

In the battery compartment though, the little dot with the fine red lines to detect whether its been dropped in water- it's just white.

Doesn't the lack of red lines mean that it HASN'T been exposed to water? In all of the stickers I have seen, they change to a color, and it's usually the whole sticker.

@nataku83: I agree that this might be an effective way to get resolution. However, this can also lead to artificially inflated eBay feedback.

If the seller convinces a buyer who was deceived, but then given an exchange, to leave positive feedback, it's harder for future bidders to see that the seller was deceptive.

I recently put some things on eBay, and you can't even list that you accept MONEY ORDERS OR CHECKS as payment anymore! It HAS TO BE Paypal, or propay, or some other stupid garbage. What the heck is up with that! eBay has gotten so bad its ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if they deny your refund.

I bought an electronics product (an ASUS Eee PC 904HA) off of eBay once, last December. The seller was the eBay store of an online retailer, ZipZoomFly. They had it for less than anyone else ($330 plus free shipping vs. $350 that most sellers were charging via Buy It Now), plus I had a PayPal/eBay coupon for 15% off and I took advantage of Microsoft Live Search Cashback for 25% cash back (which I received in February). The only problem with the transaction or the product was that the FedEx guy left it in front of my door in spite of the signature requirement, and obviously that's not the seller's fault.

@Eric Jay: There's a pretty big difference between sellers who screw up, or are deceptive initially, and then when the customer complains, they go out of their way to fix the issue, and sellers who screw up or are deceptive initially, and then are dicks about it and won't issue a refund, exchange, etc... If the seller is willing to fix the issue, I think they deserve the good feedback.

Also, I'm a little amazed that "buyer not satisfied with eBay purchase" really deserves to be a story - she didn't have a problem with eBay itself, or LG, or any major retailer - this sort of thing is basically just how eBay works, and why they even have a transaction system in the first place.

I'm astounded that the question was even asked. An LG phone with a non-LG charger was the first problem I had. Then there was the scratches. And I would have returned it right then and there. All of the clues together practically scream "I'm not new!" in neon.

@AbsurdHero: COTD, hands down!

eBay has gone downhill. You can't leave negative feedback any longer for buyer's who don't actually pay. The get a "strike" against them that is not easy to view. There are so many little things they have done to ruin the overall experience...Back to the basics, eBay!!

Older moisture detectors are solid white until tripped. The LG chocolate is an older phone, and would all but definately have this style moisture detector. These were abandoned for the new style that is white with red cross-hatched lines because people were able to bleach the old ones after they were tripped to return them to the way they originally looked. It sounds like the moisture indicator on this phone is fine. It's still used though, I would send it back or at least ask for a partial refund.

The phone I got from ebay was loaded with personal information from the seller. It was amazing. Ebay, , email, paypal, romance sites--all that account info was there for the taking. You never know what you will get.

@nataku83: Even if there is a difference in the seller types she still needs to leave the feedback. She should contact them and explain what happened, yes. If they send he a new phone she should leave feedback that states "Seller sent used phone with scratches, I notified them and they sent me a new, replacement phone." It is a huge pain in the ass and other buyers need to be aware of the seller's practices. They probably get away with it because people think it's no big deal and keep used/incorrectly described goods.

i hate to be the hater here, but i will be.

i'd like to see a screen shot of the listing before the seller gets drawn and quartered.

that being said, as stated above, the seller usually works with you so you can get what you are lookig for, if not, they are usually willing to issue any refunds as necessary if they are a power seller.

i've bought many things on ebay and find that most of the reputable sellers are good people.

side note: i am a big fan of the best offer feature. i once got a pair of $80 dress pants for $17 shipped. i also got a new era 5950 which retailed for $40 for $20 shipped.

@Marc Melton: Yet another helpful unrelated Facebook comment. Ebay announced long ago that they were moving away from cash and check.

@nataku83: "I'm a little amazed that "buyer not satisfied with eBay purchase" really deserves to be a story..."

Yeah, this one puzzled me as well. I guess all it takes is an electronics purchase with some kind of porno on it to warrant a headline.

In my experience, if a listing begs you to contact the seller before providing negative feedback, you should just look away. That is the sign of a seller anticipating a problem and hoping to get away with something. On the other hand, the multitude of positive reviews the sellers has is probably evidence that he/she will cave quickly if you approach them for compensation.

@Marc Melton: Actually, "significantly not as described" claims are more recently quite skewed in favor of buyers, which has made many sellers pretty unhappy.

