Justin used to sell on eBay until policy changes made it a more favorable marketplace for buyers than for sellers. But he still has his account and a good feedback rating, so he’s helping a friend sell off some gold coins worth a few hundred bucks each. They’re shipped UPS with signature confirmation and full insurance. The coin itself goes inside a plain envelope, placed inside a sealed cardboard UPS document mailer. This plan worked for 25 shipments, until the buyer from hell wandered into Justin’s life.
I used to make a nice living on eBay until they changed their policies and fees a few years back. Once they rid the marketplace of sellers being able to leave negatives on buyer I left as every transaction would go unpaid and as a seller I had no recourse.
Fast forward to a month ago, in this tough economic times my buddy wanted to liquidate some of the gold coins his family had been keeping for a while. I started selling gold coins on his behalf without trouble for about 25 transactions, until I had a horrific experience with [the buyer from hell] on ebay. Side note: until this point my friend had been receiving the money directly to his paypal and he was shipping the items. He went out of town and left me with three coins to ship while he was gone. [BFH] pays for the item and I ship his coin. I place it in a white regular envelope, seal it and then place the sealed envelope inside the UPS cardboard envelope (the document sized ones) and ship it with signature delivery, and insurance for the full value. If anything should happen, I should be covered.
Man was I wrong, a few days go by and I receive an email from [BFH] saying “The Envelope was empty” and immediately starts harassing me from there, using profanity and becomes increasingly threatening. He even looked up the address of the business I shipped the coin from, (my family business) then took it upon himself to go plaster our Facebook fan page cursing and threatening.
As I try and talk to him all he says is “go fuck yourself” etc. I tried explaining to him that I did indeed ship the coin and if there was a mistake then everything is insured and all will be right, but no the tirades continue. Without being able to resolve anything, he disputes the coin though eBay. Without speaking to anyone, eBay grants him his full refund.
The tirades continue, time and time again I explained to him he now has a full refund, he has not been screwed out of any money and someone obviously stole, or misplaced the coin during shipping. I would like to claim insurance on the package, so I am not out $450 as well.
Up until this point, it is just a typical eBay transaction gone wrong, but now is where I become upset with the process of UPS and eBay.
After numerous pleading emails to the buyer, he now understands that I need him to cooperate in order to receive my insurance claim from UPS. Under their terms, they must inspect the envelope before they grant an insurance claim. The buyer now tries extorting me for money in order for him to cooperate with UPS. He wants $100 delivered into his bank account or else he says he will never pick up the phone.
After countless calls to UPS & eBay they will not help. I’ve submitted documents to UPS and eBay explaining how he in writing has said he will not help without being paid. UPS continues to say that without inspecting the package or at least talking to the buyer, they will not grant insurance. I understand this is a common sense policy, but there MUST be special circumstances! I have in writing a customer that is basically telling me to go fuck myself because he has his money.
Moral of this story is, if you want anything for free on eBay just purchase an item, say you have received the item and the package was empty, never help the buyer. They will grant you a full refund, and the seller will be out money.
Unbelievable.
It is hard to put into words the frustration I have had with eBay and UPS and this story doesn’t even do it justice. I am being scammed by a user and then extorted to cooperate and UPS and eBay just sit back and do nothing!!!
I am out a gold coin, $450 plus $20 shipping UPS and I receive a big Negative from the buyer in my perfectly clean 1440 feedback!
What a mess. Systems put in place to instill confidence in buyers can instead give evil buyers a refuge when they scam honest sellers. I wish this were an isolated incident.
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As with any business, theft and bad customers are a part of the picture. One bad feed back won’t kill you, and you gotta accept that the money is gone. You can’t look at a single item, but at the big picture. For all the gold coins sales, look at the profit.
You fail to understand that this only works for large businesses. One flunked sale for a small business can mean they go tits up. Also, bad customers are not a “regular business liability.” The government had that same logic back in the day regarding construction incidents. They said there was an allowable amount of deaths/injuries per project. Now, they realize that ALL injuries can be prevented, just as all unscrupulous behavior can given we teach people to be more honest.
