Warning to Aussie buyers regarding REMOVED

[normsmith50]

Hi all,

I purchased a 6 Gang LED Rocker Switch Control Panel Circuit Charger 12V 24V-Boat RV Marine from REMOVED based in Shen zhen, Guangdong Province China. When the product arrived it seemed to be a reasonable product. I had it installed in my boat professionally and upon using it all of the switches broke. Upon inspection they were found to be very cheaply made with the plastic being very, very thin and brittle. I contacted the seller and he requested pictures of the product which I supplied. Eventually he said that he would replace the unit without return and for me to await deliverly. This never happened and I contacted him on a further 3 occassions and on everyone he said that he would send another unit, nothing has ever arrived.

Beware of this seller as I believe he cannot be trusted and will stall you long enough claiming long deliverly times until it is to late to make a claim. Do not buy from him.

[lyndal1838]

You might have difficulty opening a dispute.....the condition of the item is supposed to be the condition when it was delivered to you, not the condition after it was used.

If it was an Australian registered  seller you could take them to task through Fair Trading but I doubt that you will have any luck with a seller in China.

If you want to try you have 6 months to open a claim through paypal.

[davewil1964]

In future don't let the seller string you along past the dispute cutoff time.

I am not sure why you were willing to wait for a replacement - it was unlikely to be any different to the one that had already proven to have a design fault. As a general rule of thumb, if you want goods that will work properly don't buy from cheap Chinese sellers. If you buy because the items are cheap, there is a reason for that.

[c_mount]

'removed' being ebay protecting the fraud and scammer sellers usernames....

[maranock]

'Removed' being Ebay protecting innocent selelrs that have been named by disgruntled buyers who have got the username wrong.

Naming and shaming can really hurt sellers who have been mistakenly named as scammers by either people who have misspelled the user name or are our to deliberately harm a rival, or protecting a seller where a buyer has got muddled in the dispute process and didn't know they were in the wrong.

That is why moderators remove names. Sure many may be scammers, but how will an innocent seller regain their reputation if they are not.

[countessalmirena]

@normsmith50,

If you can still do so, please do take Lyndal's advice and try opening a PayPal dispute on the basis of item not as described. It's certainly not fit for purpose, by what you describe. You could focus on the fact that the plastic is too brittle and too thin to be useable. Explain that because of the unfit nature of the item, the switches broke instantly, the first time that you tried to use it. (That's all, I think, that you should need to say. Too much detail may distract from the fact that this item's condition when it arrived was insufficient for its intended purpose.)

If it's too late for a PayPal dispute, then try a chargeback with your bank.

And as davewil said, you absolutely must not allow the seller to string you along for so long! There are unfortunately many Chinese sellers on eBay who are notorious for doing this. They will um and ar, and draw out each response time, and request pictures, and give you replies back and forth - all designed to do one thing: keep you dangling without your opening a dispute during the eBay MBG timeframe! (Some will also drag it out for so long that even the PayPal dispute time has run out.) Don't be a party to such sellers' deceptions and dishonesty by allowing them to do this to you; I don't think you are a fool, but letting Chinese sellers scam you like this is like turning your brain off and unplugging it from the mental mains!

(Well... even intelligent people can be fooled... but hopefully you will learn from this bad experience and know better in future. You should have the eBay MBG timeframe noted down somewhere. A very handy place to keep this information is in your purchase history, right under the Estimated delivery or Guaranteed delivery dates of the respective item/s. If you bring your mouse over to that area, Add note appears. Click onto the link of Add note, and you can type in the date on which any eBay dispute must be opened. Do the same for the PayPal dispute date. (I'd also suggest giving yourself a cut-off date that is at least a week in advance of those dates, in case something prevents you from opening a dispute at the last moment.)