I finally burned an LP scammer on Ebay

You're not gonna believe this but he appealed and they charged my credit card. I called Ebay and got an account specialist and they reversed it back again and assured me that's it. He can't put in a second appeal. Holy crap this is unbelievable.

 

From what I gather no matter how much evidence you show if the other party appeals they will reverse it and then you must appeal the appeal and then it's over.

 

Your experience has scared me away from ever wanting to sell anything on eBay (or Discogs).

 

You know what I'll never understand? Every day, this guy looks at himself in the mirror and truly believes that in spite of blatantly ripping you off, nah... STEALING from you (or trying to), that he's a good person. That is what is unreal to me.

 

Well, he lives with it at least. Hard for me to believe that he actually thinks he's a good person though.

 

I'll be monitoring to see if at least Ebay finally throws him off. I do still have a mail fraud case started with USPS although I'll be surprised if they follow through on anything with it.

 

You're unfamiliar with human nature, it seems. Unfortunately, I am a little too much so and can assure you almost everyone on earth thinks they're a good person.

 

So who charged your card? eBay or Paypal?

Not surprised he appealed, worth a shot, especially if he appealed to Paypal. I recon they basically just hit the refund button when buyers call them with a complaint and don't really look into anything.

 

Wow. So if I'm reading this thread correctly, the only thing that saved the OP was that idiot was dumb enough to mail an empty box? So if he would've stuck a Barbra Streisand record in the box he would've gotten refunded?

 

That is my take as well. He definitely got a good roll of the dice with this buyer.

 

Karma is a wonderful!

 

That's not Karma, that's justice. Karma would be if every LP the scammer buys from now on will be warped, have groove damage, misprinted labels or some other kind of invisible flaw that one cannot foresee when buying.

 

The label means nothing, it is not a measurement of weight but only what the user puts as such. The buyer could state he made a mistake on the value but the record was in there. Plus the buyer doesn't pay shipping on returns if the item is damaged or not as described, the seller does. Thus he would have no motive to lowering the weight on the label. eBay tends to give every seller a few no-contest breaks here or there. You should not have a problem.

Most bad buyers I have run into are those who buy intending to re-sell for a profit, then if they cannot, they return at the last minute with reason 'not as described', claiming it was 1-2 grades lower. By doing this they get a free rental and the seller is forced to pay both ways shipping. A lot of "record stores" do this. They also search for rock bottom price on a grade and depend on it being something they can grade higher. Those people are the worst.

 

Has there been either? The buyer got the record and the seller got paid. What would be an appropriate reckoning?

 

I don’t think the buyer/scammer got burned, per se, since they have the record they paid for. But their scam was foiled, and though the scammer tried to get something valuable for nothing, they ended up getting what they paid for. So I would say justice is right. Karma would be the scammer getting scammed, which I’m sure they deserve many times over.

 

Justice would be some form of punishment to discourage such future behaviour. Otherwise it will continue.

 

I very rarely sell on eBay after being stung for a very nice amp sale which went south; the buyer said there was an issue with the phone jack, opened the amp up to look around inside (all admitted on the eBay messages) and then asked for his money back. I lost out big time; I paid a hefty postage to him and got an amp back that had been tampered with, minus my £25 postage outlay.

Yeah it'll be fine Mr Myles, said eBay. He shouldn't be tampering with the equipment. Next thing you know, ruled in his favour. Bad bad bad.

 

I never sold anything on Discogs. How do they handle situations like this? Same nightmare?

 

Has nothing to do with Discogs. It's the payment method. Since it's PayPal, it'd be the same. It'd be the same thing here, quite frankly. Again, PayPal.

 

That was my first thought as well. I don't understand what videoing opening a package would prove. Unless you video with a time stamp from the USPS vehicle to the actual opening, there's too much opportunity to change the contents of the package.

Glad you got your money back!

 

Video was my original plan but decided to wait for the mail carrier and have him witness it and document it.

 

What's the alternative? Sell locally for much less and with higher risk of being scammed? At least with ebay/paypal they have the person's full name, address, bank info.. So if something of significant value is stolen there is really no where to hide..

 

As I mentioned before, PayPal doesn't care about videos. They can be faked so they don't accept that as evidence.

 

No I didn't video it I just had the mail carrier witness it and sign a paper with his name stating that I opened it in front of him on delivery and there was no LP in it.

 

Just to add some finality, my credit card was indeed refunded but as of now his account is still active. Interesting to note that when he was temporarily refunded my credit card on Ebay was charged. The Paypal account seemed to not play into this whole thing at all, only the Ebay account. So perhaps maybe something like this would play out differently on a site like Discogs.