Settings eBay likes to hide:
* From “My eBay” go to Account > Site Preferences
* Next to “Buyer Requirements” click “Show” and then “Edit”
* For both “Buyers with Unpaid Item Strikes” and “Buyers with policy violation reports,” make sure these are set to the fewest problems for the longest amount of time. Remember: without the ability to leave buyers negative feedback, you must assume the worst.
* Probably want to check “Don’t allow blocked buyers to contact me,” unless you find humor in the messages Nigerians will send you.
And for the really, REALLY hidden setting:
* As above, on the “Site Preferences” page, click the “buyer requirements exemption list” near the top of the page.
* “Add an eBay user to my Blocked Buyer/Bidder List.”
* Anybody who rubs you the wrong way, anybody whose jib you like not the cut of, anybody you get any sort of negative vibes from in any way, shape or form, goes on this list. Not just the bad but also the merely questionable must go on this list, because blocking the questionable now is better than trying to deal with them when they go truly bad later.
For example, someone asks you a question you clearly already answered? Block them, as they are far more likely to file a “not as described” dispute; you have no idea what else they’re unable or unwilling to read.
Ridiculously lowball offer? Blatantly trying to test your naivete earns them a place on the list as well, as you don’t know what other avenues they’ll try to explore to shortchange you.
Be exceedingly liberal with the blacklist, because it’s often the only protection you’ll have as a seller.
Done and done, right before I start queueing up a whole metric shit-ton of listings.
I agree, I was fleeced on eBay by a buyer who switched items on me and got eBay to side with him even though we found through his feedback he had done this numerous times before. There are a bunch of bottom feeders on eBay right now and I guess the deals get even better if you yell and say you never got the item or the item was damaged even though it was INSURED!. I suspect a class action lawsuit is due…
If you read ebay policies carefully you’ll find that all the legalese overwhelmingly supports the buyers. Ebay/Half.com does this to increase the buyer pool by making them feel safe and protected. Having been a seller for many years I can say that its total absurdity…its pretty much a one way street on protective rights, and with recent drop shipping scams (where the buyer fwds it to another seller to skim profit and then claims you didn’t send it) it’s getting even worse. If Ebay/Half.com doesn’t wisen up to these recent trends, they really deserve to go down, and as sellers we should all play our role by leaving the market.
If you shipped with USPS you could send a few nasty postal inspectors
I just removed all my school textbooks up for sale on half.com after reading this, i would rather have Amazon have my business
Get a lawyer man, you have one hell of a case. Sue the buyer for defamation of character, sue for harassment, sue eBay, sue sue sue
good luck, this why we have bloodsucking lawyers.
Also file a police report in the jurisdiction of the buyer for theft and extorsion. With any luck they will show up to his place with a warrant looking for the gold coin. Best case you get the coin back and still sue him for whatever he has for defamation of character. Ask the judge to ban him from the internet (they actually do that too in harassment cases).
That’s not going to get anywhere. First, there wouldn’t be a search warrant. Second, even if there were, it’s not likely to turn up something so easy to stash or move as a coin. Third, even if they obtain a warrant and find a coin, how would they prove it’s *this* coin? Unless there’s a pattern of several complaints, I wouldn’t expect to see any action from the authorities.
The answer, in this case, is to learn from the situation. First, if the both parties are being honest, then the coin might have been stolen while the package was in transit. This has been known to happen from time to time, especially with high dollar insurance policies on small or light packages. Second, if the buyer is being dishonest, then the seller would need to be able to prove this. In either case, selecting a shipping method that provides a verifiable chain of custody is imperative. USPS registered mail provides such a service. Alternately, for purchases of this nature by establish brokerages, it is not uncommon to utilize a bonded courier service. Protecting the shipment is the seller’s responsibility, and unfortunately, due diligence was not performed in this case, and the lesson has come at great expense to the OP.
OP knew eBay/PayPal was no longer safe for sellers, but used them anyway to sell an expensive item. Wow.
People still use eBay? I never see that old website mentioned anymore. It’s all Craigslist, Facebook and Twitter now days.
I think at the very least you have a case for extortion. Because it was over state lines, perhaps a federal charge under money laundering since gold was involved. Contact your police and see what they suggest. At the very least file a stolen property report.
