My fiascoe with an eBay purchase

[elcompa]

This is the story of my fiascoe with an eBay purchase. Very embarrassing, but I'll bare my soul. I was once taken advantage of on eBay. Well, nearly... Perhaps someone can learn something from my ridiculous escapade. Anyway, it is said that the best learning comes after great pain.... And yes, I should have known better.

I was after a Rolex watch on eBay about 6 months ago. The price was good, but not ridiculously so. I looked very closely at the posted pix. Even had a friend "in the know" look at them. the pix were real and all was original. The seller had 2 yrs of good feedback, a 99% or something recommendation (whatever they call it). I called him, emailed him, chatted via ebay, all seemed well. I (luckily) sent the money via PayPal and he sent the postal info. All on track, right? I looked carefully at the tracking info that came by email and it actually said pick up number. I clicked on the link. It sent me to the US federal postal service, USPS mail site. Even the links on his email worked. I called him to ask pls send me the proper tracking info and explained that something must be wrong with the site. He sent me another number. He played me along for a few days via emails and calls. Finally I contacted the postal service by phone to see what was wrong. They said they could not recognize the number. The phone calls and emails ceased abruptly...this is when I got scared. Didn't know what to do. Felt real stupid in front of my wife. Lost a lot of money on a scam. What an idiot I was!!!

I called PayPal, filed a complaint. I then began to dig even more. PayPal sent me info on him. His contact and banking info were in South Africa and his phone number was a VOIP in Korea. I went back to ebay to see what else I could find on the guy and all of his account info was gone. Deleted. Missing. all of it...even all his positive feedback.

As PayPal had him listed at a foreign address, but he claimed to me in an email that I thankfully kept, that he was in Florida, PayPal locked him out, but they still had his banking info that he had registered with. They changed the status of "complaint" to "investigation". They notified him and he replied via email. Stringing them along too, he did not comply with their requests for info. A week or two later PayPal asked if they could have another week to ensure that he would not reply, thus giving him every possible chance to correct the problem. They contacted him again and sent me an email copy. To this, he did not reply. Disappeared like a ghost leaving only a trail of lies, bad emails, bad addresses and voip numbers.

Long and short of it: After about a month and various attempts, considering my email evidence, PayPal reimbursed me in full. Every penny. I lost nothing. One of the tricks is timing. Had I waited over three weeks to report it, it might not have gone so smoothly...over their legal limits. Since I jumped on it and reported it, and followed up several times with calls and emails, they did what they promised. PayPay took a while doing so, but they did support their buyer protection plan as promised.

Yes, this was quite embarrassing to write out, so please learn something from this and pass it on to anyone who may need this kind of support.

On the bright side, I was recommended to do business on TRF and two purchases later all has gone well. It was painful finding TRF, but Im glad to be here.