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The seller's ID is metalalloy. I bought a lot of stormboys (I think I overbid) and paid on october 28th, and after waiting 12 days and receiving no answers to my e-mails, I filed a paypal claim and got my item. The seller eventually replied, and claimed he waited two weeks to ship because he was waiting for the money to clear from paypal to his bank account. I filed a paypal claim on november 7th and the package arrived the 9th, post-marked for the 8th. I think he was dicking around and ignoring my messages (I sent four, he claimed he received none) and panicked when I filed with paypal.

Edit: I paid $60 on ebay for 15 stormboys and a metal stormboy nob. Most of the plastic ork bits will have to be replaced, but the metal rocket packs and bits are ok, most of the legs are good, and the nob is fine. The seller ignored me for two weeks, didn't ship until I filed a paypal suit, and sent me an obscene, profanity laced e-mail after I left negative feedback, in which he claimed, among other things, that I overpaid for the models.

By my calculations, I got a mediocre deal but I still saved money, since 3 x $17 for the bitspacks and $12 for the nob is $63, which is more than what I got the models for shipped. It also doesn't include the cost of the ork plastics needed for the bits packs, which the auction pretty much included.

In summary, how bad was I screwed? And has anyone else been ripped off worse (or treated more shabbily?)

If you got merchandise and saved money, then you did pretty good. But if you're not totally satisified, then you still have options.

Now, if it were me, given that the seller was stupid and replied with profanities, I'd hammer him with a SNAD in a month or so and get all of my money back.

See, the way Ebay / PayPal works now, you have the absolute right to claim Signficantly Not As Described, ship what you think isn't right, and demand a full refund. If you use a Tracking Number and Delivery Confirmation, PayPal *will* issue a full refund to you.

Right now a lot of eBay sellers are up in arms, because a lot of Buyers hold them hostage, or ship back incomplete / broken / damaged / different merchandise as SNAD, and they just have to eat it... Unscrupulous buyers are literally taking parts out of items, shipping back different (lower grade) items, or just shipping back part of what they received.

This is why I refuse to do business on eBay anymore.

As a Seller, it is far too easy to be scammed by a Buyer. Sellers lose practically every time.

He should not have to wait for more than 2-3 days for a transfer from Paypal to his bank to clear, though having the credit in his paypal account should have been enough. He was making poor excuses.

I think you did over pay. I got 10 stormboys + metal nob for $22.50.

To be fair, PayPal really screws Sellers by placing 21-day non-interest-bearing holds for no particular reason. Recent PayPal policy is to earn 21 days of interest on every transaction, unless you have a (paid) merchant account *and* a long history with them.

PayPay will (eventually) also release funds if the Buyer leaves Good Feedback, if the Seller begs them to do so, based on communication from the Buyer...

Sounds like he was screwing with you or just being lazy seeing as he didn't even send it out till after you filed a claim. In addition it does seem that you overpaid a bit, but if its still less than retail then its still a saving none the less.

I'm actually waiting on some nid stuff I bought off ebay now, and I'm starting to get a little nervous as I hadn't heard anything from the seller yet. I'll wait a bit longer to see if it shows up and if not I'll probably have to email the sender and go through the process you did.

@Axyl: if it's been more than a week, I'd initiate a PayPal dispute and then esclate to a claim within 3 days after that. Don't sit on things, because you're on a clock.

dumbuket wrote: The seller eventually replied, and claimed he waited two weeks to ship because he was waiting for the money to clear from paypal to his bank account.

Some sellers do this. It's shoddy practice, but not specifically disallowed. And not entirely unlikely... it generally takes 3-4 days for the money to transfer to the bank, but can take up to 10, from my experience.

Add on extra time if you paid by echeque (ie:funded the payment from your bank account) in the first place.

Edit: I paid $60 on ebay for 15 stormboys and a metal stormboy nob.

More than I would have paid, but since that's the amount you bid, you certainly weren't 'screwed'...

and sent me an obscene, profanity laced e-mail after I left negative feedback,

Forward that on to eBay, and they should suspend his account.

I guess I did overpay a little bit but I don't feel that bad about it.

I also deleted his e-mail and removed it from my trash, so I can't foward it to ebay. Probably not worth doing anyway. I don't want to be vindictive, it's not worth the trouble, and who knows how crazy this guy is.

I also never knew sellers had it so rough. I mostly sell on ebay and I've never had a buyer abuse SNAD with me.

dumbuket wrote:I also never knew sellers had it so rough. I mostly sell on ebay and I've never had a buyer abuse SNAD with me.