I’m done with ebay and paypal. My last ebay transaction was a camera that I sold for a bit over $800. The buyer was really nice though the whole transaction, I even helped him via email to get it connected to his computer. He thanked me and said everything was working great, he loved it and blah blah blah. Fast forward to about a month later and my paypal account is $800 in the negative. He decided to do a chargeback and claim he never received it. I provided the delivery confirmation with signature, emails form him saying he was happy with it and paypal didn’t do a damn thing about it. So now it seems if you want something for free, just do a chargeback, paypal won’t do anything to help make things right.
That’s evil too. So many people know they can get away this kind of fraud it’s outrageous.
Ask for the camera back or call the police. Simple as that.
Was the gold coin insured by the OP’s buddy ? At the very least, he could file a claim with his insurance company. I’m not sure, however, how a value would be determined for the loss.
Did the buyer have a feedback record? I know eBay screwed up the FB system by allowing only Positive FB for buyers. It’s insane and horrible for sellers, but they did it. But did your buyer have a record? Newbie bidders are a no-no for anything better than used panties.
ya ebay is totally slanted for the buyer….even tho its the seller that does all the work and pays all the fees.
You should take him to court of damaging your reputation ,if the case is true and he will not help state the time and frequency of his calls with a short description and print it all out The take UPS and him to court -neither will probably show up for court and you will get a default judgement for your money and court fee’s..
Funny how sellers complain about how unfair Ebay/Paypal is to sellers, I stopped using both years ago after being crapped on by one too many powersellers.. Ebay let them get away with all kinds of crap.. Heck, even normal sellers sold crap and there was nothing Ebay would do..
Sure, there are (and have been) bad sellers. While powersellers were given special privileges, that doesn’t take away from the fact that occasional sellers have to deal with this kind of BS.
Oh, and I was primarily a seller, and had my share of scumbags to deal with, but also received broken merchandise and bootlegged tapes as a buyer.
This is happening time and time again on ebay now. I too, am done selling on ebay. I haven’t been screwed yet, but I’m stopping before then. I had a friend get screwed this same way just last summer on some communications equipment. He also lost hundreds. Ridiculous.
OK, lesson learned. Now here is the correct way to ship coins or other monetary instruments: NEVER, NEVER ship those items through UPS or FEDEX. ALWAYS go to the Post Office and ship REGISTERED MAIL.
Yeah, I stopped selling on ebay when they made my life hell over a SUCCESSFUL transaction, conspiring with PayPal to hold my money for two months even after I received a positive review. I’d rather sell on CraigsList (and I’d never sell on CL) than deal with ebay again.
He should file a theft/rifling report with the post office. Most dishonest buyers will not risk being charged with fraud and will drop the case.
it went UPS not USPS.
And this is why I will no longer sell on eBay, either.
My man, you need to look into postal fraud.
eBay has become unbelievable. Every time I sell an item anymore, I have a feeling in the back of my head that I’ll never see a payment or have an experience like this. The thing that needs to happen is shippers change their insurance policies if associated with an ebay sale. This is effecting them too.
ebay is always a gamble, but i think there are good people out there.
i have lost items 2 times, once to a buyer in Mexico and once to a buyer in Colombia.My dad works for usps and said certian countried have “issues” with customs.
i trust people and i have been treated well on ebay.
If you are selling on eBay, before you ship the item can you make the person sign a legal document stating that if the product is damaged or stolen during shipping that they are to cooperate with the shipping company to finish the insurance claim? And failure to do so will result in a small claims court complaint in the seller’s jurisdiction and/or a complaint of theft to the police in the buyer’s jurisdiction?
My husband sells model trains on eBay. We didn’t have BFH as bad as this guy did, but eBay’s actions to the situation were absolutely absurd. Without going into the whole story, it ended with eBay PAYING the BFH to remove his negative feedback from our account. What kind of solution is that? They are rewarding the guy for lying in the first place. Granted, there is no way really for eBay to find out the truth because they don’t even ask, much less have any way to verify anyone’s story. Whatever, we still use it to sell, but at least the trains are relatively cheap ($20-50, occasionally $100 max).
