[R-390] Bad Overseas EBay Experience

Sat Mar 25 14:47:31 EST 2006

Bill,

    I have traded by your recommendations for years with the exception that 
I don't do business with out of the country sellers, period nor do I sell to 
out of the country buyers....too much of a hassle and too risky as well.

I agree with never doing business with anyone that wants to be paid only by 
money order, certified check etc....that's a big flag with me that 
something's up.  Granted there are those that don't trust Paypal or BidPay 
or any online type of financial service and just want to be paid but I can 
do without anything one of those guys has due to their concern with using 
technology to do business because of the added risk of no recourse if things 
go wrong....

I personally refuse to use Bidpay.  I once used it to pay a guy for a Tek 
O'scope and it took weeks to get things settled.  They send a western union 
money order to the seller.  They send you this nice email telling you the 
tracking number of the money order and when you have a problem you go to the 
western union site and they don't know anything about the money order number 
because Bidpay buys them in bulk and western union does not track those. 
Then the seller finally gets the money order and it can only be cashed at a 
western union location which in his town was a small drug store where they 
had to wait until they had collected enough money in their register to cash 
the thing....what a nightmare.  He might have been able to deposit the thing 
in his bank account or something but he didn't think so.

Won't do that again.

I've had good luck with Paypal after using them for probably 10 years.  I 
think they have good security in place...the emails you get...and I get on 
bogus ebay stuff is not the fault of ebay's security...it's the creativity 
of the bad guys.  Nobody has gotten into your account unless you have 
answered those bogus emails and given away vital info.

I forward them all to the ebay security folks and for the most part over the 
last year or so they have stopped....

On credit card transactions through paypal....have the credit card company 
reverse the charges.  It takes a while but they will credit your credit card 
account and get the money back from Paypal...it's then up to Paypal to 
settle with the seller.  I've done that before...works fine!

Good Luck...

Cecil Acuff
WB5VCE

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Feldmann" <n6py at qnet.com>
To: "R390 reflector" <r-390 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:29 PM
Subject: [R-390] Bad Overseas EBay Experience

> 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
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