val-u-part, very interesting...
It does sound as though you struck a buyer who had the "switcheroo" thing down to a fine art. Perhaps this buyer did it so many times that eBay eventually flagged him as a risk. Perhaps the case ended up being referred to a human...? Perhaps said human saw that there was sufficient evidence of consistent swindling going on with the buyer, and on that basis eBay gave you a "discretionary refund"?
I'm going to repost what you wrote, but with paragraphs, so that others here can read it. (It makes posts so much easier to read if you can break up what you write into shorter paragraphs.)
@val-u-part wrote:Yes, we did. Eventually I complained to the US head office. We were scammed by a buyer who switched a product with ours and then sent us an email stating we were liars and false advertisers. He kept sending sarcastic emails stating the above. Three days later he complained and opened a case; under buyer protection he asked for a refund. He stated item was broken and bits missing etc.
We noted that the item was a secondhand item he had broken and was not ours, so we opened our case. eBay was contacted on numerous occasions; they found in his favour and issued him a refund. This meant we lost big time as we had to pay the return post as well. We asked for an extension to the case – we had more photographic evidence, and a Stat Dec from post office [employee] as the guy packed it for us and saw the item. We also put in a statement.
eBay said they will investigate ... They completely ignored our evidence and told us to go to the police. A joke. Police do not handle such things, so a refund was debited from our PayPal account. Then, to add insult to injury, we were hounded by the collection company as our PayPal went into debit.
So angry at our treatment. I kept up the complaints – written, of course, to the head office. We also found out he left positive feedback with a damning and demeaning statement. So we investigated further; he had done the switch on a few occasions and used buyer protection to get money and good items, and he dealt in the particular items we sold and [those of ]other people.
We felt that he was a professional scammer switching his damaged stock with good honest items. Anyway, as I said, we complained to head office... Then a couple of months later, not hearing anything, email or otherwise, we got a refund for the item but not post. Interesting – no notification as to why the refund to us was issued, nor what happened to the buyer.
Anyway, I guess after months of anger and stress, we counted our losses, and were not happy with the refund. [We] still lost but not as much.
My advice is to hound eBay in every way possible. Don’t stay quiet; don’t take [advice from] a person in India who doesn’t even care – the police, God! Stat Decs, lots of photos of your items, and use a mark that only you know where it is, and buyer cannot see it; that helps.
GOOD LUCK ... DON’T GIVE IN.
