Buying Stuff on Ebay....

I had someone try to scam me. They bidded on my item and it closed. Then the guy who bid on there deleted his user profile. So i went to relist my item. THe guy emailed me saying he would wire me the money if i sent it to some nigeria country. I knew it was a scam. I have had three people try to scam me in the last year. ONe on ebay and two elsewhere. I would definately alert ebay.

I luckily so far haven't had any trouble like that yet. I always check the person's reviews out before I buy just to be safe. Sometimes though they could have good reviews and you just become that one that they screw over. I'm glad you got your money back. I would imagine just from you filing the dispute that ebay is now looking into this guy. You could email them just to make sure though so that no one else gets burned by him.

Yeah, I always look at the sellers feedback rating before I decide to buy from them. I've bought a number of items from ebay, and I've never run into that kind of problem before, the only thing that I've experienced is when you email a seller about something they don't ever email you back, or it takes them a long time to do it, or it takes them a long time to leave you feedback, thats what I don't like. Well it would seem that if other buyers were having problems with this seller they would look into it, and see what his problem is and do something about him. I guess you can put in a complaint about him, I don't know how you go about doing that tho.

Hi ya Wyldrose I think that you were more than fair. This guy sounds like he has tried to scam people several times. I would report him to ebay before he tries the same thing with soemone else!

Ahh that would make me mad too. I haven't had a problem on Ebay yet. I don't really buy on there because I'm scared they'll take my money and won't send my end. I usually just try to buy from people with a lot of positive feedback. I do sell on Ebay though and I haven't had a problem with a person not paying their dues yet either. Hopefully that's the only problem you'll have with buying and selling on Ebay.

Hi Rose, I think you were more than accomodating, patient, reasonable and gracious than you needed to be. In fact you were very generous too...And I thin you MUST tell Ebay about this seller so that other people are saved of this anguish. Afterall, it definitely brings a bad name to Ebay as well. I am just happy that you made the payment through Paypal and was refunded your money in total! Good for you. Next time you decide to bid for a product on Ebay, kindly check the rating of the seller. DO not contact those who are rated anywhere below 95%. That should be a safe bet! Happy Shopping otherwise! :o)

It is definitely to bad that people have to do stuff like that. There is a difference between a person having trouble or being slow to send and a person who is an out and out liar. If he didn't intend to ship the books he shouldn't have excepted the money unless he was an out and out scam artist. It boggles my mind that someone would intentionally do such a thing and ruin their credibility and reputation with PayPal. Not only should he be ashamed of himself but he should also reconsider his reasons for being online. Both eBay and PayPal should remove him from their ranks in my opinion after what you have said. A network marketing company that I am with is going to add the option for people to sell their own unwanted items as a way to earn extra income. I hope that they don't run into the same problems with scam artists as eBay does.

Hi. I sell on Ebay and even have an ebay store. People like this guy make the rest of us have a hard time on Ebay. If it was me I would report this guy to Ebay and to the authorities. What he is doing is trying to scam people and until someone stops him, he will probably continue. Most people on Ebay do not know that they can report this kind of activity to the authorities. He is commiting fraud. Once all of the people he has done this to stand together with Paypal and Ebay, they will track him down and stop him. I hope that you do this, so that honest people on Ebay can have a good experience. I have had to do this with people who won an item but refused to pay.

The one thing that I have found during my dealings online, and especially when it comes to eBay. There are many honest buyers and sellers and for the most part, the transactions are very smooth. However, there are those that never intend to complete transactions and they hope that they can string people along long enough for the time to file with Paypal expires. I always check a seller's feedback when buying and I look at what they've sold in the past (I'm leery of someone who sells a lot of $2 items and is now selling a $100 item if they have shaky feedback- late shipments, lost items in the mail etc) Since this seller did this to several buyers, it seems like he never intended to complete the transaction. My advice to anyone who is waiting more than 14 days for a item... contact the buyer, asking if the item shipped. Wait a few days and if after 21 days, you still have no response, contact again (through eBays messaging system) letting the seller know the item hasn't been received. On day 31, if no item is received, open claims with Paypal and with eBay. I believe after 30 days, is the first time you can open a claim...on day 31, file the claims...don't wait another day, that's what these types of sellers are hoping for. There are several of these types of eBay members out there and unfortunately, they know there way around the loopholes in the system and some have more than one eBay account. There are far more honest sellers and buyers on eBay than the scammers and it's these scammers that ruin it for every honest person out there. My experience with the one dishonest seller I came across... eBay did nothing until he scammed several other buyers and then he was kicked off eBay, which lasted about a day because they still sell products and still try to scam people out of their money. eBay really does very little to protect their honest members. The scammers have to have multiple bad deals before ebay reacts. Trying to deal fairly with this type of seller is what they hope for. They want the transaction to be dragged out in hopes a claim doesn't get filed. They don't care about negative feedback, as they have several accounts. Checking out a sellers feedback is essential....sorry this has happened to you and I'm glad to hear you didn't lose your money....here's hoping all your transactions go smoothly in the future!

