The Danger of Ebay

[MrMan]

Ok, i've used EBay before and its given me no problems at all, but recently i was the victim of ebay fraud, and its put me off using the website forever.

A couple of weeks ago my brother purchased two weekend camping tickets for Reading Festival in August for me and him, the total cost was nearly 400 quid, which in itself is a rip off as the normal buying price before they sold out was only 125 quid each. Anyway, once the money had been drawn out of my brothers bank account, he was informed by the seller to read the selling information carefully, and the guy subsequently closed his ebay account.

Turns out, in very small print right at the bottom of a bit list of bands and events at the festival, it said that the bidder would actually be paying for the seller to go to the festival, not for 2 tickets for themselves.

At first i blamed my brother thinking "why didn't you read it all?!" but then it became clear that the guy had set out to defraud us from the beginning. My brother has numerous e-mails to and from the guy, in which the guy makes it pretty clear WE would be getting the tickets, not him...all a crock of s**t leading up to him effectively stealing his money. This is blatant fraud and we have ebay and paypal investigating, and probably soon the police.

There is good news though, one is that we will more than likely be able to claim the money back on ebay insurance, and the second is that my brother e-mailed a previous buyer and got him to give us this retards address. We have mailed him today asking for a full refund of the money to be put into my brothers bank account, or we will have to visit (and we put his address) and claim it back ourselves. Hope he wet his pants.

So the moral of this story, don't always trust EBay and always read the small print. There's always some idiot out there trying to trick you.

 

[Harryz]

Didn't you look at the Ebay buyers profile and his score?

 

[MrMan]

Yup he had 16 positive reviews, no negative

 

[Icarusintel]

wow, you got :smoking:

 

[xLostx]

owned. no offense but owned. be more careful with that shiznat, i know i am.

 

[OmegaX]

Theres nothing illegal about the auction he made. He stated that you would be paying for the tickets so he could go. It's as simple as that. Do you happen to have the link to the auction?

 

[Harryz]

Yup he had 16 positive reviews, no negative

Well, thats why you don't buy off people who've had a small amount of reviews. They sell somethings to get positive feed back and them they scam you. As a general rule, I don't buy off people with less then 100 feedback and less then 99%.

 

[MrMan]

Ok fair enough, when i said ive used ebay before i meant like, twice, im not an ebay expert or anything.

Omega, true he stated that, but as i said in the e-mail exchanges he made it abundantly clear that we would be receiving tickets, and also clear that he was hoping we had not read that small print, which we didn't.

Yes i got 'owned' lol, but its looking like its gonna work out anyway...i don't mind admitting i got screwed i just thought id warn you guys so you dont

I don't have a link to the auction, i'll try and get one for you later...he's closed his account which makes it harder to find. I actually had nothing to do with this process, i found out about it all after we got screwed over, I looked him up and it said he was a member for less than a month, and 15 of those reviews were off sellers, not buyers. My brother SHOULD have been more careful, but wasn't, so this is the price we pay. Could've been a lot worse though...

 

[StardogChampion]

Honestly it's your brother's own fault. I think buying tickets over ebay is stupid anyway, especially when you're paying £400. Stick with Ticketmaster or whoever it is that does them, and if they're sold out then tough.

 

[evil^milk]

keep us informed

 

[CptStern]

ya you got screwed but I'd look into fraud if I were you ...go down to the local police dept and ask them if it is indeed fraud or just a case of Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware)

 

[MrMan]

Honestly it's your brother's own fault. I think buying tickets over ebay is stupid anyway, especially when you're paying £400. Stick with Ticketmaster or whoever it is that does them, and if they're sold out then tough.

Yeah but the tickets sold out in about a week and i didnt have any money back then (student )..plus reading is my only holiday every year so i always go, have done for 4 years...dont mind paying a bit extra. And yes, it is mostly my brothers fault, but the e-mails should provide sufficient evidence of fraud. I feel so angry that people would do this, as if i'd want to pay my hard earned money for someone else to go to the festival...least i have the little turd's address...

 

[Asknoone]

Wow, owned

 

[Insano]

Sad this happened, I hope you get your money back

 

[Top Secret]

You're fault.

