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I only sell to people in my country, that way I can drive to the house if need be and extract my money if required.

Its a bad side of the internet, people ripping other off, its a faceless crime and is hard to stop, but it does look as though you have a case.

 thehod wrote:
I live in Port Saint Lucie and have had all my mail forwarded to my place. Even if it was sent to my old place, I have my ex-roommate currently living there who would pick it up for me. I finally called the post office in Orlando responsible for my parcel and they did not have any packages for me.

All ebay or paypal requires is just a tracking number and he could have sent something as simple as a letter and just used the tracking number. I have researched this subject and many people have been scammed and even to the point of getting in return an empty box.

Bullcrap. Both the German DHL number and the USPS one clearly state that it's a parcel sent to ya and that it successfully arrived at the adress you gave him. Given the hard facts, you have zero proof to back up your claims whereas he provided us with any information on the matter backing his idea up. Furthermore, he is a highly respected seller on ebay with his actual customers providing extremely positive feedback on his services, especially in regard to his fast and high quality shipping.

You, as a seller, are required to make sure the package can arrive safely at the destination. You are responsible for packaging it carefully in order to achieve the aforementioned goal, and you *are* responsible for any damage caused if you poorly prepare the package e.g. by not adding enough filler material etc.

As it stands right now, you are making up stories, are a liar, someone to absolutely avoid buying anything from and cause financial damage on purpose - which is the same as any scammer you speak so badly of.

Hello,
i do not know what i can do more, sorry. If the adress was wrong and the packet will be send back to me i will contact the seller of course! And i will also keep my eyes open for the items.
But i also have a highly financel damage and do not make the seller responsible for that in several tabletop forums. That would not be fair!!! So please do not tell everybody my name and call me a thief! I will never ever steal an army from another guy!!!
I am sorry, that the items are lost. But i sent it to the adress ebay gave me. Thats all i can say.

Greets,
Joe

@Sigvatr

The emails I got from joe stated he sent it to my former address that has the zip code of 32825 (I can show you the screen shots) and the tracking number clearly shows it arrived in Orlando at zip code 32828. Now as I said before even if it went to my old house I have an ex-roommate who would have told me and I called the post office and they have no such package for me.

Here is another fact:

A tracked package will say "DELIVERED" when it arrives at the house for example:

Tracking #:
1Z6274330313603693

Carrier:

UPSGround

Status:
ACCEPTEDIN TRANSITDELIVERED

DELIVERED
Jan-30-13, 13:11 PM, PORT SAINT LUCIE, FL 34984


This is the tracking number he supplied:

CL722368017DE

Priority Mail International Parcels

Arrival at Unit

December 11, 2012, 6:51 am

ORLANDO, FL 32828


Once again the address he sent to was 32825 So either he scammed me or it got lost in the mail and I will apologize to Joe if it is the latter.

Not quite, it arrived in 32828 because that's the USPS distribution center for the zip codes around it.

For example, in Richmond, the main distribution center is in 23220 and services 23220 23221 23223 etc.

Find the post office in 32828, call them, tell them what the tracking info says on the site. I bet that it is sitting in an undeliverable/unclaimed international mail bin because they couldn't read the street address or something, so didn't even forward it to the post office in 32825.

Edit: also, a poorly written '5' can certainly look like an '8'.

 thehod wrote:

 japehlio wrote:
surely if you now have proof he did not return product to you (different tracking number etc) you can 'counter claim' with paypal?

I had to call ebay over the phone and it was their German call center. The problem is since I dont speak German and their English capable rep had no idea and kept insisting the buyer had a tracking number. I have read various forums about my problem and I am not the only one this has happened to and it is about 99.9999% ebay sides with the buyer over the seller. I provided the seller's ID for people to blacklist him just in case.