No, I've never had any experiences like this in ebay.. You need to look at the seller and make sure that their comments are good.. I'm sorry that you have such a bad experience with ebays.. Well, I do hope you'll never experience this again.. :) feel better.. have a great day.. Happy New Year!!

There are alot of dishonest sellers on ebay. That is why you should always pay with paypal so you can get your money back. If he gets to many disputes against him on ebay he will losing his seller status and ebay won't let him sell anymore. I have had a problem once or twice but paypal has always backed me up.

I've had that happen twice to me also,so what i did was file a dispute with paypal and the guy e-mailed me that same day and said it was on its way.guess that woke him up.can't afford to give up that kind of money.

Its best to check a the other parties feedback and make sure that most of the feedback is positive. I've had a couple of bad ones, but if you pay through paypal for the most part you are safe. It's too bad that there are few people out there who spoil it for the rest of us. You are too nice, I wouldn't wait that long, I'm sure he wouldn't have waited that long for you to pay. I'm glad you were able to get your money back.

I have purchased many things from ebay, and most of the time, I have had no problems. I think most of the people are honest and they are just looking to get rid of their stuff. I have had a problem with one seller. I ordered a shirt, and it never came. The person said they sent it and it still never came. I did not get insurance for the item, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but it was still irritating. I sent an email to the seller asking for confirmation,and they sent me an illegible email. I think they were not being honest, but I could not tell. The item was not that expensive, so I never filed a claim, but in the future I think that I will.

Yes we do have to be wary when buying online and more so when it is from sites like eBay. Unfortunately there are a small pecentage of unscrupulous sellers and buyers who will take advantage of everyone they possibly can. You have taken the right steps since you found out you were being scammed as far as I am concerned. However first I would make sure that I check the feedback on the seller. Look for any inconsistencies and to do that you check what items have been sold and what they were sold for. For example all items in the past sold for less than $10 but suddenly they are listing items which are 5-10 times more than that. That does not automatically mean "scam" but something to be aware of and perhaps a little bit cautious. The other thing I think you should do is let eBay know what you have found out and see what action they take. Of course eBay might ban that seller although what it really does is just slow them down temporarily. Often they will start up again with another username and email address etc in a short period of time. We have had one experience with eBay where we won a bid, paid that same day as postage costs were shown. We sent an email to the seller confirming what we had done and 2 days later received an email from seller saying parcel would be sent that day. A week later nothing had arrived so sent seller another email and several days later got a reply from "a friend" stating seller had been rushed to hospital in an emergency etc. Like you we accepted that it had actually happened and did nothing for a couple more weeks when we again contacted the seller who again promised to send the parcel. After waiting for 10 days, we contacted eBay and got the sellers address and phone number and contacted seller that way. Again they promised to send parcel and after that seller ignored all our emails. By this time some 6 weeks had passed and we still did not have what we had paid for. When we contacted eBay about it they said too much time had elapsed since the close of the auction. Also we couldn't claim any money from anyone as we had paid for the item by bank transfer and not paypal. We sent one final email to the seller saying that if we did not have the item within 3 days we would leave negative feedback. We also offered that a friend could collect the item if that would make it any easier. No response from the seller so on the 8th day after sending that final email we left feedback. At the same time we saw that at least a dozen other people had left negative feedback on the seller in the previous week. Most interesting of all was that while we were being told the seller was in hospital etc, they had listed items for sale and some of the negative or neutral feedback was from those sales. After many complaints, eBay did deregister that seller. Some weeks later we saw the identical item that we had won listed but the username was different. One of my stepdaughters sent an email to the seller about the item and that she was very interested in it. Yes you guessed it, the same seller. When we reported that to eBay they did absolutely nothing at all and we have never bought anything through eBay since that time. Yes eBay can be good but if they don't ensure that items which are bought and paid for in good faith are delivered, then they will lose people.

I feel sorry that you had such a problem with a ebay seller. I have been a member of ebay for a very long time and bought through ebay a number of times and have never had any problems. The one thing I have always done before I even buy from a seller is see what kind of ratings the seller has and also how long the seller has been on ebay. Paypal is really good about taking care of disputes. I also have been a long time member of Paypal and I think they are one of the greatest sites around. You tried to solve the problem the best way you could what you were ready to do was more than fair.