By and large, they don't.

There are the few bad apples, about which a lot of noise gets generated. But the vast majority of buyers are honest. I've had exactly 2 chargebacks in the 4 years (and thousands of items sold) that I've been selling on eBay, and one of those the item eventually bounced back to me through the mail system, so I know the buyer actually didn't receive it.

You'll get occasional dodgy customers no matter how you sell. eBay is no different to any other selling venue in that respect. Possibly better, in fact, than some of the stores I've worked in...

I got a nice little obscenity laced email from another bidder I outbid at the last moment. That was fun.

Based on my experience, roughly 1% of all transactions goes bad.

In the past, you could do a lot more to protect yourself from fraud as an eBay Seller *and* as an eBay Buyer. For example, I always used to buy via Credit Card, and as a seller, I did my darndest not to accept PayPal.

The problem is that eBay has really changed the rules to make it very hard to protect yourself from scammers, either as sellers or buyers. So at that point, I rather just not deal with eBay.
____

Oh, yeah, 1% sounds low, until it's *your* 1%...

i think you should buy from a flgs and not worry about all this shenanigans

There was a good chance he was waiting for the money to clear because :

A: he was to broke to front the cash for shipping

or

B: he wanted to rip you off and after the money is in his account paypal can not take it out.


I just recently experianced B.... I would nail him with negative feed back at the very least.

i dont think you got screwed at all... you got what you paid for.
now would i have left a negative feedback, you bet. would i use him again, heck no.

I don't think you got screwed. I think you got jerked around, but that's not the same as screwed. I both buy and sell on eBay and I can assure you of one simple fact: everything I bid on is way overpriced, but the things I sell always go for nothing. </sarcasm>

You got the models, you left the feedback. If the email had bugged you at the time, you should have forwarded it to eBay, but without any evidence there isn't much you can do. I would file a thing with eBay describing your interaction, not to get money back, but simply so that the next person will have an easier time dealing with eBay about the guy.

Also, never attribute to malice what is probably negligence. I'm guessing the guy is doing this part time, and simply never got around to mailing your stuff.

Thanks for the post on who to avoid. It's a real shame that eBay has made some of the changes they have. I've had nothing but good experience until recently, when I had a buyer blow up about a mouse that I described as used, which I took almost directly off my own desktop, and then shipped to him. He also made a bunch of strange claims, like not being able to get to the post office, for a full refund, instead attempting to bully me into buying some upgrades for the mouse.

OTOH, I also had the shipping get totally screwed up on some things (2 items essentially swapping) and had UPS + the buyers work wonderfully in concert to get the whole mess straightened out, with no cost to myself, and no negative feedback.

Clthomps wrote:There was a good chance he was waiting for the money to clear because :

A: he was to broke to front the cash for shipping

or

B: he wanted to rip you off and after the money is in his account paypal can not take it out.


I just recently experianced B.... I would nail him with negative feed back at the very least.

Actually it is very easy to take the money from a seller, its happened to me numerous times, where even though I shipped an item within 2 days of recieving payment, and it was delivered, and was given positive feedback, they filed a claim with paypal and WON! -.- seller protection doesn't really exist it seems..

JohnHwangDD wrote:Based on my experience, roughly 1% of all transactions goes bad.

In the past, you could do a lot more to protect yourself from fraud as an eBay Seller *and* as an eBay Buyer. For example, I always used to buy via Credit Card, and as a seller, I did my darndest not to accept PayPal.

The problem is that eBay has really changed the rules to make it very hard to protect yourself from scammers, either as sellers or buyers. So at that point, I rather just not deal with eBay.
____

Oh, yeah, 1% sounds low, until it's *your* 1%...

I too have stopped doing anything on eBay. The sheer number of changes of rules they have made got my goat and made me suspicious about their motives.

@KK, there's no reason to be suspicious. Their motives are just as transparent as GW: Take and make as much money as possible.

The difference is that GW at least has to follow a variety of laws for what they do.

Ifurita wrote:He should not have to wait for more than 2-3 days for a transfer from Paypal to his bank to clear, though having the credit in his paypal account should have been enough. He was making poor excuses.

I think you did over pay. I got 10 stormboys + metal nob for $22.50.

I had to wait an entire week for someones echeck to clear paypal. It's not totally impossible that he was telling the truth.