@backbroken: Yeah, if it seems like the seller is anticipating a problem, he/she is possibly looking to get away with something less discerning people would care about. Personally, I can't imagine buying electronics on eBay.

@Hyman Decent: So this is a complaint about FedEx and not eBay then, right?

Want to bet it was a "new" phone that was previously returned and resold as new? This phone will probably just keep going out until someone doesn't think its worth the time to fight it.

Even big companies are pretty bad about not clearly marking returned items.

Now it's been two days since I've had it, and I'm really enjoying it.

I think you all are missing the lead of the story. Why return a phone she is happy with? That's a losing proposition for Lillian. She is in a great position as a customer. The seller will probably offer a discount to remedy her dissatisfaction.

Winner: Lillian.

@Raekwon: Que?

@twophrasebark: Because even though she likes the phone, it's clearly not what she paid for. She paid for a new phone, with a presumably new charger, not a phone that has links from someone else on it.

I've seen the white sticker inside the battery compartment turn a color when exposed to liquid- I would contact LG and confirm what the color of the sticker was initially, if you can. My phone also has a sticker on the battery... worth checking the color of that if it has one.

@Melt: I agree completely. There has to be a system of checks/balances for both buyers and sellers.

@Shannon: I bought a Mac Pro for $2200 on eBay. Went just fine, of course the thing is still under warranty for another 2 years; I don't think I would have pulled the trigger without that.

@Eric Jay: "If the seller convinces a buyer who was deceived, but then given an exchange, to leave positive feedback, it's harder for future bidders to see that the seller was deceptive."

Yes, exactly. I was promised priority shipping if I bought two items, and only got first class shipping. I contacted the seller to offer them a chance to explain/make it right and got the blow off. Only after I left negative feedback did they really respond (and then only to tell me I was blowing it out of proportion). But how many people do they do this to that do not leave negative feedback? I bought it from that seller specifically for the free priority shipping.

What's with all the porn ending up in "new" but actually refurbed products nowadays? Isn't this like the third story of someone thinking they bought something new only to find out that not only was it not new, but full of porn?

@RecordStoreToughGuy: Reply system sometimes posts to a different comment. It was to the one below me.

@korybing: To be fair, there are far more stories of consumers buying items they thought were new and finding all kinds of normal information on them, like e-mails and addresses in the address book. These types of stories don't get as much attention as the pr0n ones.

@rdm: Alright, that example makes sense. But let's say you contacted them about the shipping screwup, they apologized profusely and gave you a full refund for the shipping, would you still leave a negative feedback afterward?

Also, in my above posts, I wasn't even advocating that she just give a blanket positive feedback, I was suggesting that she actually try talking to the seller BEFORE SHE FILES A FREAKING EBAY CLAIM!!! (or even contacting 'the media', for that matter). If you've ever gone through the claims process, they tell you to try to work it out with the seller first. Also, getting eBay involved is probably a lot more likely to turn this into a story that deserves to be on consumerist.

@Shannon: I've made numerous electronics purchases (laptops, smartphones, home theater) off eBay and never had a problem. One of the things I look for is that an actual photo of the item is part of the listing, not a stock photo. Asking questions of the seller and gauging their knowledge and completeness of answers is always helpful.

@backbroken: "Near-perfect" can also mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I've often heard folks unfamiliar with eBay consider 95% positive to be an excellent feedback rating.

eBay = Scammer's Headquarters.

Those highly rated reputations are bogus at best. I could garner a 99.9% rating selling $1 Pokemon cards and then switch to selling $1000 cameras and nobody would ever be the wiser. By time I have scammed a couple thousand buyers out of their $1000 per fake camera I will be a Millionaire and leaving the country before eBay has even started their fraud investigation.

@Marc Melton: That is exactly why I will no longer buy anything on Ebay. Selling on Ebay isn't even an issue for me.

I hate PayPal and I refuse to use it. All they are doing is trying to create more PayPal customers out of what's left of the Ebay customers. Gr-r-r-r-r!

@Corporate-Shill: You can look at the seller history to see what items were sold. And with eBay listing fees and paypal, making 1,000 $1 listings to rip one person out of $1,000 would be a total waste of time.

Ratings are NOT worthless you're even semi-competent on the site.

@Hyman Decent:

Fedex failing to require a signature is the fault of the seller.

Residential deliveries, unless adult signature required, can be left at the door solely at the discretion of the delivery driver.

