E Bay nightmare.

gerardo1000 · Post by **gerardo1000** » Thu Jan 09, 2014 7:07 pm

After over 420 flawless E Bay transactions and a Feedback score of 100 %, this is what recently happened to me. I put on sale a brand new irish flute from Doug Tipple, E Bay informs me that it has been sold to the highest bidder for $118.00. E Bay send me an order info with the name of the winner and his address.
I pack the flute and ship it Priority Mail to him. The flute is delivered two days afterwards. After two weeks, Pay-Pal take out from my bank account: $ 118.00, plus $ 20.00 bank fees. What happened ? The buyer filed a request of charge back saying that he did not authorized the payment (obviously he or someone used his credit card to pay with Pay Pal). Now take into account that: as soon as the buyer won the bid, he received a note from E Bay and an E Bay invoice from me, and he did not argued\, in fact I never received any message stating that there has been a mistake.
After I have the money disappeared from my Pay Pal account, I ask Pay Pal why they did that. They explain that the address that Pay Pal had on record was different from the address that I shipped the flute to (given to me by E Bay) therefore, because the instrument was shipped to a different address, they could not apply the Seller Protection and could not do anything different than take the money off my account and give it back to the buyer.
I e- mailed the buyer explaining what happened and asked him if he knew who was living in his former address (in case the address is not still one of his addresses), and asked him please to contact the person and ask him to ship the flute back to me (at my expenses) . No response. Never got any response or feedback from this buyer. A ghost.
Therefore... I have lost: $138.00, the flute, the E Bay fees and Pay Pal fees.
I contacted E Bay about this issue, no response. I contacted Pay Pal again, they said that perhaps the buyers Bank could decide in 75-80 days that their client is wrong and I am right, and send back the money to my Pay Pal account (go figure). Is it right , is it fair ?

Angel Shadowsong · Post by **Angel Shadowsong** » Thu Jan 09, 2014 9:03 pm

It is possible that the ebay account was hacked.

After the owner of the credit card saw the billing statement on his credit card, he then filled a despute.

I was wondering is this the tipple B flute Black that I was watching I clearly remember the 118?
I was suppose to snipe bid this but our provider cut our net because of delayed transmittal from the payment centers.

I wished you have sold this to me. No fuzz and clean transaction.

I pray that you find justice in this.

gerardo1000 · Post by **gerardo1000** » Thu Jan 09, 2014 9:21 pm

Yes, it is (was) the Tipple low B black, and I also wished I had sold it to you.

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 2:13 am

As far as I know, Ebay owns Paypal*, so they're far less arm's length than they like to pretend.

*But verify before you use this in complaint, if you do.

kkrell · Post by **kkrell** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 2:36 am

Sorry, that's the way it works - you have to always ship to the payment address (PayPal), not what eBay tells you.

pipersgrip · Post by **pipersgrip** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:31 am

I am sorry for this incident, I can't stand scammers.

However, you do have the address to where it was shipped. Maybe getting the law involved could help if you are in the same country.

Steve Bliven · Post by **Steve Bliven** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:57 am

To be fair, it doesn't sound like any sort of scam.

From the information provided, the flute was shipped to the address given by eBay—not the one provided by PayPal—which apparently is not the correct one for the buyer. So the high bidder may not have gotten the instrument, it may have simply gone to the wrong address. Since the seller has the address to which the package was delivered, perhaps it would be worth a shot to contact that person and ask that the flute be returned (at the seller's expense as he/she has suggested).

Them's my thoughts.

Best wishes—and good luck to the seller in resolving this mess.

Steve

MTGuru · Post by **MTGuru** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:21 pm

Here's the piece of the puzzle I don't quite understand.

