Ebay refunds obvious scammer no questions asked. $200 fraud

[xtimbo1980]

Recently I sold some gift cards via eBay. These particular cards have a scratch panel covering a code needed to redeem the voucher.  My asking price was $200 for $250 worth of vouchers. 

Initially I had contact from a buyer that I was able to identify as a scammer and was able to protect myself from making the transaction. Soon after this my item is bought by another buyer.  We converse via messages and all seems good. I could not make it to the post office the following day as I stated I would so I offered to deliver on person that night. The buyer declined this offer.   I send item free via express post the next day. My first suspicion was that the postal box adresse name was different to the buyers name. I should of stopped here.  A day or so later the buyer messages me saying he has received the package however it has a big gash in the envelope and asked if I had any pictures of the envelope so he could confirm that auspost was responsible. I said I did not.  The next message he retracted this and states he was looking at another envelope and mine was fine.  I'm not sure what he was up to here perhaps sussing out if I had evidence that item we sent in as described condition.  Anyway soon after I get notification of a return request with pictures showing scratched cards with no value and a claim that this is how they were received by the buyer.  Being the first situation I have been in like this obviously I was disappointed. I looked a little further into any information I could gather.  I found this member had been a member of abay a little over 2 weeks, the same amount as the previous buyer that was trying to scam me.  The the shipping address and the paypal account were under a different name to the buyer.  The phone number provided to ebay only weeks before was disconnected. Buyer had no previous transactions.

I have been an honest member of eBay for 13 years with 130 transactions never had a problem or any negative feedback. I used my real name my real address and even offered to deliver item face to face.  I pointed all this information out to ebay plus more and asked them to to review relevant masages, user identities, email addresses, phone numbers etc. I suspect eBay would find further inconsistencies in the buyer's credibility with their access to member information. I thought even blind freddy could see who was the honest party in this dispute. However not eBay. They issued a refund no questions asked. I was dumbfounded. I have tried to contact eBay on numerous occasions and different lines of contact which I have found is not very straight forward in this situation and I have had no reply. I don't even care about that money any more. This is an unjust system that punishes the honest and rewards the dishonest. I really don't know what to do from here . I have tried going down the suggested appeal paths via eBay however these paths are time consuming and never go anywhere. PayPal won't help as there is an ebay dispute open. Gift card company will only confirm cards have been used but can't provide by who due to privacy. How can I get this dispute properly reviewed by eBay?

Any advice?

[maranock]

After reading less than half of you post because it is so difficult to read without paragraphs, the only advice I can offer is to not sell such risky items online, and give them to friends and family.

[go-tazz]

You didn't follow the guidelines for a safe transaction maybe you can try reporting them to Acorn once other

avenues have been closed..

Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network

https://www.acorn.gov.au/

When making the report please use paragraphs so that it's easier to read.

[xtimbo1980]

Thankyou. Yes sorry about the layout it was written on my phone not that user friendly.

[*tippy*toes*]

Phones, yeah, that little angled arrow pointing to the left, creates a space and new paragraphs. Pretty much anyone that uses a phone for anything, including plain old text messaging, knows what that button is for. 

Please resubmit your post, with paragraphs, and people here might be able to help. 

[digital*ghost]

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@xtimbo1980 wrote:

Gift card company will only confirm cards have been used but can't provide by who due to privacy.

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Your best shot is if you can get confirmation from the card issuer of when the cards were used - if you can show eBay they were used after they were received by the buyer, you have a decent chance of appealing their decision, but I can't think of any other way you could defend against the buyer's claim.

[springyzone]

That's a great idea, digi.

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I read the whole post and as an aside, some of you other posters just don't have stamina.

Once you've had a few years of reading 2 or 3 pages of Year 1 writing, without paragraphs and with a lot of incorrect spelling, most posts on here are a doddle in comparison.

Phones can be trickier to use. I am getting better on mine but it was a learning curve.

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The only other thing I can suggest is perhaps ringing, if you haven't done that. You said you had been in contact with ebay, but I wondered if it had been almost entirely by messages. In this case, a phone chat to a real person might be called for. I think in business hours, there is a call back option. They will phone you. It is worth a try, you have nothing to lose.

Have your facts & timeline in dot point before you, so that you can run through the problem as clearly as possible.

If I were you, I would open with the basic outline. That you sold some items, the buyer has been awarded a refund and you would like to dispute it because you have evidence they made a false claim. Then outline the date the vouchers were posted & received, and date vouchers used (if you can get that information). Invite the rep to look at the ebay private messages to confirm when they were received. Maybe calmly mention that if the situation is not resolved, you feel it is serious enough to warrant being reported to the cybercrime online reporting network.

From everything I have ever read here, I have never heard of any buyer who was a awarded a refund having to then repay it. Not saying it doesn't happen, just I haven't read of it. 

But occasionally, from what I can make out, a seller can contest a case and if ebay feels a mistake has been made, ebay will sometimes refund the seller out of its own funds. That's what you have to aim for, but with a $250 amount on the line, they aren't going to be keen to lose that much unless you have good evidence.

[xtimbo1980]

Yes I tried that they could not provide me with times and dates to prove my case unfortunately. Anyway good news case as reversed upon appeal !

[xtimbo1980]

Springyzone thanks for your reply and actually offering some constructive advice. My faith has been restored in e eBay. I loged an appeal summarising my case and sighting a breach of the abusive buyer policy. The decision has been reversed!

[countessalmirena]

@xtimbo1980,

It's good to hear of a positive result in what was clearly an abuse of the returns process.