Got scammed on eBay: how PayPal handled the issue

[fomoz]

hello! so i was in the market for a micro sd hc card for my mp3 player a few weeks ago and i decided to buy one on ebay. after checking the prices, i decided to buy a no-name 32gb card from a chinese seller with a 10000+ 99.8%+ positive rating (stupid me). they were selling them at auctions every 20 minutes, starting at $0.01 and finishing between $25 and $75 usd. after spending a few minutes modeling the auction end price distribution in excel, i found out that $32 usd is a likely price and won't take too long to get. i ended up buying a 32gb card for $38 aud (~$32 usd) an hour later.

when i received the card, i found out that the directories i copy onto it become empty. it would only store 1-2 directories properly, everything else disappears. after doing a quick search online, i found out that i bought a "fake" card. i also found a msg from ebay saying that the seller deleted the item and that i should cancel the transaction. well duh, thanks for the info!

after filing a claim with paypal (ebay told me to go there since it's not ebay's problem anymore), the automated system told me that in order to receive a refund, i need to send the item back to china and provide them with a tracking address. that's cool n all, but the cheapest parcel with tracking i could find was $55. gg.

lastly, i called paypal customer service and told them that i was scammed and explained the whole situation with the tracking. their answer was "sorry, even though we understand that u got scammed and that the seller's account was deleted, there's nothing we can do. in order to receive a refund u must send it back to the seller and provide us with a tracking number." all they could give me was a complementary "one-time" $20 credit. kthnx.

anyway, fffffffffuuuuuuuuuu paypal! don't use it!

[asdfasdf]

I'm not really sure why it's paypal's problem that someone in China sold you fake merchendise, sorry.

[Len Myers]

Originally Posted by asdfasdf

I'm not really sure why it's paypal's problem that someone in China sold you fake merchendise, sorry.

Perhaps it isn't. But Paypal is owned by eBay and eBay wants to collect fees from vendors, and the supply of vendors will eventually dry up if buyers get scammed and go elsewhere.

[mr coffee]

It's ebay's problem. They pushed you off to paypal, who they typically direct customers to use, and sometimes even require. And they own paypal. Ebay is the one who enabled the fraud, with their 99.999999% rating on this goofball. They got their fee. This is like the software/hardware problem with the help desk. Call the helpdesk, and the software people say they'll look at it after you eliminate the it's a hardware issue. The hardware people say they'll only look at if after you eliminate it's a software issue. Then it's no one's problem.

After ebay started pushing paypal, and turned itself into the world's dollar store, I quit buying from them.

[General Apathy]

Originally Posted by fomoz

hello! so i was in the market for a micro sd hc card for my mp3 player a few weeks ago and i decided to buy one on ebay. after checking the prices, i decided to buy a no-name 32gb card from a chinese seller with a 10000+ 99.8%+ positive rating (stupid me). they were selling them at auctions every 20 minutes, starting at $0.01 and finishing between $25 and $75 usd. after spending a few minutes modeling the auction end price distribution in excel, i found out that $32 usd is a likely price and won't take too long to get. i ended up buying a 32gb card for $38 aud (~$32 usd) an hour later.

when i received the card, i found out that the directories i copy onto it become empty. it would only store 1-2 directories properly, everything else disappears. after doing a quick search online, i found out that i bought a "fake" card. i also found a msg from ebay saying that the seller deleted the item and that i should cancel the transaction. well duh, thanks for the info!

after filing a claim with paypal (ebay told me to go there since it's not ebay's problem anymore), the automated system told me that in order to receive a refund, i need to send the item back to china and provide them with a tracking address. that's cool n all, but the cheapest parcel with tracking i could find was $55. gg.

lastly, i called paypal customer service and told them that i was scammed and explained the whole situation with the tracking. their answer was "sorry, even though we understand that u got scammed and that the seller's account was deleted, there's nothing we can do. in order to receive a refund u must send it back to the seller and provide us with a tracking number." all they could give me was a complementary "one-time" $20 credit. kthnx.

anyway, fffffffffuuuuuuuuuu paypal! don't use it!

This is over $18?

You modeled ebay auctions?

[vtek]

Originally Posted by General Apathy

get a helmet and stfu

ifyp

[ADoubleDot]

You created a model??? There aren't enough emoticons in the world!

So, this guy spent years doing legit auctions to get his rating up to 10000+ so he could set you up over $40? Times must be rough in China.

[MountainHawk]

Get what you pay for. They seem to sell for $80 from reputable dealers.

[remilard]

Is their a correlation between any of the following?

1. Not being willing to type out "you".
2. Being willing to spend hours to save a few dozen dollars on a memory card.
3. Crying like a baby when you lose $18.

[SamTheEagle]

Originally Posted by ADoubleDot

You created a model??? There aren't enough emoticons in the world!

So, this guy spent years doing legit auctions to get his rating up to 10000+ so he could set you up over $40? Times must be rough in China.

Shit. Doesn't China have like a trillion people? He probably just got 10,000 of his Chinese buddies to pretend to buy stuff from him over the course of a week or something to set up this scam. Had a couple of them give him a negative rating, so his rating wasn't 100%. That would be too obvious a scam if he was 100%.

Sucker.