If I were the legitimate buyer (with the PayPal account) and I were told by Gerardo that the flute was on it's way by USPS Priority Mail, and if the flute didn't arrive in a few days, my reaction would not be to wait 2 weeks and then initiate a refund. I would contact the seller immediately and ask, "Hey, where's my blinking flute?" If there were an address and/or payment discrepancy, that would be apparent immediately and could be reported proactively to eBay/PayPal for resolution. So I wonder why that didn't happen in this case, unless it was a deliberate attempt by the buyer to defraud.

Or, as the seller, I would have discussed the address discrepancy with the buyer before shipping. But sure, hindsight is 20/20.

Steve Bliven · Post by **Steve Bliven** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 1:08 pm

I'm pondering how or why someone would commit fraud to get a Tipple flute ? They're nice instruments, but wouldn't you go for something with a bit higher resale value or ease in street sale if you were out to defraud someone ?

I must confess that I've had some pretty squirrelly e-bay deals, both selling and buying but they were all due to misunderstandings and poor communication (never on my part, of course) and were resolved in time.

Them's my thoughts...

Best wishes.

Steve

eilam · Post by **eilam** » Sat Jan 11, 2014 11:34 am

that really suck's ! i'm sorry. had i bought something and it did not arrive, i would have contacted you to find out what was going on. to me it seems like the problem has to do with ebay/paypal not having the address record straight.
hope it works out with out you carrying the whole load.

gerardo1000 · Post by **gerardo1000** » Sat Jan 11, 2014 12:58 pm

I may have been wrong in not double-checking that the address I got from E Bay was the same as the address recorded by Pay Pal, but in the past hundreds E Bay transactions in 13 years I never had a case of discrepancy between the E Bay and Pay Pal addresses, so I printed the E Bay label with confidence.
I contacted several times both E Bay and Pay Pal and they told me that the E Bay address is only for info, but the verified address is only the Pay Pal one, so...my bad. More over, they told me that when a credit card customer asks for a charge back, by law it is the Credit Card Company/Bank that has the authority to decide. And they decided (of course) to make their client happy, not me. So I guess that there is no hope at all to get back my flute or the money that I have lost. Interestingly enough, because I guess that if E Bay had a second address of the buyer this could have been his old address that he never updated, I e-mailed the buyer explaining the situation and asking him if he could tell me who is the person who now lives there, so that I contact him. No response, total silence. There is something wrong in all this story: why this buyer never contacted me ? Why he waited fifteen days to file a claim with his credit card Company ? Why he is still not answering me ?

libraryman · Post by **libraryman** » Sat Jan 11, 2014 1:45 pm

I have made maybe 50 sales on Ebay and never knew that you had to use the Paypal given address. I guess I have been lucky. Thanks for sharing this warning, but I am sorry for your loss. Seems like a scam, but I agree that you would think someone engineering it would pick a more expensive item. Strange.

monoRAIL · Post by **monoRAIL** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 7:02 pm

Thanks for the info - I never realized that the PayPal address was the only one eBay recognized as legitimate.

Unfortunately for you eBay is totally focused on protecting buyers, not sellers. Even if you write letters to the delivery address they probably won't respond. eBay doesn't have to be nice to sellers since they have a monopoly on online auctions and there's nowhere else for sellers to go.

MarkP · Post by **MarkP** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:50 am

ouch, it's a fairly well known eBay-Paypal scam, although I'm surprised they'd pick the flute over something easily sold/pawned.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Sellers-Only-Sh ... 071/g.html

Sadly, it's a seller beware story.

gerardo1000 · Post by **gerardo1000** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 5:59 pm

Case closed. Lost the money, lost the flute.
Here is an extract of the e-mail that I received today from Pay Pal:

"As you know, we have been using the information you provided to dispute a
chargeback filed against the transaction detailed below. Despite our best
efforts, the buyer's credit card company decided in favor of the buyer.
Unfortunately, we do not control the outcome of the chargeback decision
reached by the buyer's issuing bank in a credit card transaction. By
accepting the terms of the PayPal User Agreement, you agreed to accept the
decision of the issuing bank as final and legally binding for this type of
dispute"

Chiff and Fipple Forums

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