Victim of fraudulent eBay buyer - need advice

cimo

Another update: the buyer finally responded to my eBay message. He still has not offered to return the watch. I told him I will give him a refund if he returns it to me.

Instead he just wrote a long list of reasons he believed it wasn't as described, which included 1) strap wear (its a used watch) 2) scratches on the case (simply untrue) 3) not working (also untrue, I confirmed all functions working the day I sent it. plus why did it take him 3 weeks to notice if it didn't work???) and 4) he claimed the TAG box was from a different model (I don't even know how to respond that)

omegasaso12

Will hijack this tread on ebay buyer problem. Situation:

-I sold something to Australia (from EU) and send on 10. Jan, 2017
-buyer open case "did not recived" on 3. Feb, 2017
-becouse there was no proof of delivery (Australia post does not provide tracking????) they closed case on 12.Feb, 2017 and send payment back to buyer. Ofcourse buyer got money back and he was so nice to give me also negative fb.
-I send appeal same day with question if they will delet neg. fb and return payment when buyer recives parcel. They only wrote appeal closed.
-I wrote legal form "find my shippment" on Post in same week and today I got answer from post that parcel was delivered on 13. Feb, 2017 (one day afther case was closed). Ofcourse buyer did not inform me that he got parcel, ofcourse he did not delete neg. fb and ofcorse he did not payment back.

Now I have legal form from Post that parcel was delivered and signed and my question is how do I handle this situation. Tracking can not be seen online, so I can not give ebay/paypal tracking to check. All I have is proof of delivery in physical form.

I want payment back and that neg. fb to be deleted. If you ask me I would also delete username. If someone had situation please let me know how do I handle this so I make no mistake on ebay or paypal.


Thank you

omegasaso12

Hy,
I am from EU and I have to call to Germany for this. I dont speak good German so there will be a problem to tell me exactly what I want.

I mean time I found (becouse I got negative feedback) that I have option "report a buyer" so I already send all infos I have on there. I hope it will resolve fast.


p.s.
we need picture in this thread 😁 :

omegasaso12

You are on other side of world, you can shout as laud as you can, I cant hear you.

Can not see what pissed you off so much, but hey, sometimes you need to open valves........safer to do it online.

Its not my habbit to create a thread for every small info I need and I do not see nothing wrong hijack thread with info I am looking.
And if you would read you would also saw I already found where to send all infos and also @cchen was helpfull. So no need for new thread.


End of conversation.

omegasaso12

You are on other side of world, you can shout as laud as you can, I cant hear you.

Can not see what pissed you off so much, but hey, sometimes you need to open valves........safer to do it online.

Its not my habbit to create a thread for every small info I need and I do not see nothing wrong hijack thread with info I am looking.
And if you would read you would also saw I already found where to send all infos and also @cchen was helpfull. So no need for new thread.


End of conversation.

cimo

More great advice from all, thank you.

The newest development: This morning PayPal emailed me stating that the credit card company had still not made a decision, but that the financial institution had requested the funds be held from PayPal's account. They in turn debited my account for the SECOND time, this time adding insult to injury by adding a $20 chargeback fee and citing the reason as "This chargeback type was not covered under Seller Protection."

I called Customer Service and spoke with a rep who assured me that I WAS in fact covered which is why they were able to release the hold placed on my account on March 3, but that it doesn't mean they will reimburse me if I lose the chargeback. I asked for her to send me an email in writing to that effect (for use in court later). She said she would send it by end of day. I asked if she recommended I contact law enforcement before or after the chargeback has been decided by the credit card (communicating that I was not going to let this go), and as I suspected she had no idea and simply said "if you lose the chargeback we will make sure they send the item back or else we will freeze his PayPal account until he does."

She was just giving me lip service, because on the resolution center I can see that he does not have a PayPal account, he just entered his credit card number in eBay to pay after buying the watch. I am beginning to think this buyer planned it from the start.

My question for you guys: I am planning to take @WatchVaultNYC and @OmegaLover and @gatorcpa and @Foo2rama advice (wow that's a lot of you guys) and send a letter to his home address demanding return of the item within 14 days otherwise I will contact law enforcement as well as USPS investigators. Should I do this before the credit card chargeback is finalized? Or wait until I can cite the completed chargeback as reason to pursue further course of action.

cimo

I am planning to take @WatchVaultNYC and @OmegaLover and @gatorcpa and @Foo2rama advice (wow that's a lot of you guys) and send a letter to his home address demanding return of the item within 14 days otherwise I will contact law enforcement as well as USPS investigators.