Oh, don’t get me started on the guy who complained that the train arrived broken, and wanted a refund. Fine, we have no problem giving you a FULL refund as long as you send the train back to us, on our dime. He refused, and still opened a dispute. He couldn’t produce the “broken” product for refund, and luckily eBay ruled in our favor. Sorry, buddy, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
So…what exactly does Paypal mean by “Seller Protection” then?? Should I stop wasting my money on delivery confirmation if it doesn’t mean a damn thing in eBay’s eyes?
I suggest the seller signs that buyer up for EVERY magazine subscription on the face of the earth (go to B&N and collect subscription cards out of every single magazine there). Google his name and address–you’ll be surprised how much you can learn about a buyer this way. I had a guy dick me around on eBay once and I managed to find him and his girlfriend on Facebook as well as his place of employment. Fun ensued. Terrorize the mofo.
What comes to mind is sealing the package in front of a licensed notary and have the notary be witness that the coin was in the package. Have this done for expensive items. Then when it comes to court you have a rock solid witness. The judge will love that. Facts are facts!
First mistake was using UPS. Keep in mind that if you ship to Canada and UPS smells internet sale they will tack on a $40 “brokerage fee” also they nearly always charge duties even on duty free items. If you as a shipper ask about them they will deny they exist. At the receiving end they hold a gun to your package. Before buying anything from the US I check to make sure they aren’t using UPS. Ship a package USPS to Canada and it is usually here in a week.
UPS is scum.
I don’t understand. How does anyone make money selling things on Ebay and why does anyone continue to use it if this kind of activity is so prevalent? Are there any other less abusive companies where this kind of practice isn’t tolerated that can be used instead?
And, don’t forget PreyPal’s facilitating of this loss ‚Ķ
“When Do We Start Calling eBay A Payments Company?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/ebays-transformation-when-do-we-start-calling-ebay-a-payments-company-2012-1
A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say. This linked “Business Insider” article contains a graph of eBay revenues since 2003. It shows, quite starkly, how eBay’s Marketplace revenue has stagnated since 2008, about the time that the headless turkey from Bain & Co, John Donahoe, got hold of the tiller and started his “destructive renovations”. eBay’s share price has moved little in the same period; ergo the eBay Marketplace has effectively been in decline since 2008.
It should be obvious, even to the simplest of analysts, that as time passes, the Amazon River flows ever more strongly, whereas the eBay Marketplace now consists of little more than a chain of stagnant ponds covered in slimy green algae—and isn’t that a couple of rusting Chinese-made shopping trolleys that I can see dumped therein?
The graph also shows the eBay-underpinning increases in revenue that eBay has received from PreyPal during the same period, that is, from roughly when the “eBafia Don” effectively mandated PreyPal’s use on the eBay Marketplace. Some analysts therefore think that eBay’s future lays in PreyPal.
Well, if anyone thinks that the retail banks are going to let parasitic middlemen, such as the clunky, “merchant of sorts”, PreyPal—who after all does no more than ride, precariously, on the back of those banks’ own payments processing systems—continue to nibble away at one of the banks’ principal areas of business for any length of time, all I can say is, dream on …
PreyPal is little more than a clumsy, fraud-enabling middleman the use of which also nullifies the statutory protections that, in many countries, would otherwise be available to users paying directly via a real bank’s credit card.
Then there is PreyPal’s current testing of “mobile payments” at POS in Home Depot stores. Are people actually leaving their funds “on deposit” with this clunky, unlicensed, prudentially unregulated, PayPal “non-bank” that is itself not even licensed to provide credit? Otherwise, how are the funds for such mobile payments being sourced by PreyPal from the payer’s real banking account in a way that the merchant can be sure of ultimately getting paid by PreyPal? Not with the standard non-guarantee of payment that PreyPal serves up to its online merchants, I hope.
And, unfortunately for eBay’s chief headless turkey, Visa’s professional online offering “V.me”, when it is up and running later this year, will undoubtedly put paid to whatever success that the clunky PreyPal has had with professional online merchants outside of its mandated use on the eBay Marketplace. And soon thereafter both these unscrupulous and clunky entities should commence/continue their long-deserved journeys down the gurgler.
Scott Thompson saw the writing on the wall; John Donahoe remains delusional, that fact confirmed by the reported sightings of him waving his mobile phone about and mumbling about UFO sightings over San Jose.
