****ing amateurs

They got you though 😉

(Hope it gets sorted)

iPhones right? Why is this £1550?? Seller & bidders all with 0 feedback
Mental

Pretty sure that you can open the paypal dispute as well.

It also means that he temporarily loses access to his funds and alerts paypal that he’s a fraudster. although both are ebay companies, they really don’t talk to each other.

They got you though

*adds bearnecessities to the list*

I’ve already noted that when if I scam somebody for an iPhone on ebay I need to make sure I send out an iPhone sized package.

everyday is a school day eh
Good luck Jamie

dez, money laundering I should think.

It sold for £1750. Have i missed something??

Only if you had a bid on it 🙂

Hopefully the £1750 iphone is like that time a few years ago where this forum got wind of a ‘fake’ bike and 2 people used disposable ebay accounts (i see the winning bidder also had no feedback) to bid it up to a price no genuine buyer would ever pay. 😀

Or it is someone generating their own glowing positive feedback for high value items using multiple acounts, to give genuine buyers more confidence in the next scam auction. 🙁

No one buys new iphones in Plymouth either: just go to bleddy cash converters, innum!

any update?

any update?

Not really. All on hold until the 1st Feb, which is when I can escalate the dispute.

I haves spoke to eBay via a webchat, just to explain to them exactly what is going on and also so more info on the case is logged to my account. This experience did demonstrate that several eBay CS bods, didn’t really know their own rules. In as much as I was advised I could leave the dispute as a INR….although this could leave me open to lose my case if judged in the simple black and white terms of me saying Item Not Received, and the seller having a tracking number that shows ‘something’ was sent/received.

As such, I have closed the INR dispute to a SNAD one. So hopefully when the time to escalate the case does come, eBay will just ask me to send back the ‘letter’ to the seller. Once I have done so, via RMSD…which annoyingly means even if this all gets sorted it still costs me £7, I give the tracking info to eBay and they will refund me.

Hopefully this is what happens, but given my sunny disposition, I am also fully prepared for the possibility of still losing the money.

Final updates.

After the above, the seller responded, and I got this message from eBay:

We’ve informed the seller that the item wasn’t as described.

The seller has offered you a full refund for the purchase price plus original postage & packaging, if you return the item. To get your refund, post the item back to the seller. You will need to cover the cost of returning the item. Make sure you send the item by 29 Jan, 2014.

Refund information:
Once the item is delivered to the seller, you will receive a full refund of £331.50. The refund will include the purchase price plus original postage & packaging.

I did consider sending the letter back, but then I decided that I really did not want to give the seller, and by seller I mean ****, the satisfaction of having me go through the charade of posting back either the letter or a substitute…as welling as paying for the privelege. As such I ignored their offer to return the item, and get a refund, and waited till the 1st Feb to escalate the case. This I did with a final summation of all the facts, crime number and photo documentation.

I know the common logic is that eBay always sides with the buyer, and that I never really had anything to worry about. But after some of my contact with eBay customer advisors, I still had the worry that I could lose the decision, and maybe I was an idiot for not just returning the phantom iPhone.

Anyway, I heard nothing all Saturday, but this morning I got the email saying I had won, been refunded and there was no need to send the letter back. So woo, and indeed, hoo!

So what have I learned? Well, two things mainly.

1) I am never going to buy any high value small electronics off eBay ever again.

2) Seeing the machine from the inside, as it were, I would never sell any high value small electronics. As the systems put in place to protect the buyer can be abused with relative ease.

Also, eBay CS has both complete idiots, and genuinely helpful people working there. So always make sure the advice they give you is solid by asking on the eBay community forums. If I had followed the advice from one advisor, I probably would have lost the case. Oh, and just use webchat, when you do get through on the phones it’s India, and with the best will in the world explaining anything properly was impossible

Good news indeed (and I like the Jerry Springer style summary).

Glad you got sorted. Reading this has reminded me of several nightmare scenarios which have taken over mylife at various points in the past. I pretty much don’t use eBay these days, despite my 800+ feedback.

It’s when you read stories like this:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/27/ebay-wont-help-seller

…that one becomes amazed anyone risks selling on eBay.