There seems to be a ton of conflicting info. Let’s say I use my credit card through paypal to pay for an Ebay winning bid, and the guy never sends me my item. What then?
Everyone advertises “buyer protection” and so on, but am I actually covered? How could I get reimbursed or get my money back?
I’m about to pay on a quasi-sketchy auction; it’s not THAT sketchy, but there are a few little red flags about the whole thing that make me go, “hmmm…”
I have filed one dispute through PayPal, so I’m hardly and expert, but my account was reimbursed for goods never received. It took a while, but the system worked for me. As always, YMMV.
The best advice is to just not bid.
Getting reimbursed by paypal or ebay is a royal pain in the ass. Paypal waits 30 days before they’ll even look at your claim. Their poor customer service is why they have such a bad reputation.
This transaction isn’t with a person from Portugal is it? Just had a very strange and convoluted transaction with a Portuguese person that looks like it was fraudulent, but in a clever way.
If so, well should talk offline VCO before you procede.
M
Speaking as someone who has had a fair amount of experience buying things on eBay, I’d advise you that if you have any doubts at all, not to bid at all. Don’t rely on either eBay or Paypal to come through on their touted “buyer protection”, because sad experience teaches that both are unpleasantly eager to find and exploit any and all loopholes and fine print that are to their benefit, that mean they don’t have to pay off after all.
Unless the item is truly one-of-a-kind, I’d wait.
ETA: one of the things the seller can do to screw you over is to remove the item from the listing, which means that eBay’s software can’t find it, since if there’s no item number, there’s no item, right? So this means that you’ll have endless problems getting it sorted out, not to mention even being denied the ultimate revenge, the Negative feedback, since you can’t post feedback for an item that doesn’t exist.
Which means that basically the unscrupulous seller can take your money and run.
[QUOTE=Duck Duck Goose]
ETA: one of the things the seller can do to screw you over is to remove the item from the listing, which means that eBay’s software can’t find it, since if there’s no item number, there’s no item, right?/QUOTE]
How does the seller do this?
It’s tough to say without knowing the item or the auctioneer. Some people sell stuff all the time for years with good feedback ratings. While it’s certainly possible for these folks to “go bad” and take a permanent vacation. Then there’s the fellow who signed up last month with three feedback ratings for $.99 items but lately, has a concourse quality Duesenberg up for bid. Doesn’t eBay have an escrow service? If not you could still go this route.
Ebay sellers can’t “remove” the auction from the system.
They can end the listing, but Ebay should still be able to find it. Occasionally the list will be censored by Ebay, but rest assured that Ebay can look them up if needed. I saw them completely hide one auction when an Ebay employee [the old moderator on the Half.com forum] broke 3 major ebay rules in a single auction listing.
One naughty thing some vendors do is make their entire listing linked images, including their text. Ebay has rules against that, because if you do that, it becomes possible to change the actual contents of the auction later by changing the linked images.
As far as escrow goes, Ebay’s only approved option is using escrow.com.
For maximum fraud protection, always make Paypal payments FUNDED BY YOUR CREDIT CARD, not your Paypal balance.
Paypal uses the credit card company dispute rules rather than Paypal’s if you do that. The credit card company rules are more favorable to buyers than are paypal’s rules.
I do not know how the seller managed it, but when we had a problem with our purchase (item did not arrive, seller said it was supposed to have been shipped from a third party, if we didn’t get it he thought it wasn’t his problem), and we began to investigate, we found that when we entered the item # from our “You won this item” email that we had saved in our e-mail folder into eBay’s Search, eBay kept telling us there was no such item, no such auction. And when we clicked on the Item # link from the email, it also told us “not found”.
And eBay Support was totally uninterested in helping us find it so that we could at least post a Negative feedback. They seemed to think that it wasn’t the seller’s problem, and when we e-mailed them and said, “Hey, he removed the listing”, they basically shrugged and sent us yet another form letter outlining all the steps we should take if item was not received.
Which we had already done.
We had the distinct impression that at Ebay support, what’s behind the curtain in Oz isn’t human, just a spambot.
And my husband, the eBay novice, had used a Paypal account that took the money directly out of our checking account. 
:mad:
I could’ve told him not to do that; he should have used my Paypal account that goes through the credit card.
Because, ultimately, you can always call Mastercard and tell them “hey, I’m not paying for this” and let them deal with it.
About the deal; it wasn’t “Crazy sketchy” like someone from another country or anything like that. It was basically someone with like 3 feedback but a big disclaimer about how they got into some sort of feedback pissing contest with another Ebayer so they ended up having to start a new name. When I asked him a question about the item, his reply came from an e-mail address with a woman’s name instead of a guy’s name, and THEN the reply was in the third person like, “I have communicated this to the seller and the seller’s response is…” - just enough wtf’s to send up a red flag.
I decided to take a pass on the whole thing, anyway.
DDG,
Incidentally, should you ever feel the need to do so, you can do a credit card draft on ANY Paypal account. Just go to the “Withdraw Money” area and transfer all funds you to your bank account. A second later, you’ll be able to do a CC transfer.
I spend about a grand or so on Ebay’s used books market every month, and I fund all my transactions via CC. Any time anything comes into that account, I empty it post-haste.
Finally, be warned that disputing a transaction with your CC issuer prior to contacting Paypal can get you kicked off of your Paypal account. I’m not saying I’d never do it, but I wouldn’t do it for a $25 purchase.
The fact that they put up the disclaimer marks them as an idiot, but not a scammer.
A real scammer wouldn’t mention it.
You wouldn’t get scammed dealing with this person, but you also couldn’t trust them to:
describe the item accurately
ship in a timely fashion
pack the item so it would be usable when it arrived
or
make good if the item disappeared in transit
I bought Mrs. Slant a cell phone 5 weeks back. It showed up in mint condition, but the guy just kinda’… took 3 weeks to mail it. “Sorry, my computer crashed…”