Amazing ebay buyer protection case. Any advice gratefully received.

greengriff

This starts off the normal way: I sold an expensive electronic device (a valve amplifier) on ebay and the buyer complained it didn't work. I asked him to return it and subsequently discovered it had been run with no speaker load, frying the internals.

The buyer denied doing this and started a claim with ebay.

Now this is the amazing bit: part way through the claim he had an attack of conscience and confessed (through ebay's messaging system where ebay could see it) that he had accidentally misused and destroyed the amp. You could have knocked me down with a feather as I'm sure you can imagine.

About a week later ebay refunded the buy the total amount and emailed me asking for me to refund them. I assumed this had been an error (after all how many cases do they get like this!?!?) and appealed. They looked at my appeal for ages (weeks) and then suddenly I got a message saying they'd rejected it (giving no reason) and demanding the money.

So far I've refused to pay it back to them and I'm now getting debt collectors writing to me.

So what do you guys think? Should I pay them back? Will they take me to court (I'd be happy to go!)? If they do, will they win due to some clause or another in their terms that I agreed to when using the site?

I've not been in a situation like this before, so all advice/thoughts would be gratefully received.

JimmyTheWig

Didn't want to read and run, but I have no idea.
I'm sure that if it was a court case between you and the buyer then you'd win based on what they've admitted.
But between you and eBay I'd be nervous, I'm afraid.

Are we talking lots of money?

Have you contacted the buyer since to see what they say? It might be that they are prepared to pay you again so that you can repay eBay, if that makes sense? E.g. if they got their refund after admitting fault but forgetting to cancel the refund request.

I wonder (though other people probably know more than me) whether the best thing is to repay eBay and then take the buyer to court yourself, if they don't play ball?

How important is buying/selling on eBay in the future for you?

greengriff

£800, which to me is a lot of money! I'd imagine Ebay would have good lawyers. It's now ebay I'm disputing with, not the buyer I guess.

dt3887

i would start proceddings against the buyer without hesitation

JimmyTheWig

Surely you'd contact the buyer first, dt3887, wouldn't you?

oneye14

This case is precisely why I dislike Ebay, the small print is biased towards the buyer.
However IMO your case is against Ebay not the buyer mindful of the admission which I trust you taken a snapshot.
Having recently read the message from Ebay's founder in Carlifornia, I would contact him directly (or at least as close as you can get) pointing out your situation, and that rejecting appeals without reason is not acceptable undrr English jurisdiction.
As for the Debt collector, inform them of a dispute in writing and that you will ignore future correspondence from them.

porto_bello

Greengriff, (with the greatest respect to this MSE forum) I think you need better and more specific advice than can be offered here. I once had a vaguely similar problem years ago and went to see the Citizens Advice Bureau and via them, got to talk to someone with a legal background in the issue I had.

The advce was good and I managed to get the problem solved in one letter (which to the recipient, it was pretty clear that I had taken legal advice and knew the law was on my side).

I would suggest you pop along to the CAB. If you can't do that easily, as a 'delaying tactic', I would respond quickly that you are seeking advice on how to proceed.

One thought that did cross my mind (since the buyer may fall back on this as a defence) is whether it was made explicitly clear to the buyer that using the amplifiier without speakers would damage it. If it was explicitly clear, your situation looks much brighter.