Moral of the story: Dont use ebay for selling an army

I have had to deal with a scammer on eBay.
I had an open shut case, and was the buyer too. I backed out of a deal to buy 40K forgeworld tanks when I realised they were forgeworld epic tanks. The seller claimed a non paying buyer, my fight was over keeping my 100% feedback rating. With the
help of people from Warseer I got the sales quashed and the scammer banned.
But it took a while.

eBay kept asking me to open a dialogue to the seller.
I kept asking eBay why I would want to give my phone number and address to a scammer.
The answer was always the same: aka 'deal with it yourself, don't involve us, so long as we get our fees we are ok.'
Eventually I spoke the police and got a crime incident report number.
That week ebay cancelled the auction lots and banned the seller.

 thehod wrote:
He claimed item not described and said models were broken. I told him that with international shipping I cant be held responsible for what happens during shipment. Before we had a chance to negotiate he went straight for opening a case. The army cost me $2000 including cost of models. I posted his ebay ID and I hope people dont make a $2000 dollar mistake.

$2000 forget ebay, talk to the police. Report a theft.
Find the German electronic fraud police and ask them for advice.

http://www.bka.de/EN/Home/homepage__node.html?__nnn=true
- German FBI, a bit big for them, but a contact number might be useful to ask who in German policing to ask.

http://www.boersenaufsicht.de/
- German computer crime unit with regional numbers? I think.

The army posted is clearly items in a four figure value in dollars or euros, as a crime it should be taken seriously.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Unfortunately, the costs of getting a lawyer often out weigh the expenses of the loss.
Even more unfortunate, it isn't that uncommon of a thing to happen (not exactly frequent - but I have had it happen twice to me and have heard similar events from a dozen or so friends as well).

eBay is generally insulated against any action against them - in many cases that laws are actually written in a manner which dictates that what they do in regards to giving the buyer the benefit is in fact mandatory. The burden of proof to demonstrate that you in fact should be legally reimbursed is generally beyond what you can demonstrate under normal circumstances. Even have signature receipts are often not enough as it becomes the word of the buyer versus the word of the seller that the items which were shipped were in fact the items that were received.

I wont sell on ebay at all, wont give the scum my money.
If I have any miniatures to sell, I do it on Dakka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:
Not quite, it arrived in 32828 because that's the USPS distribution center for the zip codes around it.

For example, in Richmond, the main distribution center is in 23220 and services 23220 23221 23223 etc.

Find the post office in 32828, call them, tell them what the tracking info says on the site. I bet that it is sitting in an undeliverable/unclaimed international mail bin because they couldn't read the street address or something, so didn't even forward it to the post office in 32825.

Edit: also, a poorly written '5' can certainly look like an '8'.

Correct, how long ago was this. Items normally sit a month before being returned to sender. RTS address likely featured prominently.

Dakka is a wide community, we have Dakkaites in Orlando. maybe someone can visit the post office.

Aha, I knew this story looked familiar...

http://blog.spikeybits.com/2012/12/ebay-fraud-alert-stolen-army-reward.html

Seems like a lot of work and potential for reputation blowback on the seller for him to be trying to screw the German buyer. OTOH the buyer is not without his own defense. Very interesting. It's a shame that there aren't better resources provided by ebay/paypal to resolve these types of issues.

Beautiful army BTW. I can believe in the claims of damaged during shipment, but find it hard to believe that the craftsmanship was as poor as the buyer claimed (glu spots et al.) IF the army sent is in fact the one pictured. *not saying it wasn't, just positing that I don't actually have any facts.

I'm not going to comment about the specifics of the case at hand as I'm not privvy to all the details and there seems to be reason to question both sides in this case. But I have a few things to say about the other issues brought up in the thread.

Since about 2000, I have done a large amount of buying and selling via Ebay. (only chumps pay full price for GW product! ) This has mostly been as a buyer, but I've done a fair amount of selling as well. Most of my transactions have gone off without a hitch, but some have gone bad. The thing is that if you do enough Ebaying, you will eventually come across the occasional idiot, jerk, or crook. It's just simple math combined with human nature and it's something you have to accept as cost of doing business when you buy and sell online.