“How secure is PayPal for sellers?”—UK “Guardian”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jan/27/is-paypal-safe-protection?commentpage=last#end-of-comments
And an interesting follow up to this UK “Guardian” article at:
http://www.hadess.net/2012/01/getting-conned-ebaypaypal-fun.html
“Vendor Claims eBay Plays Dirty” [Who would have believed it?]
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/01/43529.htm
“Seller Files Suit Against eBay” [eBay’s “Featured Plus” scam]
http://www.theonlineseller.com/2012/01/27/seller-files-suit-against-ebay/#comment-383
“New Developments in PayPal Class Action Lawsuit over Payment Holds”
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m11/i11/s01
“A PayPal Christmas” [cartoon video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2fk56ktVE&lr=1
“PayPal: The Horror Stories” [What, more?]
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23607
“Does Visa Have The PayPal-Killing Card In Its Wallet?” [Yes!]
http://consumerist.com/2011/03/does-visa-have-the-paypal-killing-card-in-its-wallet.html
“Visa Launching PayPal-Like V.me Service Next Year” [2012]
http://consumerist.com/2011/11/visa-launching-paypal-like-vme-service-next-year.html
Scott Thompson abandons the struggling eBay for the struggling Yahoo
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=166803#post166803
PayPal claims PayPal not a debit card or payment network!
http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24148
Then, if all that‚Äôs not enough to inform you of the utter contempt that a great many users feel for PreyPal and eBay, try Googling ‚ÄúPayPal sucks‚Äù and you will find about ten million more reasons. There‚Äôs more involved in judging the future of a corporation than simply its published financials, and this applies especially to eBay/PayPal, who have become the two most despised commercial entities on the planet‚Äîeven more despised than “the banks”, and that has taken some doing …
eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking
I used Ebay for years without much hassle, both as buyer and seller….but one lousy buyer changed all that, and now I find that it’s just easier to buy items through Amazon, and use my local classifieds website for selling (in Canada, usually Kijiji).
Honestly, it’s not worth the hassle to sell on Ebay anymore; sold a beautiful little 1980′s Nikon lens that took fantastic pics, but was completely manual focus. Buyer waited 3 weeks to complain about the lens, and wanted a full refund…despite me posting a 1 week return window (more than enough time to test a lens). I said no, he disputed, back and forth for a month with rep from Ebay asking me to just give the lens back (lens was over 300, so I wasn’t going to give up without a fight), until I finally got lucky and Ebay sided with me….although the negative stain on my feedback annoyed the bejesus out of me. Long story short, not worth it anymore.
A bright spot is that he didn’t keep you from getting the insurance refund. UPS would not have paid anyway.
Next time send it USPS, Registered. The possibility of facing a postal inspector should get the miscreant in line pronto.
A lot of people aren’t aware but you can generally call Paypal or Ebay and talk about a case. I’ve done this twice and it was a lot easier than dealing with the online back and forth. The last time was about 3 months ago when I sold a pretty messed up (water damage) phone. I think the buyer intended on repairing it and failed but around a month after the auction ended he opens a claim saying he never received it. I had tracking for it so I called up Paypal and told them that USPS said he received it almost a month ago. They told me that I had done my job and this was more of a paypal issue and closed the claim in my favor.
I had another issue with a messed up phone about 2 years ago that ended very similarly. The buyer complained about issues I clearly stated in the auction and damage that was clearly visible in the photos. The Ebay rep asked me if I wanted to give him a partial refund to keep him happy which I declined and she closed it in my favor. It took under 15 minutes both times. I’m sure these reps are going through thousands of claims a day so actually getting one on the phone who takes a couple minutes to actually review everything completely can make a huge difference.
Have a lot of stuff would like to sell on ebay. But with the current “screw the seller” policy, will just stick to Craig’s List. Too bad would make more money on ebay.
Court is usually a waste of time. Under several $1000 they want you in small claims court. My county will only accept a case if the person you’re suing also lives the the county.
This counts as internet fraud, and possibly mail fraud. I got scammed by someone online once, and I filed a complaint with the government’s online fraud… thing. Sorry I don’t have a link for you. It got me my $50 back. You might want to Google that and check it out.
