I just got ROYALLY SCREWED on Ebay

[Chozn1]

I had my auction going along nicely and had my price on my watch. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but if was going to get me closer to my Milgauss, and life's all abouy quality of life decisions I say.

Anyway, with 30 seconds left on the auction someone comes in and bids higher. Nothing really odd about that on ebay. In fact, I always wait until the last minute to bid. No point in driving the price up for nothing. The buyer had great feedback and lived in Tennessee which isn't terribly far from me. Things were looking good.

Then I got a spoof email saying that payment had been sent and that they needed some of my info in return I reported this to EBAY thinking that someone had just randomly gotten my email address. Err, no. Someone had hijacked the buyers account, who probably at some point had responded to one of these spoof emails and actually gave their info being ignorant as to what was going on.

So what does Ebay do? They cancel the auction altogether. They don't just take that scammers bid out. They wiped the whole damn thing off the map. It's like there never was an auction!!!

But hey! They're gonna get me my listing fee back withing 7 days, and I can re-list... so that this can all happen to me again I'm fuming to say the least.

[kingblackbolt]

Ebay has never been know to punish scammers like that very well... sorry to hear that!

[Chozn1]

I'm feeling a lot more like the Superman in my avatar than the one in yours, I'll tell you that. Matter of fact, time for a drink.

[Hatchet]

Yeah, that means if you didn't keep a copy of your auction, you will have to reconstruct it from scratch. It could have been worse, though.

[Terry Newton]

I'm sorry to hear that Gabe.

E-bay is getting to be more and more crooked as time goes on. I reported all of those watches the other day and they did nothing about the fact that they were obvious knock-offs. I had to write to six people at the end of every auction and report to them that the watches were knock-offs. People would have lost thousands of dollars over this creep. He is still on E-bay.

I hope this gets resolved in your favor and you can still get that new Milgauss. Nice watch choice by the way.

Terry Newton

[Defiancekofb]

You can always approach the second highest bidder outside of ebay, and send him a paypal invoice for how much his highest bid was. Assuming he is still interested with your item.

[Chozn1]

Thanks Terry, I'm going to get the Milgauss regardless. They're just too hard to come by to pass it up (especially at the old price from an AD).

And Defiance that's the first thing I wanted to do, but ebay completely wiped the auction off the map. I can't go to it to get names for second chance offers. It's very frustrating as you can imagine.

[JAD3703]

That's crappy, Gabe. And no chance to even do a second-chance offer, which is unfortunate. There are more and more disingenuous people out there every day who see e-bay as an easy, quick and relatively safe way to cheat people out of their money.

I had a bad experience with e-bay late this past summer and it took me six weeks to get all of my money back (at least I did). Throughout the entire process e-bay was les than helpful (as well as PayPal). Luckily my credit card company solidly backed me up and sorted the mess out. I'm having less and less faith in e-bay as a medium to conduct business through. It seems that they are simply focussed on volume vice customer service, admittedly somewhat understandable, considering their volume. But their overall customer service sucks.

Luckily, in three-plus years of using e-bay I've had only three negative experiences,all of which were resolved to my satisfaction.

James

[sherwin]

ebay is no longer a place to buy/sell. marely to see and laugh at what is there to offer

[Chozn1]

I agree on all accounts James. It really irked me that I had an item sold for thousands of dollars even before this bid and they just wiped it off the slate. Then, I couldn't talk to anyone on the phone. I was livid by the time I got on with some "live support" via chat, but they did nothing except tote the company line and tell me to email their security deartment. I didn't take it out on the person I was chatting with, but it was all I could do to hold back. They're just typing off cookie cutter responses though, per training.

I have a medium sized air conditioning company, and I have a people on call 24\7. If I put in your unit and you have a problem, you can call me whenever you like. How is it that a mulit-billion dollar company has no one on the weekends to talk to when there's a very real chance that my identity has been compromised? Unreal.

[JAD3703]

Originally Posted by Chozn1

I agree on all accounts James. It really irked me that I had an item sold for thousands of dollars even before this bid and they just wiped it off the slate. Then, I couldn't talk to anyone on the phone. I was livid by the time I got on with some "live support" via chat, but they did nothing except tote the company line and tell me to email their security deartment. I didn't take it out on the person I was chatting with, but it was all I could do to hold back. They're just typing off cookie cutter responses though, per training.

I have a medium sized air conditioning company, and I have a people on call 24\7. If I put in your unit and you have a problem, you can call me whenever you like. How is it that a mulit-billion dollar company has no one on the weekends to talk to when there's a very real chance that my identity has been compromised? Unreal.

Yep, that's exactly it. It's all about volume and through-put vice customer service, because it's cheaper to piss off the minority than it is to provide the level and range of customer service that people deserve and reasonably expect. Also helps when you own the virtual monopoly for on-line auctions and payments.

And yet I've learned to accept the inherent and built-in limitations of e-bay. I do not buy or sell anything over $200.00 there, as that's the limit of what I'd be willing to be screwed out of with little or no recourse for resolution. And I use my credit card for everything, and they back me up on everything. But it frustrates me that I have to take those kinds of measures to protect myself. Caveat emptor is great, but when the merchant providing the transaction services does not even provide basic protection to either party ... more than a little annoying.

James

[Defiancekofb]

Originally Posted by JAD3703

Yep, that's exactly it. It's all about volume and through-put vice customer service, because it's cheaper to piss off the minority than it is to provide the level and range of customer service that people deserve and not reasonable respect. Helps when you own the virtual monopoly for on-line auctions and payments.

James

+1,000,000