Help with customer eBay refund request

jpr_74

In August 2011, I sold two tickets on my eBay account for a friend for Adele in Bournemouth for Oct 2011.

Now as far as I know, the concert was originally rescheduled and then cancelled, as I think she still hasn't appeared in Bournemouth for that show. I think the tickets were purchased from me from a buyer who was buying them on behalf of someone as at the time, I remember looking at their purchase history and found that they bought and sold a lot of tickets on eBay before, so they may have bought them on behalf of this person.

I have now just received an email from someone whose name I do not recognise as they were not the person who I sent the tickets to via the address on the front of the envelope. The buyer had instructed me not to send the tickets directly to them, but to another named person, who I know is not the person who has sent me the following email.

This is the email:

Hi there,

In late August 2011 I bought tickets from you for an Adele show.
By the time the show was cancelled (28 October 2011) it was past the 45 day dispute period and Paypal did not proceed with my dispute with any force. Therefore you may or may not have received a refund request from Paypal for this transaction.

Since then I have been liaising with my Credit Card Fraud team and with solicitors with a view to getting this resolved. They have advised that I contact you personally to give you an opportunity to resolve this issue yourself since Paypal may not have done so on my behalf. Failing this they will proceed to follow it up with your bank and ultimately with the police.

I purchased these tickets from my Paypal account "*************.co.uk". On the advice of solicitors I have now frozen this account pending investigation of this issue.

Please could you refund me the full amount which I paid to you for tickets which became invalid and not fit for their purpose, and thus which is not rightfully yours?
If you require a copy of the Paypal receipt or any other details, including a method of acceptable payment/ transaction ID/ item no/ amount paid, please let me know. Please note that you will also have a copy of these details on file on your emails, as it may not still be visible on your Paypal history.

Thanks,
***********

Now what should I do? Is this person correct in their request, any advice would be really great....thanks. Am a bit worried as they say they want to get the police involved.

Poppie68

Credit card fraud, police?. Their contract surely would be with the person who purchased the tickets from you and then sold them on to the idiot who is trying to scam the money from you. I would forward the email onto the ebay buyer and tell them to deal with it.

Forgot to add....why wait a year and a half to contact you anyway? I would bet my life on them not having contacting any solicitor etc. They should of got their money back from the concert organisers or whoever refunds in these circumstances as i'm sure other tickets holders did.

NeverEnough

What a muddle. You have no contract whatsoever with this person, as you have described. 2011 is a long time ago and the original buyer of the tickets from you on ebay could have contacted you long before now!! Also, no-one "freezes" their Paypal account - Paypal pull the rug on them for reasons only known to Paypal.

I suggest you ignore this, it smells like a scam and an attempt to extort money. Also sounds as if your buyer was a broker of some sort who bought up tickets and sold them on down the line then fobbed people off if things didn't work out. You sold some tickets legitimately, its going on for 2 years since you did that, and you have no responsibility to someone who may have bought them from your original buyer anyway.

shaun_from_Africa

As your "buyer" (if it's really them) has left it over 18 months, I would say they his is far too long to consider refunding them as there is very little chance that you will be able to get refunded by the event organisers.

An awful lot of what your buyer states is total bull****.

Since then I have been liaising with my Credit Card Fraud team and with solicitors with a view to getting this resolved. They have advised that I contact you personally to give you an opportunity to resolve this issue yourself since Paypal may not have done so on my behalf. Failing this they will proceed to follow it up with your bank and ultimately with the police.

If their credit card company was involved, they would already have contacted you, as would their solicitors.

I purchased these tickets from my Paypal account "*************.co.uk". On the advice of solicitors I have now frozen this account pending investigation of this issue.

Total rubbish. No one would have told them this as the account need to be open for an investigation.
It was probably closed by paypal themselves due to suspicious activity either by the account holder or by someone who hacked the account.

I would suggest that you reply to the e-mail asking for the name and contact details of their solicitor and the name and contact details of the person they were dealing with from their credit card fraud department as you wish to liase directly with them.

The chances are that you won't hear back from them.

bris

Ignore it. The only contact you should reply to is from the bank.

antrobus

jpr_74 wrote: »

....
Hi there,

In late August 2011 I bought tickets from you for an Adele show....

Dear Sir or Madam,

I'm afraid you are mistaken. My records indicate that you did not buy any such tickets from me.

Yours faithfully,

etc

jpr_74 wrote: »

... Am a bit worried as they say they want to get the police involved.

Perhaps they do. But why would the police get involved? It's not a criminal offence to resell concert tickets, even if the concert is later cancelled. I mean, it's not as if you knew in advance that the singer concerned was going to suffer from a throat infection (or whatever) and pull out.

arcon5

I'm betting this woman was given your contact details from the person they bought it from..

A reply along the lines of:

Dear ____,

Having checked the details of my buyer of these tickets, it would appear they would not match those you have provided. We therefore deny a contractual relation between us and you exists.

I would recommend you refer your issues to whomever you purchased the tickets from.

I will also advise that nothing criminal has taken place here. You are of course welcome to contact the police for which they will no doubt agree with this.

Because of the points highlighted above, I now consider this matter closed.

With Regards

The police would only get involved if something fraudulent had taken place. for example you using a false name; obtaining money without any intention of supplying the goods (hard to prove though). So even if the police miraculously get involved you simply tell them you sold the tickets and sent them out 2 years ago - if they sold them on it's not your problem. The police won't want to waste time with this.

R164ard

Your contract through ebay and paypal is with the purchaser only. This smacks of a scam and I suggest you forward a copy of the email, with all header info to both ebay and paypal.

The claim of involvement of police, solicitors etc. is way over the top. No solicitor would touch this unless they received a hefty fee.......how much were the tickets worth???

Freezing Paypal account.....why? Pointless.

Ebay will deal with this for you.

techspec

I ignore such nonsense. Its never worth the hassle of getting into a debate. Their message is nonsense.

Did the event organiser refund your friend for the tickets?

Oli.s

Smacks of a Scam, They are claiming to have frozen their paypal account so that if anyone is daft enough to refund them they have to do it by other means, I bet the acceptable payment method will be western union!!

System

I'm not certain but surely your friend would have received the refund for these tickets automatically? Therefore this guy has paid you for these tickets and not got his money back. While your friend has made money twice on these tickets.

If this is true then why shouldn't this guy get his money back?

I'm unsure what the craic is when the buyer has paid far over cost price for a concert and the gig is cancelled. If he did receive the refund from the concert provider then he's probably received less than he paid you for the ticket? Is that fair?