Ebay/Paypal has made it worse in recent years. The big one was to remove the ability to give neutral and negative feedback to buyers. That was a huge mistake in my book as it removed a lot of the acountability that the feedback system had built. I feel that just as the seller has certain responsibilities in a transaction, the buyer has has them as well. Not only does the buyer have the responsibility to provide timely payment, he also needs to act like a decent human being and be willing to work with the seller if something goes wrong. He should not automaticly just slap the seller with a bad feedback rating, blacken his reputation on the feedback forums, etc. The inability of the seller to leave appropriate feedback for jerks gives some the lisence to do whatever they want.

For example it is now my policy to never leave feedback first. If I'm the buyer, I need to get my item before I can give the appropriate feedback and if I'm the seller i want to see that the item is safely in the buyer's hands and evrything is fine before I do so. I see feedback as the last step in a transaction process. I started doing this back around 2003 when I sold three lots of historical miniatures to a single buyer. As soon as he payed, the buyer started pestering me for positive feedback on the transaction, citing his quick payment via Paypal. (this was back when you could accept other forms of payment) Like I fool I left him positive feedback. Sure enough a week later I look at my feedback and saw three new nagtives griping about "shipping damage" and "poor packing". The buyer had made no effort to contact me and let me makes things right. He just hit the negative button, and as I had already left feedback I had no way of leaving feedback that reflected the true nature of the transaction: ie that it had gone bad and that the buyer was an unreasonable jerk to be avoided. So from that day on, I will never leave feedback first as the seller unless i have been in communications with a buyer and know he is happy with the item he bought. It's caused a couple of my transactions to go without feedback at all over the years. But that's fine.

Speaking of damage, it happens. Shipping damage is a fact of life if you buy and sell figures online. No matter how carefully you pack figures, if you ship enough miniatures, eventually something is going to get damaged in transit. The farther the package has to travel and the more hands it passes through the more likely this is to occur. As often as not, damage is caused by poor handling by the post office. The US Post Office in particular is notorious for being staffed with uncaring, disinterested, careless, affirmative action types. This is one of the reasons that I no longer ship overseas on my own auctions. (that and it's just a pain as I hate filling ot the customs forms, I can't use the automatic postage kiosk at the post office, and there is more scope for fraud and other hyjinx with foreign buyers)
My point is that unless there is obvious evidence of haphazzard and negligent packing by the seller, buyers should be reasonable in their expectations in regards to shipping damage and willing to deal with him in making it right. A couple of backpacks popped off models should not be grounds to slap a seller with a negative feedback score and nasty comment. (once again, that happened to me once)

TR

Hello,
I am the byer of the lamenters army and i did not give him a bad feedback!!!

I have not gotten back my army and if you want please do call the US Postal service and reference the tracking number that was supplied. It was the buyer's responsibility to ensure it got to the house and like I said before even if it got my previous address I have an ex-roommate that can sign for that package and all mail is being forwarded to my new address. So until I get back the army, I consider myself scammed out of it.

 thehod wrote:
It was the buyer's responsibility to ensure it got to [my] house...

 thehod wrote:
As to the damage, I contested that I cannot be responsible for damage incurred by shipping overseas and anything can happen...

Funny how your attitude changes depending on whether you are the one sending or receiving the goods.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 thehod wrote:
It was the buyer's responsibility to ensure it got to [my] house...

 thehod wrote:
As to the damage, I contested that I cannot be responsible for damage incurred by shipping overseas and anything can happen...

Funny how your attitude changes depending on whether you are the one sending or receiving the goods.

I dunno...there's a difference between something arriving a bit beat up and something not arriving at all, wouldn't you say?

There's a huge difference, I don't know why Treesong would even bring that up unless he's trying to the stir the pot. Take a second to think before you start accusing people of being hypocrites. I'm going to assume you just didn't pay close to attention to what you quoted.

Certainly it's more serious when things don't turn up than when they do arrive in a damaged condition.

My observation is still to do with how you apportion responsibility, it's not about 'stirring the pot'. When someone sends something to you then it's their responsibility to make sure it arrives properly, when you send stuff to someone else you are quick to shirk that and say that you can't be held responsible for the condition in which it arrives and that 'anything can happen'.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 thehod wrote:
It was the buyer's responsibility to ensure it got to [my] house...

 thehod wrote:
As to the damage, I contested that I cannot be responsible for damage incurred by shipping overseas and anything can happen...