JohnHwangDD wrote:@KK, there's no reason to be suspicious. Their motives are just as transparent as GW: Take and make as much money as possible.

The difference is that GW at least has to follow a variety of laws for what they do.

Has there ever been any ruling on PayPal's I'm a bank, I'm not a bank, okay, so I've got a ton of other people's money that I'm moving around for them, but I'm not a bank, so don't regulate me!

Nope. So far, PayPal's gotten away with not being a bank nor an escrow company.

But really, when you boil it down, PayPal is no different from giving your money to Vinnie and his Goombah buddies. The difference is that, if Vinnie screws up, you can go up to Tony Soprano to get things fixed.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oh, yeah, 1% sounds low, until it's *your* 1%...

To me that's still like buying a lottery ticket on the premise that "The odds are 15 million to 1, but... it could be my lucky day!". Sure, and rocks might fall from the sky and kill you. Just becuase you personally are involved is no reason not to trust cold statistics.

I've done hundreds of deals on the Internet, and it's about 1%. Of the few times it's happened, I ended up on the short stick exactly once. I had a good run, but at that point, I pretty much said "enough" and stopped.

Again, statistics are statistics, but the facts are facts. There are scammers out there, and those scammers can make real money. And it can be at your expense. So it is real. Now if you can control the risk, that's one thing. But if you can't, then that's a problem.

You made hundreds of deals with completely anonymous people in the human cesspool that is the internet, had ONE bad experience, and that was enough to make you quit and generalize that sellers lose "practically every time"? Seems like kind of a harsh overreaction.

Personally, I've bought and sold a few thousand dollars of GW models using eBay over the years and can't recall ever having a serious problem. I think the worst thing I've ever encountered was a non-paying bidder, and eBay refunded all of my listing fees in addition to the final value % fee. Never once had a buyer try and return something, nevermind try and scam me.

Okay so several people have said they stopped using ebay. What sites do you use now, or do you even bother with the internet? What about going through a "middle-man" ebay seller?

ZamboniKnight wrote:Okay so several people have said they stopped using ebay. What sites do you use now, or do you even bother with the internet? What about going through a "middle-man" ebay seller?

I don't buy or sell stuff online anymore. (I mean, I buy stuff from proper sites like Amazon.)

If I wanted to sell stuff I would offer it through a site like Dakka or at a wargame show or a local club.

I've had a few bad experiences, but again, that's after hundreds of good transactions, so I'm not terribly bothered by them. Any transaction is a risk, and if that sort of thing bothers you, then don't participate.

I've quit using eBay for a completely unrelated reason: shipping prices. I know it's nobody's fault, but when something I want often costs more to ship than the item itself, it kills the deal. Personally, unless you are looking for either large lots or something particularly rare, I would go through other venues, like Amazon, where you can often get free shipping.

I remember the day when 2 day priority shipping via USPS was only $3.20. Man, I did a lot of deals back then. Now, even as a seller, priority mail (that now takes WAY longer than 2 days) can cost as much as $12 to ship something. NOT WORTH IT.

ZamboniKnight wrote:What sites do you use now, or do you even bother with the internet? What about going through a "middle-man" ebay seller?

I moved nearly all of my GW trade / sale over to Bartertown.com and finished that roughly a year or two ago. I still do occasional deals there, but have much reduced need for trades / sales now. I use and accepted Postal Money Orders.

I generally bulk buy new GW stuff from Neal at the WarStore at 20% off.

Non-GW stuff, I buy new through Amazon or direct from seller. This is all credit-card protected.

I have no desire to do anything further with eBay / PayPal.

My last eBay experience was bad, too - it's been almost ten years ago, but I haven't bought anything off of eBay since. I ordered a bunch of assembled but unpainted rogue-trader era ork boyz (remember the 30-ork boxed sprue from back then? That was them!) I paid with a certified check from Bank of America - I waited two weeks after mailing it, made sure that the check had cleared (it had within a week), sent an inquisitory e-mail, heard nothing, waited another week, and then followed it up with a nasty e-mail threatening him with mail fraud for cashing my check and then not delivering. He protested that he hadn't been able to get to the post office in two weeks, and said he was sending it. About a week and a half after that, I finally got my ork boyz, as advertised...

Still, I finally got my merchandise. It just cooled my ardor for e-commerce...

On the other hand, I used to swap little cardboard pirate ships on the WizKids site through the mail and never had any problems - everything went off without a hitch. Who knows, eh?