Sick of Getting Ripped Off by Multi-Variation Listings

[rubenaa]

Is this in any way above board?

I'm so sick of seeing listings with multi-variations of the same product only for there to be one product which is there just to make the list price as low as possible. I just thought I'd bought a cat water fountain only to receive a plastic mat for $14.00 which seems a not unreasonable price to pay for a water fountain. There are photos of cat water fountains all over the listing and that's clearly what's in the title & description of the listing.

When checking the listing after receiving the mat, I see that for the current listing, the "MODEL" drop-down section has the plastic mat as the default, and the only option available. The seller does not even have any fountains available for sale.

Communicating with the seller, they are claiming they legitimately sold me a mat only because that's what I "chose" at the time of my purchase. They are refusing to issue a refund.

Is this in any way legitimate? I am so sick of this malpractice, I am this close to shutting down my eBay account. It's just blatantly scamming buyers. I am considering escalating this to eBay but am worried that eBay will just find in favour of the seller.

[audistarelectronics]

Ok, we have several issues here, the first is Ebay is not the seller, only the platform to link buyers and sellers, so they will look at how much money you make them, vs how much these scummy sellers make them, and as they don't come under Aust consumer law, you will be on your own. It would be illegal to list like that under our laws, but anything goes with these type of sellers.

[digital*ghost]

The entire listing is a fairly blatant breach of all eBay's policies surrounding variation listings. Pretty sure I've found the listing in question ( 313118884377 ) , and while the one - usually tangentially related - item at a lower price trick is pretty common and they can often be walking the line, that one is pretty far across the line. (Irrelevant keywords which equals keyword spamming [eg a mat is generally not described as "automatic" lol, and I don't think it has a USB port, or plugs into one ], , plus conflicting information in the title and listing description / photos). There's been so many revisions to that listing I'd almost be surprised if the seller even knows what they are selling anymore, and they now have this in their description:

Note: Please make sure you have ordered the item you wanted before paying( the price is corresponded to the shown product on the left side), otherwise any complaints for this reason is not accepted! 

And then they go on to detail the variations they don't offer. 

There's often an element of buyer beware for these kinds of listings, at least the ones that allow manual selection and show different products / prices per selection, but on this one, even if the default "model" is set at "mat", if at the time of purchase all they showed was the fountain, it's hardly very clear that a mat is all you would get (eg some may have thought it meant fountain with mat, given the title and if there were no gallery photos to the contrary).

Given all this, I recommend hopping on to live chat with eBay, where you can report the listing and also confirm if you have a case for item not as described (I suspect little will happen to the listing or seller, mostly because of their location being outside Aus, but eBay will be able to view the listing as it was at the time you purchased and advise if what was being sold was clear enough).