Too late to threaten legal action?

Giddytimes

In Dec last year I sold a gold chain on Ebay, the buyer emailed me asking me to wait for payment as she was having problems with her Paypal account, so I did. Then a week later she still didn't have it sorted so she said her friend would pay me instead using her Paypal account.

It was silly for me to agree to this I know but at the time I had no idea about chargebacks and the buyer had perfect feedback.

Anyway a month later at the end of Jan the buyers 'friend' rang her credit card and claimed it was a fraudulent transaction and Paypal took the money from my account. I had sent it via recorded delivery but with it being to an unconfirmed address of course I wasn't covered.

I contacted the buyer and she apologised saying her friend had made a mistake and she would tell her to ring her credit card company and sort it out. Anyway this dragged on a month with regular emails from her(which I forwarded to Paypal) and then Paypal ruled in the buyers favour and suddenly she closed her ebay account. :mad:

I have her address (but no phone number) but i've been concentrating on my final year at uni and hadn't got round to doing anything about it yet. Anyway after all that rambling I just wondered if anyone knows if it's too late to do anything about this now? We are only talking about £33 but now i've finished uni and got a bit more time it's annoying me that I let her get away with it!

bleugh

legal action will cost you another £30 at https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk

my suggestion, go to your local small claims court, fill in a claim form (but don't file it) and post that to her (i.e. 'pretend' you're claiming, without telling her that it's pretend))

if then you hear nothing, file a claim for real.........if you still hear nothing, get the baliffs round (another £30) and she'll get a CCJ against her name

Giddytimes

bleugh wrote:

my suggestion, go to your local small claims court, fill in a claim form (but don't file it) and post that to her (i.e. 'pretend' you're claiming, without telling her that it's pretend))

Good idea Bleugh, thanks. Not sure i'll go the whole baliffs route but just to make her panic that I might will do.

After reading some posts on here I realise I should have contacted her local police station at the time but I didn't think they would take any notice of me. If I did decide to take it to court would the fact that I didn't tell the police go against me?

missile

Giddytimes wrote:

I realise I should have contacted her local police station at the time

A waste of time going to the police. They are only interested in ..... well do not know what they do appart from eat doughnuts and scam money from motorists?

I am very sorry to hear you have been scammed, I am surprised anyone would work such a complicaed scam for £33, but I guess if they do it often enough.

In_Search_Of_Me

Go get em! Go giddy, go giddy!

Giddytimes

fishface-69 wrote:

Go get em! Go giddy, go giddy!

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

bingo_bango

bleugh wrote:

my suggestion, go to your local small claims court, fill in a claim form (but don't file it) and post that to her (i.e. 'pretend' you're claiming, without telling her that it's pretend))

Not a good idea. It is a criminal offence to impersonate an officer of the court, and one they frown upon very harshly. If you are going to take legal action, then do so, don't bluff it. Hard to seem reasonable when you're being charged for being unreasonable.

Oh, and you have 6 years from the contract date to initiate civil proceedings in the UK.

Giddytimes

bingo_bango wrote:

Not a good idea. It is a criminal offence to impersonate an officer of the court, and one they frown upon very harshly. If you are going to take legal action, then do so, don't bluff it.

Thanks for the warning, I don't want to do anything naughty.

It is ok to write her a strongly worded letter saying that I am considering legal action if she doesn't pay the money due isn't it?

Moglex

Giddytimes wrote:

Thanks for the warning, I don't want to do anything naughty.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with sending her the form, unless you pretend it came from the court or a solicitor.

What you should do is fill in the form, photocopy it, and then send the copy with a covering letter telling her that you will submit the form to the court if she does not pay the outstanding amount within 14 days.

This will let her know that you are 100% serious about getting your money, and if she has any sense at all, she'll cough up triple quick.