I’ve been buying games off of eBay before I’ve ever owned a credit card, and its web page could render on a PSP. Over the years I’ve purchased consoles, rare games, and common guff for my game library with virtually no issues.
Obviously eBay is full of scams and I’ve purchased my fair share of crap from china which either didn’t work, or never arrived, and grew to look at local sellers with returns or a good reputation. I’ve always saw the eBay Buyer Protection and thought it was neat, and that I’d never use it. Oh boy was a wrong.
Last month I found a console going for an insane price, not too low that it would’ve been an immediate red flag, but good though that I didn’t worry about the sellers non existent returns. The system looked good in the photos and the seller feedback looked legit. The only weird thing was the description was written by AI (eBay is pushing it and it’s as useless as you can imagine), but the condition was used, so I got it.
When it arrive the console was dirty as it was in photos. But nothing that a bit of elbow grease can’t fix. Then I noticed the ports were a bit dirty, and there was signs that it was opened by an ape before I got it. So I got my new cables, purchased separately since it wasn’t coming with any, plugged her in and… nothing.
No light, no life.
Took the system apart myself and the insides of the console was a complete mess. Rust and corrosion everywhere, so much I thought it was used as a boat anchor at some point. Or the side of the road in the rain.
So I contacted the seller and asked them for a refund. They offered to exchange it, and thought to play ball… 2 days later the other system was missing. Suuurreee.
I gave them an offer for a partial refund. Saying hey, this is so broken it’s not with the return shipping. Why don’t we compromise and you give me a return minus the amount it would cost me to return it and we’ll call it even. I paid $92 and I offered $67. They then offered me $27.
Nope going full refund. Then they went silent with no messages or instructions.
I escalated it with eBay, who gave them 3 option, pay for return shipping and refund me when it arrives, I pay for shipping and they reimburse me, then I got the rest of the money back, or we figure something else out.
They opted for the first option. I printed the label and I waited for their currier to pick it up. The seller also gave no instructions but thankfully tracking had enough info from the tracking label I knew what was happening.
Then the day arrived for the parcel picked up, and the currier was a no show. I checked the label and the address was wrong. Despite it showing up. Informed the seller, and they canceled the label. But ghosted me again.
EBay got back to me and told me the case will default in 3 day if it was not picked up. Then 3 days passed and I had to reach out to eBay again, who tried to restart the process. At this point I was frustrated and told them it’s been 3 weeks since I started this return claim, please either refund me or escalate this.
I got my refund that afternoon.
What I learned about eBay buyer protection is this. It works, but it’s work too. It’s quite fair to the seller, but its resolution is heavily in the buyers favor. My only advice is for buyers who’ve been scammed like I was, is to keep on top of your eBay rep, as replies are handed in a shared pool, and the support agent is not going to look back on the case history.
TL:DR got scammed on eBay, got money back from eBay buyer protection, however it took 3 weeks and keeping on top of eBay support.
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You got lucky.
Don’t mess around with this stuff - get a full refund first go, not “we’ll ship a replacement”. Just get your money back.
Also fuck ebay.
I like giving the seller the benefit of the doubt, not everyone can be on their a game everyday.
Honestly while eBay was a nuisance it understandable why it’s set up this way. I was on the other side of this where we shipped a thing and the buyer claimed it never arrived. Which we later proved it did. And considering how rare or hard to find some items are it’s a good service.
That said I support local sellers in my area before I check eBay. Then eBay but local to my country, the international if the price is right.
You got lucky.
No he didn’t.
eBay relies on buyer confidence to continue to exist. They’re essentially the only game in town for a well known world-spanning used stuff selling platform, so they know sellers don’t have a choice and they don’t give a flying fuck about the seller’s bottom line. eBay sides with the buyer. Always. It might take some time, it might take some extra emails, but ultimately you will always receive a refund no matter what if you as a buyer complain. This means that it is always possible to get your money back if you were overtly scammed by an eBay seller, and this is because eBay knows very well just how prevalent seller-side scams are on their platform.
But this also means that the buyer can concoct any lie or pull any scam themselves no matter how obvious and an honest seller ultimately has no recourse and will be out both the money and the product. A buyer can lie and claim the product never arrived, swap it for a broken instance of a similar item and ship it back to you claiming you “scammed” them, or even just apply your shipping label to a brick and mail it back to you and eBay won’t care. They’ll close the case, take the money from your account, and refund the buyer their purchase amount while the buyer keeps the item. It doesn’t matter if you posted your item as “no returns.” All the buyer has to do is say it was defective, damaged, or didn’t arrive if they have buyer’s remorse or simply feel like ripping you off.
For this reason I don’t sell anything with any value whatsoever on eBay. Only literal junk that I got for free via work, like parting out broken equipment that has a net $0 cost for us, etc. If I turn a buck on it, fine. But sometimes I don’t, and I have seen buyers try every trick under the sun, and every time eBay sides with them in the face of all evidence to the contrary. So you will ultimately always lose some, and if that’s going to impact your bottom line you just can’t sell on eBay.