Also, I’m not a lawyer
As someone who has worked for 2 top eBay sellers (both with over 200,000 feedback) for the last 5 years, I can say that, sadly, this does not surprise me at all. It is the general consensus in the eBay selling community that eBay has become progressively more prone to side on behalf of the buyer, and while this does not necessarily seem a bad thing, it obviously (and frequently) applies even when the seller is not at fault.
They introduced their (officially titled) “eBay Buyer Protection” policy about a year ago, and since then my company is lucky to have a case decided upon in our favor every few weeks, at best. We have maybe 3-7 cases opened up against us each day, just because of the volume of business we do. Of course, we actively work with buyers to ensure they are content with their purchases, but when they are unwilling to work with us, that’s when eBay tends to step in and just side with them.
I handle cases all the time where a buyer is completely unreasonable and unwilling to ship back an item which they claim is damaged or not as advertised, and eBay quite often, ultimately closes the case and automatically issues a refund to the buyer. It’s a shame, and this is just the icing on the cake when you also take into account their regular fee hikes, poor customer service and utterly preposterous expectations as far as seller feedback and “DSR” (detailed seller ratings) is concerned.
My company has been struggling more and more just to appease our buyers as well as eBay, even getting to the point where we have nearly faced account suspension on multiple occasions despite maintaining a positive feedback percentage of 99.5% and above!
My opinion? If you’re a seller, ditch eBay for Amazon. There are a million reasons why and I won’t go into the details, but really — at least try it.
What about taking Ebay or PayPal or even the buyer to small claims court? Could he do that?
I’m an ebay seller (reluctantly, of course) and I have a couple good stories. Yes, it is true that since the policies changed on negative feedback left for buyers (left from sellers); the likelihood of scams has gone up exponentially. I had one guy who bought a jacket from me and did the “box was empty” scam; he got his money back, I’m out a $200 jacket, and ebay instantly sides with the buyers. (btw, I have a 100% rating with more than 200 sales and the kid had a rating of less than TEN!!!) However, after getting fed up with dealing with paypal and ebay giving me the runaround; I decided to take matters in my own hands. Here’s what I did; since I knew his full name and location, I decided to “friend” him on facebook. Since he already knew my name, I used my friend’s account and he friended me instantly. I then sat on it a little bit and posted a message on his “wall” about being scammed of the jacket and asked his friends if they had noticed him wearing the jacket. (It was a REALLY unique jacket and very difficult to find); low-and-behold, I got about a dozen replies (one even from a family member) telling me that they have seen him with the jacket and how he wears it all the time. Long story, short…I got the police involved, they made a visit to his residence, got my jacket back, and he received a HUGE fine for the misdemeanor and he was humiliated on facebook in a variety of ways through my “trolling” on his wall. Yes, I was eventually “unfriended”, but I got a good 3 or 4 days of digs on his own wall before the idiot could figure out how to “unfriend” me.
Second story, now whenever I’m selling/sending an item to a buyer who has a dubious rating/ebay history, I get the package “notarized” with proof of item being sent from a “secure” location with enough safeguards to ensure that they can NEVER claim that the package arrived empty. I’ve even gone as far as boxing it much like the “Russian Eggs” nestle into each other. (i.e., a box in a box in a box in another box and then duct taped inside a last box.) I now make it somewhat of a game when I sell my items and LOVE to get disputes and shoot them down with all the PROOF that I have that it was sent. I’ve actually had a couple ebayers have the audacity to tell me that the last box was empty and then I delight in sending them PROOF that I had my delivery notarized. I usually don’t get any replies, payment is sent, and they then delete their account on ebay.
Can’t believe no one replied to this. You are awesome.
Buyers can do what ever they want on Ebay. There are a lot of psychos there who will also try to bully you into selling them things at a cut price. Sellers also have no way to flag evil doers so that others have any warning at all.
The problem is definately ebay automatically believing the buyer and not allowing the seller to leave negative feedback. They should at least require the seller to work with the buyer to file an insurance claim before deciding the case! I had this same problem. Thankfully it was only a loss of $10 on a gift card, but it infuriated me because I received several emails from other seller saying the say buyer was scamming them the same way. We all lost! She bought 20 $10 gift cards that day and ended up getting them all for free. I guess she thought noone would waste too much time fighting for $10, but we all notifed ebay and all got back generic responses showing they didn’t even check it out. It’s so sad that ebay allows scammers! They won’t even shut down their accounts!
