Ebay FRAUD LOOPHOLE

Crowqueen

Have you left appropriate feedback yourself? Leave something like 'Item never arrived. Seller stalled until I was out of time for a dispute'.

eBay can't leave people with the right to open a dispute indefinitely. They are within their rights, in fact, not to have a dispute procedure at all - some sites/payment providers don't, and in this case the seller is not subject to UK law and cannot be held to account in quite the same way as a UK business can. Anything eBay provide has to take interests of both buyer and seller into account, and therefore eBay do give you the right to raise a dispute but cannot leave sellers completely at the mercy of an indefinite buyer right to do that.

If a seller is as bad as you claim they are they will be kicked off. If you think they are manipulating their feedback, report them to eBay. eBay will be able to see their details and determine whether they are actually using interconnected accounts to pad out their feedback or whether what they are doing falls within their definition of abuse.

velissaria

That's my point!
1. I couldn't leave feedback either, after 45 days.
2. I did let eBay know. I sent them all the names of the accounts that this person runs, together with evidence that this is the same person. They did not do anything, and won't do. I read online now that many people say that eBay has gone down the drain under this John Donahue guy as CEO
3. Ebay's resolution centre discouraged me from opening a resolution case in May on the grounds that the item was being sent from far away.
5. The seller's contact details were in Chinese. Ebay should force every buyer and seller to use the Latin alphabet.

C'mon, I don't think I am being irrational here.

velissaria

See also here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4615117.stm

"I used to sell CDs - £17, £20 a disc, and one time I just couldn't be bothered to send the disc off. I waited a few weeks and nothing came of it. And it just sort of went on from there - selling discs and not sending the items... I had no e-mails, or phone calls or letter, so I just took it to a higher level."

The only reason he got caught is because he was greedy and started scamming people for higher sums. If people had complained before, he wouldn't have been allowed to grow his scam so big.

George_Michael

That's my point!
1. I couldn't leave feedback either, after 45 days.

The cutoff time for leaving feedback is 60 days, not 45 days.

velissaria

I tried to leave feedback, but couldn't. Let ebay know, but they kept telling me about the 45 days rule.

techspec

Wow - thats a lot of story for $1.98. I'm just glad you didn't lose 3 quid - we could be here all day.

The deadline is 45 days - end of. If your daft enough to let the seller convince you to wait - thats not ebays fault.

As for the story from 2005 - thats in the days when protection was poor. Now its the buyers that rule - except for those that ignore deadlines.

velissaria

techspec wrote: »

Wow - thats a lot of story for $1.98. I'm just glad you didn't lose 3 quid - we could be here all day.

The deadline is 45 days - end of. If your daft enough to let the seller convince you to wait - thats not ebays fault.

As for the story from 2005 - thats in the days when protection was poor. Now its the buyers that rule - except for those that ignore deadlines.

It was your choice to keep reading.

We are not all as smart as you. Judging from what I read on other internet sites, a lot of "daft" people were scammed by being polite and wait. It's b#lls$t that buyers rule. At the end of the day, eBay rules. It protects large sellers and buyers and ignores the small fish. If you are a seller and have this unsympathetic attitude towards buyers, then you deserve what you get as well.

sharpy2010

I wonder how long the story would have been if it had been ten quid, or in fact would we be looking at a War and Peace style novel had it been for a tenner!

CKhalvashi

This is it; it was a few quid. Never let a buyer trick you into waiting more than 45 days.

Re the foreign characters thing; I've just logged into my personal one and got the following for my personal address:

Кристофер Николаевич Халваши
Квартира 4
2/6 Улица (removed)
Королев
Московская обл
141062 РОССИЯ

So foreign characters should show up. Whether Chinese will on their systems is a different story, however.

CK

RFW

velissaria wrote: »

No, they never refunded me. And as a customer, I don't really care how much investigating the seller would cost them. When you advertise and build your name on "great" and "reliable" "Paypal" and "eBay Buyer Protection" then you should deliver.

Or do you find more reasonable their suggestion to go to the police station and report potential fraud for $1.98?

My mistake, I thought I'd read you had been refunded, I must have misread in the avalanche of information.

I'm with others who think 45 days is enough, if you haven't received after 3 weeks from an international sale contact the seller, give them a few days to sort it, then open dispute at around 30 days. If you'd done that in time it would have been another strike against the seller.

As it stands right now, Ebay have no way of knowing if you are the one telling the truth, after all you may have received the item and been chancing your arm at getting it for free.

As for sellers only using Latin characters in their name/address that seems a little harsh on a global scale, you did, after all, choose to use a Chinese seller. What would you have done with the extra information anyway, paid the seller a visit? Written them a strong letter? Sent them a novella detailing your complaint?