Ken, hate to disagree with you, but I will anyway, and STRONGLY.
The system is not at all stacked in the buyer favor, the opposite is true. You say in your post that you have been using ebay for years and never had a problem with any sellers. If that is true then you would have no idea what it is like from a buyers perspective and dealing with a seller that ripped you off. So how exactly do you know that the system is set up in the buyers favor?
I won something on ebay for the first time last year. It was a 250 dollar item, and the seller had hundreds of positive feedback with only 1 negative (for something very minor), and the seller was friendly and communicative before the end of the auction, and never tried to sell me or get me to buy something else.
When I won, I contacted the seller and paid immediately via paypal.... Item never came. This started months of dealing with a lying dirtbag of a human being, claiming he mailed it, then later saying he forgot, then giving me a tracking number for the shipment that was bogus, then claiming it got returned because I didn't give him my real address. I faxed and emailed him a copy of my phone bill and another bill with my address on it to prove it was correct, then he sent again via USPS with tracking, when it didn't arrive I when to the PO and gave them the tracking number and they said it wasn't even a valid number... back and forth, you get the idea.
So I filed a complaint with PayPal, and some very unhelpful people from that organization got in touch with me, got the tracking numbers he gave me, etc.
(you see, it is not on the seller to prove he sent the item, the onus was on me as the buyer to prove that I did not get the item, which is harder to do). They took several weeks to investigate and did find that the seller was completely at fault and that the tracking numbers he provided was bogus. BUT, of course, they could only refund the money that was left in the sellers account, and by that time he had already taken the money out, so I got awarded exactly 2 dollars back of my 250 dollar purchase.
Nothing about the system is in the buyers favor. Especially since it takes sooooo long for them to investigate, while they are investigating the seller still has access to his account to keep doing the same thing to other people, and the seller is notified that he/she is being investigated which gives them plenty of time to drain their account and take off (which is what happened to me).
So, from someone who has never gone through this, tell me how things were stacked in my favor?
toodive4:
If you are intelligent. There are ways to know who is legit and who isnt. It sounds to me like you simply didn't do your homework. Also, it sounds like you responded and bought something outside of Ebay... you responded to an email offering additional product. These are never legit and often do not even come from the actual seller... they come from Ebay copycats.
Don't know for sure what happened in this case, but I think if you wise up... you'll do better. I've been buying and selling on Ebay since year one... and I've had a few problems with buyers... but never with sellers... I did my homework... checked feedback... never bid on high dollar items where the feedback looked even a little bit funny... and oh...
I shut down my PayPal account because it is wrought with fraud... Usually from the buyers end... people claiming they never received items they did receive... then PayPal gladly issuing them refunds. The system is by far stacked in the buyers favor... so you should have no problem getting a credit.
Ken
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