coolcookie

Hi

Has anyone ever successfully had their money back from PayPal for an item which was a copy. It was a software disc and having received it was not produced by the official manufacturer. I bought it with a Buy it Now and paid with PayPal via MasterCard. I later received an email from ebay saying the listing was terminated for unspecified reasons and they won't reveal the seller's name and address. I would report his name to the Police.

Looking afterwards, the seller had a sizeable website offering many high end computer packages for £30 £40 or £50 but nowhere is his name or address shown. A reasonable guess would be that everything on sale is copied.

Ebay's contact forms seem to go round in circles and I have never successfully sent them a notification! The form says it won't accept the item number because it has ended - but obviously it has, since I bought it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I did; I bought a map DVD for the sat nav in my BMW, which turned out to be a laughably poor counterfeit.

I sent the seller a strongly worded email, which was ignored, but as I'd paid by PayPal I contacted them to open a dispute. It took several weeks, and I had to go through a bit of a pantomime in terms of form filling, but to my great surprise I did get my money back.

bpm1588

yes as above you can go with a paypal dispute or you can even do a charge back with your credit card as well.both take a while but you will be refunded.
if it was me and it was'nt a large sum of money sometimes its better sending a strong e-mail too the seller looking for a refund,might not work but saves a lot of red tape if by chance it does.

coolcookie

The end of the story.

Just to let you know, I opened a dispute with PayPal and the seller did not respond, (within I think 4 weeks) so I escalated the dispute to a claim. This would be arbitrated by PayPal and they said I might have to supply a statement from an expert to say that my item was indeed counterfeit.

I took the item to the UK distributors of the product (their offices are not far from my home) who said they would not give me the statement I needed. They would only respond to the Trading Standards department if asked.

Fortunately, PayPal has now decided in my favour and will refund the sum paid to my account, so it says, but I have yet to see it. I didn't need the expert's statement, possibly because ebay had terminated the listing itself so knew that the seller was a crook.

I'll look more closely at the feedback and length of time a seller has been a member before buying in the future.

I think ebay should send the buyer's and seller's names and addresses to each other on completion of an auction sale. As it is ebay seems to be colluding with crooks by concealing their identity.

Many thanks for your comments. Cheers.

ryn004

Use Who.is: Universal Whois Lookup and check who owns the website. sometimes you can find the address and numbers of the owner.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

Glad you got a result. I've found paypal to be pretty decent. I opened a dispute with them on an ebay item that wasn't working when it arrived with me and I got all my money back (though lost out on postage costs sending the package back to the seller).