 

[CyberPitz]

Yeah, I usually read the ENTIRE thing before I bid or anythiung. Although generally, people are good at the whole selling/buying thing. Most don't try to screw you over

 

[Adrien C]

keep us updated please

 

[CptStern]

just talked to the ebay guru here at work ..she said that as long as it falls within a 30 day window ebay will refund your money if you've been a victem of fraud

 

[MrMan]

Good good

You're fault.

Wow, really, thank you so much for that. And it's your not you're. And it was my brothers.

I will keep you guys updated

 

[SimonomiS]

How small print? Just curious...

 

[MrMan]

Small enough, here is the information from ebay:

I know its not a lot of information to read, i dont know why my brother didnt read it fully, but he didnt and thats that.

Also the text at the bottom could be misinterpreted as buying the tickets 'for' him as in doing him a favour by buying the tickets off him.

Also, we have had an email back, he knows he's done wrong, he's offered to refund us 50 quid now to let us know he's serious about refunding, the rest when he gets it, my brother told him thats not good enough, we need the money in 24 hours or we will take legal action, which he obviously wouldn't want. Not likely that he's spent all our money in the last 4 days anyway so he should be able to give it us back.

 

[Icarusintel]

Small enough, here is the information from ebay:

I know its not a lot of information to read, i dont know why my brother didnt read it fully, but he didnt and thats that.

Also the text at the bottom could be misinterpreted as buying the tickets 'for' him as in doing him a favour by buying the tickets off him.

Also, we have had an email back, he knows he's done wrong, he's offered to refund us 50 quid now to let us know he's serious about refunding, the rest when he gets it, my brother told him thats not good enough, we need the money in 24 hours or we will take legal action, which he obviously wouldn't want. Not likely that he's spent all our money in the last 4 days anyway so he should be able to give it us back.

wow, he was good with that wording, real nice and slick like, you should feel proud to have encountered such a person

 

[xLostx]

ahahahaha i think I would have read that, it's small but not that small. gold.

 

[Rafa 5.0]

"it's a great day out and you are buying the tickets for me. thanks"

LOL @ that, sorry bro, but pwnage.

 

[SimonomiS]

Ok...I thought you meant he was really devious and hid it in size 2 font in white at the very bottom of your screen after 50 lines of nothing.

That's pretty damn obvious.

 

[MrMan]

Are you people missing the point, i never said it wasn't my brothers fault, i said he should have read it, hell the first time he showed it to me i pointed it out straight away. The point is that he set out to defraud us over email, which i can't show you, but also that ebay can be dangerous.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Except it DOES sound like he's saying 'I need to get rid of these tickets, thanks for buying them for me'.

 

[MrMan]

Exactly. The guy WAS trying to rip someone off, its obvious, he can't have realistically thought anyone would buy the tickets for him. He's a little s**t with a 'cunning' plan that backfired when we caught hold of his address. He worded it very carefully, so my guess is my brother did glance over it but thought nothing of it. Maybe some of you would've made the same mistake if i hadn't already explained the situation beforehand, who knows.

 

[SimonomiS]

He does still have hold of the emails right? I'm sure if you got in contact with eBay and showed them they'd understand. Unless they don't care for things that are outside of eBay.

 

[MrMan]

Yeah ebay and Paypal are already onto it, should it come to it so will the police, but it seems the guy is more than willing to back down before it gets that far

 

[Laivasse]

just talked to the ebay guru here at work ..she said that as long as it falls within a 30 day window ebay will refund your money if you've been a victem of fraud

I dunno about US ebay, but this is definitely not true about the UK ebay. Unless they have had a massive change of policy since I last looked, their "customer protection program" only refunds up to about £115 of whatever you got cheated out of. My knowledge comes from the experience of being cheated out of a massive amount of money by a seller with near to 200 positive feedbacks. I don't want to discuss it, since it just makes me want to murder people, and I have very little constructive advice for the original poster anyway.

Look deep into ebay's T&C's and you will find some BS about "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" - basically how ebay believes that everyone is fundamentally goodwilled and doesn't want to cheat eachother. There is next to zero customer protection in place. Of course I may be wrong and they may have different policies in the US and UK, or they changed their policies...