This guy was a professional scammer. I would have gone straight to the Feds. When it comes to gold and jewelry, the scammers come out of the woodwork. He got the coins and your $450, then wanted to profit even more. You did not handle this right. I would have written a letter to UPS, then went to the FBI or Secret Service ASAP. They need to find this guy. He has likely done the same thing to other people.
This is all you need to know. You were just too nice to this guy. I wouldn’t have sent him any money back until a full investigation was completed.
In future, sell these items face to face in your local area, at a public place. That way, you can get the money, see if it’s real, meet the buyer and hand him the items so you know he got them.
The buyer requested $100 be deposited in his bank account or he would not pick up the phone. That’s not extortion. The buyer has no legal obligation to cooperate with an insurance claim. The buyer is simply requesting compensation for performing an service that is not legally required of him.
The buyer doesn’t become the seller’s indentured servant when entering into an ebay transaction. The thirteenth amendment to the constitution forbids forced servitude.
The carrier knows perfectly well that many buyers refuse to cooperate with insurance claims, but failed to disclose that fact to the seller.
A buyer should never cooperate with an insurance claim, because by doing so they are giving testimony under penalty of perjury. Nobody should ever put themselves at risk of prosecution, if they don’t have to.
” Systems put in place to instill confidence in buyers can instead give evil buyers a refuge when they scam honest sellers”
How daft are you? eBay *IS* a system to give evil buyers a refuge for scamming honest sellers.
eBay/PayPal is the most evil organization on the face of the planet. The entirety of their organization should be dismantled and shuttered with prejudice. How their heinous hijinks haven’t landed every single employee in jail is beyond me.
You could go full psycho on him:
Basically the idea is to make him think you’re crazy and that if he doesn’t help out, there’s some serious ‘oh shit’ type stuff that will go down.
Fedex him a banana with “$100″ sharpied on it. Include a note that says something to the effect of “I paid your satanic fee to answer your phone. Our Lord Jesus asks you to help me get my money back. You’ll help me right? Oh Lord please say you’ll help me… or are you an agent of Satan?”
Photoshop a plane ticket which shows a trip to an airport near his address for an airport near you. It should have a close date on it. Email that to him.
Burn the song “They’re coming to take me away” on an audio cd. As many times as will fit. Then find somebody on craig’s list that you can mail it to who will deliver it to his mailbox (make sure it’s not in an envelope. Make sure “$100″ is sharpied on it.
Call the local police in the area and ask them to do a wellness check on him.
Post the results on youtube and link to it in future ebay posts as “scammers beware”.
You could go full psycho on him:
Basically the idea is to make him think you’re crazy and that if he doesn’t help out, there’s some serious ‘oh shit’ type stuff that will go down.
Fedex him a banana with “$100″ sharpied on it. Include a note that says something to the effect of “I paid your satanic fee to answer your phone. Our Lord Jesus asks you to help me get my money back. You’ll help me right? Oh Lord please say you’ll help me… or are you an agent of Satan?”
Photoshop a plane ticket which shows a trip to an airport near his address for an airport near you. It should have a close date on it. Email that to him.
Burn the song “They’re coming to take me away” on an audio cd. As many times as will fit. Then find somebody on craig’s list that you can mail it to who will deliver it to his mailbox (make sure it’s not in an envelope. Make sure “$100″ is sharpied on it.
Call the local police in the area and ask them to do a wellness check on him.
Post the results on youtube and link to it in future ebay posts as “scammers beware”.
I’d say it’s time to file a police report and go to small claims court.
Yeah, I tend to avoid eBay when it comes to selling things. My story is nowhere near as bad as this, but I did sell my old Xbox on Ebay because I had gotten a newer one. The disc drive needed to be opened manually with a paper clip. This was explained in the auction. The person who buys it ends up giving me negative feedback because the drive “Did not work”. Now, you can respond to feedback, but they don’t give you anywhere near enough space to explain anything. It’s amusing how they cater to buyers, but without sellers there would be no eBay….
If there is evidence (e.g. messages that went through ebay), it would probably be enough for small claims court.