Selling/auction bother

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Interpreter

I have had trouble with their PayPal system and have had to take them to court to get my money back. Most people are honest, but some are not.

Pay attention! This is how to do it. First of all buy a cheap old TV or something similar and sell the valve for, say, 1 euro each. People buy them and they pay the postage etc., so you soon get your money back. Not much money though, but that doesn't matter. For every 1 euro sale that you make, you receive 1 positive feedback. Boom, boom. In no time at all, you have a 100% positive reputation.
Then you get a photograph of a piece of really good kit and offer it for sale. (You don't have to have the kit; just the photograph of it.) The auction proceeds and some lucky person buys the kit at a bargain price. Now you have to find difficulties in sending the goods. Delay sending it for just long enough to close your PayPal account and withdraw all of your money. Now send any piece of scrap metal you can find to the buyer. When the buyer complains to ebay about this, he/she will have to pay to have the scrap metal examined by an expert, to prove that it doesn't work. At this point the buyer will have to return the purchase to you. When you receive it, just say "But this isn't what I sent." Disappear.
Yes, It has happened to me.

my way round this is to only decline to use paypal but to arrange a meet in person and examine the kit in the flesh before paying cash.

however a note on this is that its easy to get yourself mugged/ripped off , however my defence against that is that i'm a double black belt , and also that i generally arrange for a couple of tasty (and i dont mean good looking ) mates to come with me

other defences are only to meet in well lit and frequented areas and make sure you arrive first

saying that i dont generally buy expensive kit secondhand on ebay anyway prefering to go to second hand dealers who give a warranty - and buying new from grey traders you can avoid a lot of hassle by only buying from those that are personally recomended by freinds.

[za64]

we use ebay to sell and buy all the time
we always put uk bidders only and paypal or postal orders only
we have never had any problems yet (touches wood).

if you dicide to sell it on ebay or on here i will start it of with a £100 for you, that will scare them off a bit

[tom00_uk]

never had any ebay issues apart from royal mail miss placing some thing i purchased

i ahve sold a number of cameras on there for more than £100 and had no issues. if you bite the bullet and are willing to pay the extra cost from pay pal it can be ok, i only take paypal, people can not have a negative feedback score, can not come from outside the uk and a range of other restrictions i add to my listing. it might reduce the number of potental buyers a wee bit but it also removes the pain of sales not compleating etc

[Interpreter]

In my experience it is PayPal that is the problem. If you report a dodgy dealer, it takes them weeks to do anything about it. They gave my money to one of these dealers without my knowledge. They never even told me that they had done this, but they set a debt collector onto me! I had to take them to court to get my money back. I would not deal with PayPal again.

If you are dealing with someone from the other end of this country or from abroad, you cannot have collection only. My difficulties have been when dealing with Italian members of eBay. I have never had any difficulties with people from any other country. Canada and America appear to be same. Nigera is not and the increasing number of purchasers/sellers from the ex Soviet block remain a mystery to me.

[geordie1970]

This almost happened to me last night A mobile phone with a buy it now price and some scammer that has hijacked an account ends the auction.Complained to ebay and the listing was removed and I will be credited my insertion fees and have the hassle of re-listing despite having uk bidders only clearly marked on my listing.This happened before with a D50 a Nigerian sends a message saying I will pay you £800 for this despite having a buy it know price a fraction of that!!.I sent a very short reply 2 words only and the 1st one started with F.