Bait-and-switch on eBay.

In My Humble Opinion
1

About a month ago, I stumbled upon an eBay auction for a particular coin. There was a description of the coin and also a photo. Judging from the photo (descriptions are subjective) the coin could have been worth anywhere from $100 to $200. The auction had a minimum bid of only $1, and there were a couple of small bids. I bid a mere $1.26, there were no further bidders, and I won the auction. I paid for the coin right away.

The coin arrived loose in an envelope (coins are NEVER sent loose), with no return address, and the stamp just slapped haphazardly on the envelope. It looked like it was sent by a child.

Well, the coin was not the one described and pictured in the auction. It was a lower grade, a weak strike, and possibly cleaned. In short, I got what I paid for, but not the coin I should have received.

It took a while to get the name & address of the seller, and I sent the coin back, asking for the actual coin pictured on eBay. I even sent $2 more for postage & handling.

Of course the replacement was sent the same way, and was pretty much the same quality as the first. I sent an email to the seller to this effect, and now he’s ignoring me.

The bottom line is this: The seller was stupid to start bidding at only $1, and he ran the risk of the coin going for practically nothing. That doesn’t give him the right to switch coins when he realized how low the winning bid was. If I file a complainst with eBay, I expect at best a refund, but I don’t want my lousy $1.26 back; I want the actual coin I won (if it even exists).

So my question is: should I even bother pursuing this, or just accept the coin I got, since it’s worth about what I paid for it?

For the record: the guy’s eBay approval rating is relatively high, but there have been other cases of people not getting the coin they won.

2

Leave negative feedback, I suppose. But I’ve never understood what’s to stop people taking revenge on you for doing this by leaving YOU negative feedback too.

You should definitely contact eBay. Others may have done so too and that’ll increase the chances of his getting caught. It doesn’t sound particularly profitable if it’s a scam, but he clearly needs to get his act together and a sharp word from eBay might do the trick.

3

I got screwed by a seller who didn’t send my item two years ago. As of that time, eBay didn’t do refunds for items under $25. Hopefully, they’ve changed that, but if they didn’t, you can’t even get a refund.

4

If you, yourself, are an Ebay member, I believe you can request to have this person banned. And, definitely leave negative feedback. I would advise you to keep your feedback short, picking very sharp words without ranting, and perhaps threaten you are looking into what legal action can be taken.

Along the lines of legal action, I’d start the ball rolling by printing out Ebay’s terms and conditions, and then send a copy along with your complaint to your State’s Atty General’s office - Consumer Protection Division, for starters, with a cc to Ebay’s top execs. In the very least, you can find out what options you have for recourse. (Don’t forget to explain how you tried to resolve the issue.)

As for the bidding starting at $1, this is not dumb. This is the bait!

  • Jinx
5

On reflection, the haphazard stamping of the envelope makes it look very much like this guy is doing a LOT of mailing. Which suggests lots and lots of transactions, and it follows that he might well be making a large amount of money out of the scam after all.

eBay may well have a note of his antics already. You need to tell them about this.

6

Report him to the Postal Inspectors for Mail fraud. :mad: