I bought an item of jewellery that was listed as genuine, turns out it is not genuine.

[girlfriday67]

I have contacted the seller today (when I received it) to advise that I will be returning the item to her for a refund.  Problem is she says she can't refund me as she doesn't have the money now.  Also, the listing was auction only, but I said I wanted to 'buy it now'.  The seller said she could not change the ad to include 'buy it now' so to just make the payment directly to her PP acc. via her mobile number, which i did.  We were still communicating through the eBay message service though.  Does this mean I won't be covered under the Buyer Protection?  And if I am, what happens if she doesn't have the money?

- Worried

[kylies*swap*cards*]

I think you just learned a lesson I hope, not to buy outside the ebay system.  Good news though that if you paid via PayPal you can still lodge a claim against her.  Log into PayPal and start a dispute and do all of your communicating through that process from now on.  

[i-love-my-sheep · Accepted solution]

Open an item not as described dispute through PayPal. DO NOT send it back until PayPal tells you and only post it to the address that PayPal tells you. 

Did you actually conduct the transaction through eBay, or did she end the item and you send her the money? If you did that, then you have no protection from eBay. You still should have some protection from PayPal, but I don't know how much.

Edited to add, she can still refund you by sending a payment as opposed to a refund, or PayPal can take it from her linked account. I'd be letting PayPal handle it to protect yourself.

[lyndal1838]

If the item is fake you are going to need a letter from an authorised 3rd party to state this fact.

In the case of jewellery a letter from a jeweller or gemologist would be sufficient.

Is the value of the item high enough to warrant paying for this letter as well as tracked return postage to the seller?

[phorum_junkie*]

When you made the payment did it specify that it was for goods? If not and it was just a personal payment then you have no cover.

[springyzone · Accepted solution]

I know you can make a claim on paypal even if it has nothing to do with ebay, only because I have had to go down that path myself. Quite a few other sites are accepting paypal these days.

But the crunch is that you have to put in a dispute claim, list your reason for making a claim and the seller then has a few days to reply.

If they do not reply at all, I think it is automatically awarded to you. You don't have to worry about whether the seller has money or not as paypal awards the money and I presume they must  deal with getting the funds from the seller's account.

The main problem I see here is the seller's response. If the seller responds as they have to the buyer and just says-can't refund, don't have funds-I doubt that would cut it as an excuse. But if they deny the item is a fake or that there is anything wrong with it, then I think it could get more complicated.

[modestbods]

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@kylies*swap*cards* wrote:

I think you just learned a lesson I hope, not to buy outside the ebay system.  Good news though that if you paid via PayPal you can still lodge a claim against her.  Log into PayPal and start a dispute and do all of your communicating through that process from now on.  

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Agreed.

It can get tricky for both the buyer and seller alike. If reported to eBay the OP's seller could well have a problem, for having offered to sell a currently listed item (or another one similar) outside of eBay to a prospective ebay buyer/bidder... a big no no. It won't help her at all that there are ebay messages to prove this. 

 Like most sellers using auction formats I occassionally get asked to sell auction items for a buy it now, but I choose not to. It would be a simple matter; end the auction listing early and relist in BIN format... but what happens if something goes wrong? What if the buyer is stuck on the phone or get's called away for some reason at the time you relist with a BIN & someone else snaps it up in the meantime? What if there are others watching the auction listed item with the intention of bidding near the death, only for you to end it & resell for BIN, will they still then be interested in following your other auctions given you wasted their time once already? What if, what if... just too many what if's for me, and too many opportunities for someone to potentially get upset.

As for selling a current listing outside eBay to someone making an offer to do so via seeing the eBay listing, I don't need to worry about any what if's, as it's something I refuse to even entertain. And I have been made those offers numerous times in the past, having listed two yachts & a luxury power boat. Ironically the two dearest boats were both sold in the end to buyers that had seen them on eBay, but had made no approaches at that time. One happened to drive by my workplace a month later and recognized the yacht parked in the yard, and came in and asked if it was still for sale. The other called the number that had been on the listing a couple weeks after it ended in the hope it might still be available, he'd apparently been awaiting a property settlement & so didn't have the funds available at the time of the listing... but two weeks later did. So I thank karma for the outcome on both 🙂

[girlfriday67]

Yes, I have learned a lesson.  I have lodged a claim with Paypal.  Thanks

[girlfriday67]

Turns out that the way she got me to pay for it without changing the listing on eBay made it outside of eBay. eBay have directed me to Paypal and have accelerated the claim. I should be hearing form them by the 2 Nov, and they have said that if she can't prove it genuine, that they will refund my money and pursue her for it, they can withdraw it against her credit card linked to her Paypal acc. They have not directed me to post the item back yet. On the link from Paypal to lodge my claim, there was a space for me to write a message to the seller. I took that opportunity to list in bullet point form the reasons I was claiming the item to not be genuine. I hope to have this resolved next week when I hear from PP.

[i-love-my-sheep]

I hope it all works out for you. Please come back and let us know the outcome. Good luck with it all.