Fake Item - Unpaid for - what's next step?

justsarah

Yesterday I bought a pair of GHD straighteners off ebay. The price was a little below retail value (so didn't strike me as being odd / too low) and the seller had 54 x 100% positive feedback. The only payment method was postal order and by chance the seller only lives 5 minutes away from me so thought I should be fine. About an hour after the auction ended I received a message from another ebay member asking me not to send money to the seller since she had recently bought ghds from her and after three days they had broken. She had paid to send them to a ghd repairer (since she had not received any communication from the seller) and they had declared them counterfeits. Unfortunately she had already left positive feedback. Then another message arrived from a different buyer quoting the same, this time the buyer was a powerseller with over 3000 positive feedbacks.

I have double checked the seller's feedback rating and realise that after I bidded most of the positive feedbacks have now been followed up by comments claiming they are fakes. She has also just listed 20 pairs for sale!

Obviously I do not want to pay for the item and I'm very grateful to the people who have saved me my money! But what should I do now? should I contact ebay and explain why I won't be paying? or should I just not pay and see what the seller does? I don't really want a negative feedback as I've bought / sold on ebay for almost 4 years and have a 100% positive feedback score of over 250 so I'd be pretty gutted to get a neg now!

Sorry this is so long and thanks for any help

blaise802001

To be honest I wouldn't pay. If she leaves a neg, just leave a follow up comment to it telling others users to check her feedback as she is a con artist. I have over 250 feedback too with no negs, but for this I wouldn't mind getting a neg. Like I say leave a follow up comment. I would also log a report with ebay too just so you are covered. They might even be able to sort it for you if she does leave neg feedback, that they could remove it? Not too sure though. She should be reported as selling counterfeits though, ebay does not support fraud in the slightest.

HTH

justsarah

Thanks blaise802001 for your help. It seems a lot of people have been reporting her to ebay, I've now received yet another two messages from people warning me off! I've just checked her user id again and she's no longer registered with ebay! I'll count myself lucky this time, just have to hope that she doesn't reappear under another user id, I'd hate to think that people might get scammed by her.

blaise802001

Hi Sarah, if she is listed as no longer registered with ebay then it is highly likely that ebay have suspended her account after all the reports filed against her. There is definitely no way they will reinstate her now. Glad you saved your money :-)