Funny how your attitude changes depending on whether you are the one sending or receiving the goods.

I dunno...there's a difference between something arriving a bit beat up and something not arriving at all, wouldn't you say?

On the contrary... if something arrives damaged then it is ultimately the senders fault. If something doesn't arrive at all, then it is probably just as much down to the receiver to call around their local sorting offices to see what happened to it.

From what I have gleaned from this thread, it sounds like the parcel did make it to the US and got misplaced somewhere. The OP posted that he finally called around and they don't have a parcel waiting for him, but this is months after the incident. That should have been investigated straight away. You can't realistically expect the German guy to be calling around sorting offices in the US, when he hardly speaks English.

I don't think it would be fair to expect the German sender to call around to US offices even if he spoke fluent English.

Hello,

its me again. I wrote an email to the U.S Postal Service and they send me the tracking list of the packet:

Current Track & Confirm e-mail information provided by the U.S. Postal Service.

Label Number: CL72 2368 017D E

Service Type: International Parcels

Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arrival at Unit ORLANDO FL 32828 12/09/12 7:05am

Depart USPS Sort JACKSONVILLE FL 32099 12/09/12
Facility

Processed through USPS JACKSONVILLE FL 32099 12/08/12 4:00am
Sort Facility

Depart USPS Sort JERSEY CITY NJ 07097 12/06/12
Facility

Processed through USPS JERSEY CITY NJ 07097 12/06/12 8:57am
Sort Facility

Origin Post is
Preparing Shipment

Processed Through Sort GERMANY 11/19/12 1:02pm
Facility

Processed Through Sort GERMANY 11/19/12 12:31pm
Facility

Acceptance GERMANY 11/17/12 6:15pm

Maybe they read the 5 as an 8, but the packet arrived! i am really sorry, that the packed got lost. But i am not a thief! So please stop that false accusation.

liuthalis wrote:
Maybe they read the 5 as an 8, but the packet arrived!

It looks like they almost certainly did read the 5 as an 8 since it says "Arrival at Unit ORLANDO FL 32828", and the OP hasn't received it. This begs the question, was it insured? Otherwise the only thing I can think to do is go to the address it was delivered to and ask them if they still have it.

All it will take is someone to drive to the 32828 Post Office (every zip code has it's own post office) with the tracking number, and they can look in the Undeliverable Mail bin - which is quite large - and find the package.

Hope the OP doesn't expect the German guy to buy a plane ticket for that.

It is the onus of the shipper to ensure a parcel arrives safely. While I don't expect him to fly here to do so, it isn't beyond reasonble expectation that he should verify its correct delivery, especially if a poorly written 5 is at fault.

The "5" being read as an "8" does seem to be a likely explanation... I've had a package mis-delivered that was intended for me after a similar error. It was close by, so I was able to drive by the person's house who received it and ask for it .

Worth a call to that post office, at the least...

Yeah...USPS isn't the most reliable, quite honestly. I had a package sit at the post office with a "PROCESSING" status on the tracking because of insufficient postage by 38 cents. They never called me or returned the package; it simply sat there until I called.

How about the OP drive to the post office and inquire in person. If the box is there, then the original buyer refunds the OP the cost of gasoline. Three bucks or so.

didn't he post the routing numbers.....hell anyone could call the post office it went to on accident and see if it in the undeliverable bin.

The only problem is calling doesn't necessarily mean they will check. I've had to do that before when the employees didn't bother to actually check on the phone, when I went in person they did go look and find a package for me (it was also a poorly written address, street address was 1828 and they read it as something different, like 1528, and there is no 1500 block on that street).

I made a few calls to the post office and DHL. Several hours and faxes later, got things rolling on and the call was made around Monday of this week. I will be going to the post office to see this matter through.

Thanks for the update, thehod! Let us know how it goes...

Side note - what happens to mail that spends a long time in the undeliverable bin? Do the workers get to keep it?

Go Hod!