Ebay given wrong advice, now I owe £500 please help with advice

[wduk2005]

Hi.

I hope I've put this in the right section and sorry for the long detail I'll try keep it short.

 

Sold a phone on ebay for £500,

seller paid immediately through paypal but seemed dodgy and requested collection,

 

 

I rung ebay and asked if it's ok for them to collect,

the man 100% assured me over and over its fine and i'm covered by seller protection,

(I have reference number to call)

so buyer collected I had my money everything was fine.....

 

then I get a chargeback through paypal,

I explain to them the situation,

they say themselves it's obviously a s cam and they will fight it against the card company. ....

 

the card company goes in the buyers favour so paypal are now chasing me for 500,

 

 

just received a debt collection letter for it

 

 

rung paypal and they completely agree that the info ebay has given me is wrong

and that they have cost me this debt, but can't do anymore to help,

 

 

when I speak to ebay they say it's paypal that offer the protection..

..but they are still currently the same company and it's impossible to get any help from either side.

 

Really don't know what to do,

I know it's ebay that's messed up but they don't have any useful numbers

or anyway I can get my issue escalated to someone that can actually listen to the call and deal with it.

 

 

Paypal advised me to post on here for help.

 

 

I'm considering letting them take me to court as at least in a courtroom I can explain it to someone.

 

Sorry to go on, there's a lot more finer details but I think I've got the essential information across.

 

Thanks to anyone who can help me

[citizenB]

PayPal advised you to post on CAG, that is very interesting.

 

I am sure someone will be able to help, it might not be until later on though as most of the people that help in this section have day jobs

[p3t3r]

hi, if you let this go to court to explain what happened, you may lose out with such things as your credit rating, charges and fees etc.

 

This seems to be theft to me. I dont use ebay but if i did and were in your situation I would be reporting the incident to the police.

[wduk2005]

Yeah paypal themselves said to come here or try to get ebay to escalate it higher but said that's not going to be easy they said.

 

If it went to court and I lose then I'd just have to pay monthly as I don't have that sort of money, what worries me if it did go to court is that they may say that I am liable for the debt to paypal and that my argument is with ebay and unrelated to paypal claim, I'm just stuck at what to do for the best.

I had it happen about 7 years ago where I posted to a unconfirmed address and I lost the case, I tried to report it to police and fraud etc etc but got no where, they never trace them. That's why I rung ebay before doing anything this time and was assured I was safe for collection and to take reference of the call and they can check back if I'm at all worried.

[aburobert]

Paypal, as far as I know, have never taken anyone to court.

 

What you will get are threatening letters from whichever debt collector they currently use.

 

Personally I think you can ignore this until your receive Court papers which IMHO is highly unlikely.

 

Your Paypal account is now knackered and possibly your eBay account. But it is not too difficult to open new ones. You simply need different email addresses and a different bank account. A small change of other details and you are up and running again. For example if your registered name with either was John Albert Fish - just re-register as J.A. Fish and put something like Ground Floor at the beginning of your address. Unless someone reports you eBay/Paypal will not pick this up as almost everything is computer generated - so the slight differences simply mean a brand new registration!

 

So I would stop worrying about this until you actually have to.

[oriental1]

Hi, I feel very sorry for you. I have been selling on Ebay for over 10 yrs and I can tell you that EBAY nearly ALWAYS falls in favour of the buyer. I too have lost goods to dodgy buyers blatently telling lies re damaged goods, or goods not arriving despite proving 100% delivery success etc etc. I used to list over 3000 products with Ebay, now I list just 100. The buyers leave you bad feedback for no reason and your selling rating goes down.; There appeal system is corrupt and useless. Ebay COULD if challenged be subject to online fraud by letting these crooks steal your goods.

As you have proof of the conversation (date, time, person you chatted too) then they should have a TRANSCRIPT of this conversation. MAKE EBAY produce this transcript, Then if all is what you have said then tell EBAY that you will make a counterclaim against them for your loss INCLUDING legal fees etc.

You then need to take out a small claim against them (you can easily do this on line .. moneyclaim on line .co.uk)

 

DONT LET EBAY WASH THERE HANDS. They are Bias and just a money grabbing evil company.

 

Good Luck

 

 

Barry:mad2:

[wduk2005]

Thank you very much for the helpful reply, I think I'll take a but of both advice and make a final call to ebay and try to get the transcript for the call and then just ignore the letters, at least that way if they do take me to court I've got proof of the initial phone call,

I feel so let down by ebay because their fees are huge and I've had my account 10 years so they've made a lot from me and their service is just so appalling, even paypal said they are awful to deal with !!! Thanks again for the help

[aburobert]

You will be very lucky indeed if eBay send you the call transcript - particularly from a telephone request.

