Ebay seller arrested after item reported 'lost'

prowla

So, he offered to refund it.
Which was ignored.
Then two months later the police turned up.
And told he'd better refund it.
Soooo, he was told to do something he already had offered to.

I_wanna_live_for_free

I don't understand why he didn't just refund anyway once he had been advised that it hadn't arrived and was presumed lost in the post. He didn't even then claim from Royal Mail, and thus "kept" the buyers money by not refunding it. Did he think the buyer was just going to shut up and forgo his money? and as for letting the buyer change the terms of the auction after the event by sending it by a different method than that stated, absolutely no way!

I think there's more to this than meets the eye. Buyer should have raised a dispute which he would have won if seller couldn't provide tracking.

peter999

The seller didn't do anything wrong.

They came to arrangement to send cheapest way, but it went wrong.

The police behaviour is idiotic, stupid & ridiculous.

peter999

antrobus

I_wanna_live_for_free wrote: »

I don't understand why he didn't just refund anyway once he had been advised that it hadn't arrived and was presumed lost in the post....

Quite.

I_wanna_live_for_free wrote: »

I think there's more to this than meets the eye. ...

Agreed.

If you read the original version of the story -
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/Furious-student-sue-police-arrest-eBay-sale-probe/story-17094448-detail/story.html - you'll find that MrQuayum:-

- has sold "thousands of items on eBay without problems"

- has not had "any problems with that eBay account" but "one of his accounts had been suspended after he made mistakes in the listing of some items"

So you have a medical student selling thousands of items on eBay through multiple accounts. Sounds like a business to me, and I rather doubt that a medical student would have the time to be parcelling up orders and running down the post office every other day. Probably dropshipping for some dodgy Chinese suppliers or something similar.

Definitely more to this story than has been disclosed so far.

sequence

Well it said he had sold thousands, it doesn't say over what time period, it could be any length of time from the day ebay started trading. It doesn't take that much effort to sell a few thousand on ebay anyway. No reason to think that he was doing anything dodgy. More likely that the buyer wouldn't leave the police alone and so they were pestered into doing something.

antrobus

sequence wrote: »

Well it said he had sold thousands, it doesn't say over what time period, it could be any length of time from the day ebay started trading.

Mr Quayum is either 22 or 24 (depending on which bit of the Daily Mail report you read). So it wouldn't be 'any length of time' - the 'past few years' or even 'months' would be a better guess.

sequence wrote: »

...It doesn't take that much effort to sell a few thousand on ebay anyway...

Firstly, the volume remains a strong indicator of trading, secondly it's not selling that requires effort, but the fulfillment of said sales. And Mr Quayum is a medical student, and medical students have a pretty hefty workload, exams every six weeks, that sort of thing.

sequence wrote: »

...
No reason to think that he was doing anything dodgy. More likely that the buyer wouldn't leave the police alone and so they were pestered into doing something.

Then why did CPS decide to prosecute? Who where the "witnesses critical to the prosecution's case" (note the plural) who later "declined to make a statement"? I don't know the answer to that question, or any others for that matter. But like the poster above, I have concluded that there's more to this than meets the eye. The clues are there if you look carefully.