Ebay assistance, please!

[Laurajean1014]

Will I every see my money?

I bought an item on eBay (on December 27th) and with shipping it was $56.00. I paid for the item on the day I received the invoice (seller took 5 days to send invoice). Since then, I have left over 10 emails to the seller to give me shipping status. No answer.

I used the Dispute Console at eBay and Paypal started the complaint. The seller had till today to respond to me. No answer.

Today, I received $31.00 from Paypal reclaiming it from the seller. It was all the seller had in their account.

What happens now?

Question: Will I ever see the balance $25.00?

 

[N.Bailey]

Are you familiar enough with eBay to look around and see if the user has had any dealings of any type on eBay? Has he/she left feedback for others? Have they listed any new items? Anything along those lines. While it's possible that this user has scammed you, I find it odd that they had money in their Paypal account. IMO, anyone trying to just scam others would have cleared that account out long before you'd have had the opportunity to file any compliant. Is it possible this user may have been in some type of accident?

It's doubtful that you'll be able to recover all your lost money. You've obviously filed a complaint with Paypay, you could do the same with eBay if you've not done so.

Maybe you'll have better luck with the seller if thru no fault of their own they've not been able to respond.

Good Luck!

 

[Laurajean1014]

Thank you for responding.

The seller has not had an auction since mine. I trusted a seller with a feedback of 4 - not doing that again. He/She has not been on eBay since.

I can't say if the person is injured or not, but their auction is a binding commitment and agreement, so I would expect within the past month, some type of notification, unless they are in a coma (but how would I know this???).

I originally tried to go through eBay, but it took me to Paypal, because I paid through Paypal.

How else do you work with eBay?

 

[N.Bailey]

It's odd that this seller left the money in their Paypal account. REALLY ODD! I don't think it's a good sign that your seller only had a feedback of 4 though.

Here is a step by step from eBay on what you can do.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/isgw-buyer-protection-steps.html

I'd also suggest you go into the forums on eBay. Those people are well versed on what actions you can take, such as filing complaints with the postal service and such.

Here are two boards you could try.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum.jspa?forumID=107
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum.jspa?forumID=100

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

Probably the most that eBay can do is to encourage them to refund the balance or risk a non-selling seller strike against them, which would inch them toward being NARUed (NARU = Not A Registered User which in this case would = kicked off eBay). I think they would need three strikes, though; I know Non-Paying Bidders get 3 strikes and they're NARUed.

Do they have any negatives or neutrals? If so, there's a web site called toolhaus.org that can do a search and pull up an eBay user's negs and neutrals complete with comments.

Also, was the item they sold out of character for them? Reason I ask this is I wonder if the eBay user's account was hijacked and you got taken.

You should be able to get the seller's information, including address and phone number. Then you should be able to get in contact with them and find out what's going on. If on the off chance that something tragic has happened, you should be able to get in contact with a family member, friend, or someone and find out.

I hope this was of some help.

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

I second what N.Bailey said about the eBay forums. Talk to other sellers and buyers and see if anyone there has any experience like this and what they did.

On second thought, it does seem odd that the seller had money in the Paypal account. If it was an account hijacker, they probably wouldn't have used Paypal but had you pay by check or MO.

I wouldn't consider someone with that low of a feedback score a bad thing, though. Now, if they have a negative or two already, then we're possibly talking about trouble!