I purchased the Motorola A780 cell phone from an online store called EletroniCell, which I found while price shopping on Froogle. I payed for 2 day UPS on the 15th. A document on the web site says that items are supposed to ship the same day or the next day. I payed with my debit card over PayPal.
Heightening my worry, I purchased many upgrades for my laptop from 4 different companies on the same day last week, all through UPS. They all arrived by wednesday.
Their is no contact phone number on their website. When I log into their website my order status is listed as “New”. I submittied a status query on their contact form and have received no reply. The copyright status of the web page says “2003-2004” but archive.org says the website came into existence ~Feb. of 2005. This indicates it may be a slightly older template copied to this domain a year ago. I verified that the website was first registered in December of 2004. I have found another website, MeriCell, that is the exact same site as ElectroniCell. They even forgot to replace all instances of ElectroniCell with MeriCell. Phrases of their FAQ and privacy policy indicate that they are exact copies from a few other cell phone sites on the internet. I found them using black-hat search engine optimization techniques, such as keyword stuffing other websites via javascript. The site seems to be semantically related to Turkey.
I bank with Washington Mutual and I payed through PayPal’s credit card function (not through my PayPal account). Before I contact them, I would like to know what my rights, if any, in this situation are (I am not seeking specific legal advice. I assume this may be somewhat prevalant but I don’t do a lot of online shopping), and any IMHO’s or IME’s are welcome.
It’s a little late for this advice – but whenever possible, it is best to pay with a credit card. I have had a couple of bad experiences in the past that the credit card company investigated and refunded my money.
PayPal is proving to be incredibly frustrating. I had to create a second account (even though it is the same card) in order to file a report. I don’t use my account to make credit card payments because they do a bank transfer that takes several days when I do. They will not allow me to file a report because the status of the payment is Unclaimed, while the “transfer from Credit Card” is Completed. I thought this was good news, as they say you can only cancel Unclaimed payments. Instructions say to push the cancel button in the action tab. The action tab is there and is empty. I called PayPal and they said I can only do this claim online!
I finally got through to an actual representative. She told me they cannot look at the website and that I will need to wait until one or the other of these happens. a) ElectroniCell logs in and accepts the payment b) 30 days have passed.
This will be an exercise in patience. Thanks for the comments.
Amazon also says you can only dispute purchases online.
One time I had a client who was a nearly illiterate Mexican immigrant whose checking account had just been wiped out by scammers.
The Amazon phone CSR swore up and down that there is no facility to investigate disputes not started online. “We’re an online only company, we do everything online.”
My client had no computer, and I’m uncertain his written English skills were good enough to use their site.
My thoughts about these people are pit-worthy.
If you don’t get satisfaction in the next few days, I’d suggest disputing all associated transactions with all parties by means of certified mail.
Your bank, paypal and the vendor if an address can be located.