When the shipper, for legal and/or other reasons, requires an adult signature and pays the appropriate fee to FedEx for obtaining said signature, FedEx is required by Federal and/or State law to obtain said signature.

Because obtaining an adult signature is a pain in the arse, shipping companies only do so when directed by the shipper.

Legal reasons for obtaining an adult signature include the sale of fire arms, ammunition, chemicals including some household cleaning products as well as adult products such as alcohol, tobacco and some printed, photographic or video material. Additionally, adult signature required can be used to show delivery of legal documents, such as business contracts or warranties.

Because of the extra charges involved with adult signature required, many vendors (especially low quality and scamming vendors) will ignore the adult signature section of the shipping document and hope the shipping company collects an adult signature as part of the normal delivery. Except,as already noted, adult signature is driver discretionary for residential deliveries.

Next time, please do not blame FedEx for errors of the shipper.

PS: I do not ship via FedEx, I am a UPS shipper. My comments above also apply to UPS.

I too had a similar experience when buying a cell phone for my girlfriend as a gift. The seller had a ridiculously high rating and seemed to only deal in cell phones so I trusted them.

The phone was obviously used with 100s of hours of calls logged in the internal timer as well as nicks, scratches, pictures, and other personal data still on the phone.

I contacted the seller and he was quick to resolve the issue with a full refund, including shipping. He claimed that he sold a couple of hundred phones a month, new and used, and they accidentally shipped me a used version of the model I wanted.

@korybing: Smut Faeries.

They sneak into asian factories and sprinkle girl-on-girl-on-goat and midget wrestling dust all over the flash drives of cell phones, then kiss them with a smattering of dodgy links on their way out of the factory.

@nataku83: This really isn't a case of an honest seller making an oops. They very deliberately and intentionally marketed a used and abused phone as a new one. If the seller doesn't immediately tell them to go to hell or ignore the contact attempt, they'll probably stall the issue long enough for it to be too old to force ebay/paypal to do something about it.

I'm also willing to bet this seller didn't already leave feedback for the buyer, in an attempt to punish them for revealing the truth in feedback.

@Applekid: I never said the seller was honest. I've run into plenty of dishonest sellers, who, when caught will apologize and make up for it. If you don't contact the freaking seller, you'll never know.

Shocker porn? For us to validate that claim, we're going to have to ask you to post those links here. We'll need to determine if those are indeed categorized as 'shocker.'

@Shannon:

I've been buying electronics on ebay for over 10 years. Just today I received 3 WIC-2T's that I won last week and are going into the three Cisco routers I bought on eBay.

I've had deals from Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, Canada, and nearly every continental US state.

So far I've only had one deal that almost went bad with a purchase in Canada, and that was when I was 18 and completely ignorant of ebay scams.

I've had some items arrive not-as-described, and in every case the seller either made it right immediately, or eventually made a refund through the resolution process.

In that same 10 years I've had more problems with brick and mortar stores wanting to give me the shaft over defective merchandise.

@backbroken: @Ratty: After 90 days, the item listed under a given piece of feedback is erased, so it would be possible to stealthily rip someone off just as in Corporate-Shill's scenario.

However, I do think that feedback still has value the vast majority of time.

I hardly ever buy stuff off ebay anymore. You always end up getting something you didn't pay for.

Paypal can refund the money if the seller does not. I mean, they must be able to do that since they ALWAYS hold my friggin' money when I'm stupid enough to forget that they do that and sell something on Ebay.

I'm sure a whole lot of desperate people are selling things on Ebay right now just to pay the bills, only to find they have to wait out a hold.

I just sold a $600 camera. It took my buyer 6 days to pay, now I'm in a 21 day hold for those funds, then I will have to wait 4-5 business days for the funds to move to my checking account. Thankfully, the money isn't breaking my back but Ebay is just not worth the hassle anymore. Between Ebay fees and shipping the camera, I've paid $60 out of pocket while waiting for the funds to clear.

@backbroken:

I can see you've never had much contact with the typical ebay riff-raff.

When I used to sell on ebay full time we would get negative feedback constantly with no idea there was even a problem with an item.

If the seller isn't aware of a problem, they sure can't fix it for you. We'd e-mail a return UPS label, or send UPS out to your home to pick it up, whichever was more convenient.

Our terms were pretty simple: If it wasn't as described, we'd give a full refund, plus return shipping.

A lot of the ebay sellers out there now won't cover return shipping, and won't refund the initial shipping either.