I have an unbelievable story to tell here. I like buying Gift Cards on eBay because you sometimes get them at a nice discount. I rely on the eBay Money Back Guarantee, which appears prominently under the Buy button on gift card listings (I don't rely on PayPal with gift cards, because I know PayPal explicitly excludes gift cards from their buyer protection policy). In the small print, eBay does exclude "intangibles", but items sent by registered or trackable mail cannot be defined as intangibles.
This last month, I've been stung 4 times buying gift cards:
1) CARD ARRIVED WITH $440 MISSING CREDIT
Bought a $500 Coles gift card, but when it arrived it only had $60 credit. The PIN was still covered up. Turns out that the Seller had put a photo of the card number on the listing, so someone had taken the number, executed a brute force attack on the Coles gift card website until they got the PIN (Coles should stop this, you can execute unlimited tries with the PIN on their site, or could as of when this happened), then the thief had cloned the card with a magnetic strip reader/writer, and used $440 credit at Liquorland in SA (I am in QLD, seller in VIC). Fortunately the seller was very nice and refunded me, and they took it up with the police, so this never became a PayPal or eBay claim.
2) SELLER USES ME FOR A CHEAP LOAN
Another seller sold me a $230 card and simply never sent it. 2 weeks later she emailed me "sorry, there is no crdit on that card and I have to refund you". The paypal refund was "pending" for 6 days, then failed. I wrote to seller asking for immediate refund. She then refunded me properly. The only explanation that fits is that she needed some money over Xmas, an interest-free short term loan, so sold a fake card to get it!
3) SELLER SELLS ME CARDS THAT NEVER ARRIVE
Another seller sold me a $400 Woollies card that simply has not arrived. It was supposedly sent by registered mail. Numerous attempts at getting the registration number for tracking purposes did not meet with success. I did get one email, via gmail, saying "I am so sorry for the problems with your purchase. I am looking into it now and will get back to you very very soon." I heard no more (that was 2 days ago). Ebay case opened, waiting for seller response, and no response after 2 days.
4) SELLER SELLS ME $1500 BUNNING GIFT CARDS, NO TRACE
Last week I bought about $1500 worth of Bunnings Gift Cards from a seller with a seemingly good feedback record. I was immediately given an Auspost Platinum Express Post reference number (next business day delivery), but 3 days later the number shows no activity on the Auspost site, the seller is not responding to messages, and it seems to have gone missing! I called Auspost and they say they have no information on that tracking number and that the sender must contact them...
Note that these purchases all happened more or less in the same time period, around Xmas and New Year, so I am now **extremely** wary of buying gift cards again on eBay.
I have yet to test whether the eBay Money Back Guarantee looks after me. I've been a member for 15 years and spent tens of thousands of dollars through eBay, so we'll see how they look after me. I would not have thought items sent via registered post, and clearly not sent (no tracking), could be written off as "intangibles". And there are legal implications to putting the "eBay Money Back Guarantee" logo under the "Buy" button on a listing, I am told (my son is a lawyer). So we'll see.
Comments welcome...
