[R-390] Bad Overseas EBay Experience

[Bill Feldmann]

Hi All,

Been reading with interest on this and other reflectors about bad EBay 
experiences.  I just had a real bad one with trying to purchase a item from 
Italy.

My item was a GRC-9/BC1306 7 foot power cable that I bid on in late January 
and won.  The seller was serlet4446 and instructed me to send him a bank 
cashiers check for the item plus shipping.  One strange thing was he upped 
the shipping price in his email to me by $5 over what he quoted on the 
winners notice from EBay.  But because we all can make mistakes I included 
the additional $5 in my check.  I promptly sent him the check by registered 
mail and got the mail card back in three weeks showing himself or his 
company received the check.

A month later I got a notice from EBay saying he had not been paid and I 
could be black listed from EBay.  I contacted him personally using a email 
with an attached scan of the signed mail card.  He still claimed  he didn't 
get the check.  After many emails with him that were hard to understand 
because of his poor English I contacted EBay customer service by email.

I got a form email from Vincent K at EBay instructing me to pay him using 
PayPal with my credit card, which I promptly did.  At this point I assumed 
he was maybe honest and the check was lost in his company and never cashed 
so I sent a second payment for the cable to serlet4446 by PayPal.

Then last week I get another notice to pay again for the cable from EBay. 
But the notice instructions were in Italian which I can't understand.  I 
again contacted serlet4446 and he claims he didn't get the money from PayPal 
even though I have a email receipt from PayPal showing the transfer of funds 
and my credit card statement shows the money went to him through PayPal.

I also contacted my bank and found the original check was cashed by him or 
his company.  But my bank will try to get my money back for the check.  The 
PayPal money is most likely gone since I paid using them later than 30 days 
after the closing of bidding as just a money transfer.

I also contacted the Post Office because this may be mail fraud but they 
really can't do much since serlet4446 is not in Italy where the mail fraud 
laws are not strong.

Yesterday I put a negative notice on EBay about him to at least warn others. 
He does have a good EBay, record up to now, and my not be a crook but could 
run a company with very poor records and controls.  I'm sure he has a 
surplus company because he sells lots of military radio parts on EBay and 
also sells GRC-9 power supplies.

I will most likely never see the cable or my PayPal money but this is a good 
lesson about buying off shore through EBay.  EBay is not a company staffed 
with people like Sears or Costco that can help in a situation like this. 
There is no person to call to get help, the company is just a bunch of 
computers, programmers and servers that can only crank out form letters. 
Also EBay is set up for sellers and not for the buyers.  When I put a 
negative feed back about serlet4446 on EBay they had me take a test with 
some confusing questions before submitting the report.  Others have told me 
they have given up trying to submit negative feed back because of this. 
They do all they can to discourage negative feedback but my report is on him 
should be a warning to others.

I will most likely never use EBay again for an overseas purchase.  In fact 
they my do me a favor and black list me since I'm not sending him any more 
money.  In the future I will try to buy only from individuals or using the 
mail in the USA where there are some mail fraud laws and the seller speaks 
English.

But a few suggestions for those of you that must use EBay for over seas 
purchases.

1.  Only pay promptly by PayPal so you have some insurance from PayPal.  If 
the seller doesn't use PayPay, don't buy.  Also the advice from my bank was 
to only use a credit card with PayPay and not a bank account number or debit 
card, you could be cleaned out by a hacker.  EBay and PayPal have very poor 
security as illustrated by myself always getting bogus EBay email asking for 
personal financial information after completing EBay transactions.

2.  Only buy from sellers in English speaking countries unless you speak and 
write the sellers language to avoid confusion and disputes.  Also English 
speaking countries usually have stronger mail fraud laws.

3.   Always check out the seller's feed back, but this should be taken with 
a grain of salt since it is difficult to file a negative report on EBay and 
many buyers don't like to advertise that they got took.

So I hope this will be a warning to the rest of you, in my case the loss was 
around $100 with paying twice and the cost of the $12 registered mail to 
send the original check and I still don't have the cable.

Bill N6PY