WatchVaultNYC

Sorry, like I originally said, you are SOL with a SNAD case with Paypal, as it is not covered under Seller Protection (sneakily, Paypal seller protection only covers "not delivered" and "unauthorized payments", everything else is the wild, wild west). Scam buyer can keep both money AND your watch.

Best thing to do in this case is to threaten the buyer to return the watch "or else"

cimo

On the bright side I withdrew the money to my bank account so PayPal is simply showing a negative balance. I am content to let it remain there. If I end up never using PayPal again, so be it.

night0wl

Glad you got your money out of there.

PayPal said:

Thank you for this information. I'm sorry to hear about the issue with a chargeback. From the provided details on that email, it seems this was a merchandise dispute, so this would not be covered under the Seller Protection Policy. When a chargeback is filed, we must abide by the financial institution's policies, procedures and decisions.

From what you have mentioned, the case was decided in the buyer's favor without return of merchandise. Unfortunately this is a possible outcome in a chargeback situation. 🙁 What we could do, in an attempt to recover the merchandise for you, is send an email to the buyer requesting the item be returned. If you'd like to do that, please send us an email from your PayPal account with the case number and return shipping information to provide to the buyer on your behalf. We can't force them to return it as the case was filed outside of our dispute process, but we're more than happy to try and work towards a positive resolution for you. I apologize for the confusion and any frustration this may have caused.

Me said:

Thank you. I will send an email from my PayPal account email.

Please tell me the email address where I should send this information. In the event that the buyer is unwilling to cooperate, I would like to have some contact points for PayPal. While I understand you are required to say that "this is a possible outcome," I am sure you understand that it is unfortunately not an acceptable one. PayPal is a business based on protecting financial transactions online. I fulfilled my requirements for being covered by seller protection, and I have adhered to the eBay and PayPal terms of service. The buyer has violated these terms by refusing to use the eBay and PayPal dispute systems. Would you please provide me a phone number to a US-based manager or supervisor who has the authority to make account related decisions in relation to fraudulent chargebacks. I also need the email address where I should send the request PayPal will send to the buyer. I would also like the mailing address of the PayPal corporate legal department. Thank you for your help.

PayPal said:

Thank you for the response. I'm more than happy to provide you with most of the contact information you've requested. Unfortunately, I won't be able to provide a direct phone number of a supervisor or manager as requested, as these are not made publicly available.

This information will all be listed below. However, to address your issue directly, I want to help in anyway I can. While the transaction may have been eligible for PayPal Seller Protection, the type of chargeback filed by the buyer (Merchandise/Significantly Not As Described) would not be eligible for coverage. You are absolutely right that you took all the necessary steps to ensure you would be covered by PayPal Seller Protection, and you would have been protected should the chargeback type have been eligible as well.

As it pertains to the relationship between our internal claims process and a chargeback, we would always prefer for the buyer to file a claim with us directly. This allows us to force the return of the merchandise while a chargeback may not result in that outcome. We are more than happy to continue to discuss this transaction and the chargeback process with you, but it would likely be in your best interest to pursue the buyer externally to PayPal, as we ultimately may not be able to take any action in this situation.

cimo

It has been a few weeks, and I thought I would continue sharing my tale. At this point, a few things have been revealed:

1. The buyer is still not cooperating. He has not responded to my requests to return the watch, and I am preparing to look up his local precinct and attempt to make contact with officers there.

2. PayPal customer service agents want to help, but have no authority and are poorly trained. I spoke to at least six different representatives, who all contradicted each other and one who even accused his fellow agents of lying to me. I was told at first that my case was closed, then that it was being reviewed, then that it was under appeal. I was also assured three times I would be covered under seller protection. Twice, they filed "support tickets" for my account, which did not result in anything whatsoever. Finally, I contacted the customer service Twitter account, who in no uncertain terms said that they would not help me. For your amusement, here are the last few messages from my conversation with their Twitter account:







So basically, they are taking a "not our problem" approach. I will continue to reach out via some contact numbers I found online, but ultimately I plan to file in small claims court after I return from vacation in May.

Needless to say, I will no longer be doing business through PayPal. Sadly, this means it is unlikely I will be trading many more watches. I will keep what I have for now, but if selling a piece is truly this great of a risk, I simply cannot afford this hobby. I hope you all learn from my mistake.