[bad french accent] [one eyebrow twitching up and down]
You thought you would sign a new account, buy my iphone, then seek a refund for imagined issues, whereupon I would never see the tempting and delicious bit of yummy technology again while you laughed and laughed at how you got a free $450 phone.
But you never imagined I would be paranoid enough to make a videotape of the phone before sending it, showing it working, the identifying information, the outside from all angles, and my packing it up to send to you! AHA!
With that, my honest listing, photos, and perfect 12 year, 1500 auction rep, and multiple emails outlining offers and compromises that you continued to refuse in favor of only a full refund in advance of returning the phone, your lies stand no chance!
Take THAT!
And people, if English is your second language, you don’t get to use messaging shorthand, because then this becomes the ugly result:
All the messages I sent to him I sent in English and then ran through Babelfish in the hopes that between his English and bad babelfish, my communication would be completely clear. His (Last? I think so…) email to me, after he’d actually seen parts of the video and knew I wasn’t bluffing, was all in spanish, which he’d never used before. I ran it through babelfish and it seems he isn’t all that much better in Spanish, becuase this is all I could get:
Umm… ok.
I responded to the above thusly:
And that was a day and a half ago. I’ve heard nothing from him OR ebay- I cantacted them first to give a heads up and make sure they were going to cover my ass.
I hate it when people live down to the expectations that people tell me I should have… but I love it when I pay attention and take precautions.
So you did get the money, and the scammer wants the money back? What a jerk.
I’ve never sold anything on eBay, but used to buy quite a few things, and only once did I ever have a problem. And that was more because the seller was rude, not dissatisfaction with the purchase.
I’m pretty sure the whole thing was a setup from the get-go:
1.I asked for a phone number after they bought it and I talked to his wife. I asked why they were so new to Ebay and she told me they did have her account, which has positive feedback x 21. She said this was her husband’s account. I didn’t probe further, but when you want to just screw someone, you set up a new account, use it for the screw, and bail, you don’t cause problems on an account you care about. On the other hand…
If you’re going to be making an honest purchase for $450, you don’t want to risk being in his position if YOU get screwed, which is [soup nazi] No benefit of the doubt for YOU![/soup nazi], so you use your established account while you build up a new one with smaller, less risky purchases.
His choice of my iPhone over others to begin with. The front camera doesn’t work, and I stated that clearly in the listing in large type. (It’s a software issue that would probably go away if the OS were updated, but the phone is jailbroken and unlocked and that would get fucked up.) Other phones were the same price or less with no flaws. If he’s going to be super picky (claimed it was horribly scratched, loose buttons, whatever…all not true) why would he go with my iphone over the others? The answer I think is true: because having one flaw makes it easier to claim it has more.
I made several offers:
[ul]
[li]a. $50 back for the scratches he claimed were terrible. Ok, different standards, difference of opinion.[/li][li]b. Return the phone first via priority with sig confirmation. if it’s exactly the way it was when I sent it, with the same software, in the same physical condition, and it is definitely the same phone, I ding him a $50 restocking fee for being a pain in the ass and refund the rest. [/li][li]c. If it is the same phone and nothing has been changed but it is truly broken in some new way, a full refund. [/li][li]d. If it is not the same phone, if the software is changed, if it has been changed or tampered with in any way, I deduct $100 minimum plus any additional needed to undo whatever he fucked up.[/li][/ul]
Nope, none of that was ok, the only thing that he wanted to do was argue me into submission and get me to send him a full refund first. Sorry, Charlie, not gonna happen.
If he ends up sending ‘the phone’ back, open the package in front of a post office employee. It may not make any difference to Paypal if you have a statement from the PO saying he sent you a brick, but you never know.
But since I still haven’t heard from him or Ebay, I feel 98% certain that he was trying to run a scam on me and get a free phone, and the fact that I had the videotape made him realize he wasn’t going to get very far claiming that the phone was all fucked up.
But if I get a package, I won’t open it without witnesses and video.
Also, Google Translate actually works really well. I didn’t know people use Bablefish for anything other then a joke. When it first showed up on the scene, it did an awful job. You might want to try translating some of the emails again here and see if they’re any more coherent.
There was no communication beforehand except my call to the wife, who spoke English decently. And his first few emails to me weren’t that bad, it deterorated with each successive exchange.
Thanks for the Google Translat, Joey, I knew there were others out there.
monstrast was supposed to be some form of monstrar = “to show (me)”.
q means “que”, “that/which”.
mandarm is actually “mandarme”, “order me”.
d means “de”, “of/from”.
nimodo is “ni modo”, “no way”.
rallones is “rayones”, “scratches”.
So he’s saying your video doesn’t show anything about the camera and, I’m guessing, some defect that looks like bubbles in a protective screen. Then he says “no way, as you want to give me $50 for the scratches that the phone has.”