Piss on ebay.

 

[MrMan]

As far as i know its PayPal not EBay who are providing any kind of insurance. EBay are simply 'looking into it' i.e. not doing much at all

 

[sabre0001]

he can't have realistically thought anyone would buy the tickets for him.

your brother did...

and it is kinda obvious - always read EVERYTHING!

 

[Fliko]

Show E-bay the emails if 30 days passed. If you want to be like a lawyer, or risk it. Only show emails that will help you, and things that will help you to ebay. They should refund you sooner or later. Also tell them that it states that you will be refunded if you are ever frauded within 30 days. Look into their rules and find things that will help. Read slowly too, not just fast but everything, but slow, and think about every word then the sentence so you won't be messed up by wording.

 

[DreadLord]

Reminds me of the p-p-p-powerbook scheme. Loved this story from the second i read it, it's definately worth the read..

http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

 

[MrMan]

your brother did...

and it is kinda obvious - always read EVERYTHING!

No, he didn't, he just misinterpreted that last sentence if he read it at all

Thanks for the advice Fliko

 

[craig]

I've had a few annoying purchases off eBay:

1. About 2 years ago I bought a 6100 Nokia mobile phone for about £160. The guy sent it me via Special Delivery, I stuck my SIM in when it arrived, powered it up, gave it a quick once over, and everything seemed fine, so I gave him positive feedback.

Anyway, as soon as someone rung me I realised something was wrong with the phone because the sound was all messed up. Upon deeper inspection of the phone it became apparent that 1 or 2 of the buttons on the phone were sticking quite often.

I contacted the guy and informed him of my discoveries and he suggested that I send it to Nokia to find out what was wrong and that as far as he was concerned it was out of his hands because I'd given him feed back.

Anyway.. I send the phone to Nokia, they take two weeks, and when they do finally get back to me they tell me the phone has recived some water damage that is NOT covered by the warranty.

I contact the guy on eBay again demanding he do something about this, and the dude basically tries to say that it was me who damaged the phone and it was fine when he sent it.

Because I e-mailed to complain I got negative feedback off him and a broken phone for my troubles.. moral of the story DO NOT give positive feedback unless you're 100% sure you're happy with the product. I didn't really have a leg to stand on because of the feedback I'd given him.

2. Bought a copy of Windows XP Home off ebay (which supposedly came with SP2). Anyway, I paid for it, it was delivered (sealed), I installed it, the key had already been used so I had to re-auth, and the copy didn't come with SP2 (I had to download it).

Ironically someone who had purchased a copy in the same auction e-mailed me to see if I was having problems. I told her I was and we both complained together. We both got refunds and I got a new copy of XP WITH SP2 included on the disk.

3. Bought a £550 LCD TV off ebay... had it 7 months and the internal TV tuner is knackered. If something runs off the VGA socket on the TV the panel displays the image fine, but if something runs off Scart 1, 2, S-Vid, or Coax the panel has pink flickers that show up every now and again.. very annoying.

Basically you need to be really careful on eBay imo.

 

[DreadLord]

lol owned (above attatchment)

 

[craig]

lol owned (above attatchment)

Aye, in that instance I well and truley was

 

[oldagerocker]

I had a problem with ebay.

Off one of these powerselling (thousands of + comments) companies i bought a swedish keyboard. They sent me a french one... I had no way of getting back intouch with them, their '[email protected]' email they didnt reply to. So i gave them negative feedback.
They left a comment saying that they'd processed another swedish keyboard order, as it was a warehouse problem. I recieved this link and it went to the payment screen (they take payment via card through their website, or cheque etc). well, i wasnt going to pay again... so i left it.
I never recieved another keyboard and i'd already sent the french one back.
So im £15 out of pocket, not allot but its still annoying... im just not sure wether is should have clicked the pay via cheque option and sent them a letter explaining. In which case its my own fault but i hate how ebay, there's no way of complaining, there's no help from Ebay itself. I found no 'contact seller' button after a sale.

I hate ebay almost as much as i hate amazon. Both are really dodgy.