What are my rights?

scrooge_mcduck_4

Hello all,

I recently bought a heart rate monitor/watch off a seller in Canada. I won the auction on the 24th June, and emailed the seller to find out how he wanted to be paid. He stated cash, IMO, or bidpay. I did a bit of research and whilst none of the options offered me any protection as the buyer, I went for bidpay, as this appeared to be a common method amongst US, and Canadian Sellers, and I could use my credit card which offered me online fraud protection. I was also comforted by the fact that he had 1030 feedback comments with a 99%+ positive record.

Needless to say, I wouldn't be writing this thread if the watch had ever turned up. We did in fact exchange email correspondence right up until 20th July, with him sending regular emails to say he had not yet received the money from bidpay, as there was a postage problem in Canada. This was backed up by some discussion threads on ebay (apparantly it was impacting a lot of bidpay customers).

I asked him to chase bidpay for an update, and his last email on the 20th July stated that he had spoke to bidpay and they had confirmed that his money had been sent to him. He therefore agreed to send me the goods, as it was not my fault bidpay were having problems (his words)

From that date, the seller has no longer returned any of my emails, and I have kept my credit card company up to date. He is also "no longer a registered user" of ebay. I had not been too concerned about this, as I was under the impression that I was covered by the cc fraud protection.

Today, I phoned my cc company for an update (I sent them all the email correspondence a week ago) and while no action has been taken by them yet, they tell me I'm unlikely to get my money back as bidpay offer no recourse to the buyer. Now I already knew this, but had been given the impression by the cc company (American Express) previously, that I would still be covered by the credit card fraud protection, which no longer appears to be the case. They say they will instigate a charge back, but that it is likely to be rejected by bidpay

I have today escalated a claim to Ebay (I had already filed a dispute a few weeks back).

Now that I have the very lengthy preamble out of the way!, I guess my question is, have I got a hope in hell of receiving my money back (£110) from either my credit card company or ebay? Has anybody had any similar experiences?

Thanks

soolin

I'm really rusty on credit card protection, but will go and have a look to see what I can find.

I have no experience of Bidpay though, so that might muddy the water a little, it depends on how they process the transaction and whether you pay them or the seller.

There are two points I want to check particularly, one is whether you are fully covered for overseas transactions, I had understood that some of the CC protection is eroded for foreign purchases. Secondly, is American Express a UK credit card with the same rules and regs as say a Visa card?

No doubt others will be able to offer advice though.

Soo

MORPH3US

Don't know if this is relavent to you or now, but about 4 years ago I purchased a Bluetooth headset from an online retailer called Scancom. The headset broke after about 20 days and after lots of e-mails and letters to them from myself and TS being ignored, I decided that I wasn't going to get money back so went to CC provider and said that under "consumer credit act blah blah" that they were jointly liable - just as TS told me to do. They came back saying that they weren't as it was under £90 so they weren't liable.

I wrote them a complaint letter saying what benefits were they offering me if they weren't protecting me from these kind of online con merchants yet they let them accept their card. Said I was going to close my account with them and get a different CC if they didn't do something and low and behold, 4 days later the money had been paid back onto my card!!!

Just goes to show that even if they say there is nothing they can do to help, complain and if you are a valued customer then you should get some joy!!!

Hang in there mate, i'm sure you will get somewhere from your CC company or with ebay!!!

M

maninwhitecoat

Oooh do let me know what happens, i'd like to see what ebay are going to do seeing as though you didn't use paypal to make the purchase

Hintza

You should get most of your money back from EBay. They will charge you £15 admin fee for this and you have to post/fax all your stuff to an address in Germany. This process takes ages 3 months plus bit it should come good eventually.

Thefunkygibbons

3 months

The one time, I used it, it took six months, but at least a partial recovery is better than none

I fear that you will have no joy with your CCC, as bidpay (and paypal) are not treated as vendors but as money transmission service providers

Shame, because if the CCC would breathe down their necks, the service might improve