In our case, the seller would not admit to his theft. My husband's office clerk had signed for the package at his work and did not know the difference. When he got the empty box in his hands we emailed him right away. His reply to use immediatly stated that the box had a weight when it was shipped and that it was accepted at the post office. He then went on to call us thieves and dishonest and that when PayPal checks his prior feedback, they will see he has repeatedly provided excellent transactions in the past (more about that later). Real piece of work. Well, at least he saved us time by telling us exactly what we needed to know. We called VISA and repeated what the seller said, asking if these things made a difference in our case, and we were told that there was not much more they could do for us. We were told to ship back the product..er..empty box to the seller if we wanted them to keep this issue open with them for dispute.
When my husband was bidding on this item, the seller offered to close the deal outside of eBay. My husband accepted the offer as he was going to get the item for a reasonable price. When this happens, the buyer cannot then provide feedback on the transaction (as it is outside of eBay). Looks like this is how he runs the scam - as his feedback was extensive - and all excellent.
As for PayPal, the buyer has 30 days to state their case and then you can try and get VISA to fight the transaction for you. According to VISA, an individual is more likely to come to an arrangement with PayPal and if you can't make it happen, then chances are excellent you will get screwed. We reported the transaction to PayPal that night. By the time we got up the next morning, we had checked our account and they had already closed the complaint based on the weight discrepancy alone. Paypal's only role is to facilitate the exchange of funds and if they have done their job, they really don't care, especially if it comes down to a "he said, she said" situation.
The seller of the items knew this was how it would play out and did suggest this couse of events in our correspondence to him.
We were riped off once before. We had bid on a camera a few years back and won the auction. The seller had hundreds of positive feedback and had been selling on eBay for a long time. We paid our money via money order and waited for our camera to arrive. We waited for more than 2 months but were promised by the seller that it would arrive soon but the item was on back order with the vendor. We finally decided to ask him for our money back and he said he would send it. Finally, after about 3 months, we stopped hearing from the seller. We complained to eBay with little reponse. We eventually made contact with other auction winners from this seller and were horrified to find out they they too were either waiting for merchandise or money back. We put in a complain into the RCMP in Quebec (where the seller was from) and were told that there were several and that they would add ours to the file. This was another scam - this one involves a seller running a legitimate business to build good history, then when they are ready to cash out, they flood eBay with hundreds of false actions and collect people's money. To rake in even more cash, they stall buyers waiting for their item so that no one is suspicious..until one day, they are never heard from again. We only receive a partical refund from eBay on this transaction (about 1/4 of what we lost) and were told to use PayPal next time to ensure our full refund. lol - IMO, PayPal is a scam too.
People shopping on eBay need to remember that both sellers and buyers rely on "positive feedback" to build credibility. This benefits both parties in that the seller looks good for delivering the product as promised and on time, and the buyer looks good for being efficient in providing payment. Some people will not do business (sell or buy) from someone with little feedback, so for a period, people work hard to devlop this. Therefore, the feedback feature means very little as both parties are always trying to improve their tranaction count. In my recent experience, the auction was closed and the purchase was made outside of eBay (as suggested bu the seller) so we will not have the chance to provide negative feedback - and even if we did, we would be sure to recieve negative feedback on our account right back in return (even though we did nothing wrong). It is a useless gage of honestly. Do not rely on feedback, please.
I had the exact same thing happen when I ordered my daughter's bedding earlier this year. The auction was for a quilt and a set of standard shams. I opened the box, saw that there was a quilt and two shams and never took them out of the packaging until about a month later when we were getting her "big girl bed" together. One standard and one euro. I emailed the seller and sent a message via ebay, but no response either way. I just kept the euro sham and found a second standard in the clearance bin at PBK (it's over an hour away, just happened to be there visiting in-laws)