So yes, fuck eBay – but for a different reason.
This ^
Use to sell on eBay for years, and remember a time when we shipped a Scuzzy drive to Australia only to find ourselves in eBay court. Thankfully we kept receipts and won. But as a seller you need to be extremely cautious with what you list.
I don’t like eBay but for other reasons like 3d printed model resellers who rip models and pictures from thingiverse and sells it like its theres. Even if the model is under a noncommercial license.
You forgot that sellers can’t even leave negative feedback about buyers now.
As a buyer I film unboxing videos for myself for expensive purchases. As a seller I don’t sell anything more expensive than $100 or so, and after hundreds of sales I haven’t had a return yet (knock on wood).
For more expensive items above $100 I might film a boxing video, though, and if I ever did get a return on that item, I’d film an unboxing video as well. At least I could prove if a buyer mailed me back a brick or whatever. Of course it’s also entirely possible that eBay staff don’t even bother reviewing the evidence.
I’ve been buying and selling since the late '90s. I stay away entirely from areas rife with fraud, like computer parts or things teenagers might want to buy, and so far it’s worked out for me.
eBay buyer protection is amazing. If you’re buying on eBay do yourself a favor and go find their policy document that describes the requirements for each level of condition that an item can be listed for sale under.
Sellers are often lazy (or scammy) and list items with greater damage than allowed for a given listing condition and think that writing things like “sold as is, no refunds!” in the body of the listing is some kind of get out of liability free move when listing an item as “Used” or “Refurbished .”
Unless you’re buying an item that’s specifically listed under “for parts or repair” the item must be 100% working with no loss of functionality when you receive it, otherwise you can just open a case and send it back for a 100% refund including shipping. This is a great way to hold a scammy seller over a barrel for a fair partial refund for any missing functionality. Remember that any time you have to send an item back the seller has to eat the cost of shipping both ways plus any fees eBay charges them, so feel free to extort fair compensation if you’re willing to keep the damaged item. If you can’t get an amount that would allow you to repair the item back to full function you can just say no to any offer and send the item right back. I’ve shut down dozens of sellers trying to move damaged items this way, all you have to do is point to the policy document and eBay will back you up.
I once bought an Intel processor off of ebay for a similar "great, but not too great to be a scam " price. The seller shipped “it” and provided the tracking code with a delivery date to my municipality. When it finally read as delivered I checked my porch and sure enough, nothing. So I reach out to usps the shipping provider with the tracking info. Turns out this seller didn’t even send it to my address, but a random po box in my city. I called ebay with this information (as well as the identical complaints of the exact same experience from several other people who bought from this seller who’d dropped negative reviews in the past week. No big deal, clearly a hacked account used for a scam, right?). Well, ebay told me that despite them not using my shipping address, provably (I had the usps rep who was kind enough put that in writing), and despite the other negative reviews with the same experience, they’d not be giving me a refund since the product was shipped. It took days of arguing over the phone with them, them threatening to close my (in good standing since I’d bought things here and there) account, and them closing my case unresolved for me to just file a charge back with my credit card provider. This caused my account to be closed (losing access to all previous order receipts/etc) and is coincidentally the day I decided I’d never do business with Ebay again and provide my honest feedback on this experience to anyone considering purchasing from them in the future.
Glad you got your refund, I sell stuff every once in a while and one time their support let me keep 600 bucks from some seller who was buying a laptop off me but then wanted me to ship it to some drop shipper.
I guess it’s a common scam that makes you ship to a different address then they blame you for it never arriving. I contacted support because it seemed sus and they banned them and told me I could refund the money now or just hold it until they initiate the return but that after 60 days they wouldn’t be able to ask for the money.
so I ended up keeping it since they never requested it back through PayPal
Just a tip if you’ve had your eBay account since before you were 18. Never update your date of birth on either your eBay or PayPal account such that you would have been under 18 when you made the account. I made that mistake and they banned that account, I had to make a new one.
Na, learnt that lesson along time ago when my Dad was trying to help me and got my account banned.
Ah well, it’s a little reassuring that this didn’t just happen to me!
Buying on eBay is fine. I’ve had some issues but it normally just takes a few days to resolve and I’m never worse off.
Selling on the other hand…
Shout out for PriceCharting’s online market - it is THE BEST online market for buying and selling games. Highly recommend you check it out for your future game purchases. Glad you were able to unscam - sorry for the headache.
It’s my go to when looking up game prices. That said I used eBay completed for consoles, since it doesn’t track hardware as well the last I checked.
Does it not? Hrmm. I will check.
It tracks it but since eBay uses the term “used” for all the category its hard to tell the difference between the box vs box+power+av vs box+controllers+power+av
Sometimes it comes with crappy third party controllers other times it comes with one legit and the other is a madcatz
So its a bit unreliable for exact prices, but good enough to get a feel for what bit should be worth.
