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?