 

Perhaps others with more knowledge can advise? I suspect your best course of action would be to send a SAR (cost £10) specifically requesting a copy of the telephone conversation plus any other information they hold regarding your account.

[wduk2005]

Ok.....I'll hold on and see if anyone else knows any more or even if they've been in the same situation themselves, thanks for the info

[CrappoMan]

Stop worrying, eBay/paypal don't do court. If there was a large scale fraud involved (>£10k), they may involve the police, but for a small amount like this they just pass it to their DCA, whom you can safely ignore.

 

They don't report to the CRA's, so you don't have to worry about that either.

 

It sounds like you withdrew the money from your paypal account as soon as you could, which was the correct thing to do.

 

Stop thinking YOU owe someone £500. Rather, think that it is the s-cammer that owes someone £500.

[citizenB]

If you want telephone logs/transcripts you will I think, have to make a Subject Access Request this will cost you £10.00. However, it is likely they either didn't record the call or would have destroyed it by now.

[JoeyJoeC]

Side note, report your phone stolen, have it blocked if possible if you know the IMEI number.

[jfhall82]

I agree with the principle of your argument, PayPal and eBay are a law to themselves and jointly offer very little in the way of seller protection preferring to always protect the buyer in disputes.

 

However, I think someone needs to point out that eBay haven't necessarily given you incorrect advice, and neither for that matter have PayPal. Paying for items via PayPal and collecting them in person is a legitimate way to conduct a transaction and there would have been no reason for eBay to suspect a fraud attempt at that time.

 

At that point you are already contracted with the buyer to proceed with the transaction so they can hardly say to you "No it's fraud, or risky" because this is often the way people like to perform a transaction. However, I do feel they should have highlighted the particular risks rather than broadly saying the PayPal Seller Protection applies. Yes the 'transaction' is covered is covered by PayPal's protection policy but not unless you dig into the terms and conditions of that will you actually realise how exceptionally limited it is and how many there exceptions there are to this.

 

To my mind it represents nothing more than a marketing gimmick designed to infer the impression of protection. The reality is it just provides PayPal with various 'get outs' and leaves you exposed to fraud in certain situations like this.

 

Collection/PayPal fraud like this is extremely common and easy to do. All the buyer need to is open a bogus dispute and they get their money back. Fraudsters know this.

To be honest even if you use registered delivery services you can still be had as the buyer will request to return the item and simply send you and empty package - signed for. Buyer wins again.

 

It's a crap situation but I really don't know on what basis you could mount a claim against eBay. Technically, the advise they gave you was accurate and appropriate at the time. Perhaps they should have expanded on the implications of allowing a collection but they weren't to know fraud was impending...

 

Personally when ever I have a high value item to sell I insist on collection only with either cash or bank transfer accepted.

[tobyjugg2]

I have viewed 2 different treads here on CAG recently, one where a sellers delivery service 'was near enough' that ebay decided in favor of the seller, despite no confirmation of delivery to the buyer, and here, where the seller apparently has no evidence of the phones actual delivery to the buyer.

 

In the case of this specific issue, there is no actual evidence of the buyer receiving the phone, so from my outside perspective it would seem that ebay/paypal would be right in finding with the buyer if evidence (if any) ie emails saying I'm on my way to collect it) were countered by the buyer saying something like - no-one was in when I went to collect it.

 

A bit of a devil as I have collected a number of items and honestly said as such, but it could have been very different for the seller if i were dishonest.

A worrying point for sellers - so get a receipt and note the car registration it would seem.

 

In the other case, my opinion is that ebay were wrong to find in the sellers favor, apparently just because a delivery service GPS said the delivery van had been near enough to the delivery addres without any eveidence of actual delivery.

(But that is based on the buyers reported state of affairs and may have other unreported aspects)

 

Its a sad fact that dishonest folk will always take advantage of honorable trading whatever the mechanism and a warning to us all.

 

It would seem the only option is to report the phone stolen to the police and get it blocked. The police may also be able to get the details of the person who is using it from the service provider.

[tony3x]

The last phone I sold on Ebay where the buyer wanted to collect I made out a collection receipt that both of us signed.

 

Also because I had his name & address before he collected I checked on 192.com.