I bought some parts for my pinball machine. It was supposed to be "NOS" (new old stock) with a genuine holographic serial number, etc...
Well, the stuff comes, and about 1/3 of it was fake/counterfeit and there was no serial number, etc.
So I file a complaint after getting nowhere from the seller, and even though he sold counterfeit stuff, and completely lied about what he was selling, I was still on the hook for shipping and handling both ways (to me and then back to him) in order to get a refund of the sales price.
Problem for me is that they don't make this stuff anymore, and I really only needed the part of the set that WAS legit, so I wanted to keep the part I needed, send back the junk and get a partial refund. Paypal claims that they had a "real person" look over the complaint, but it seems like it just went through their automated system. I put notes in that I would accept a partial refund based off of these terms I just mentioned, but the "human" didn't read that, so they they just marked it that I would take a PARTIAL refund after I sent EVERYTHING back!!! WTF? Why would ANYONE do that? The set of parts cost me $50 plus almost $20 shipping to get to me (rip off shipping fees). It would cost almost another $7.50 to ship them back, and then I would only get a $20 refund?!?! So if I did that, I would have spent $57.50 and have nothing to show for it. Gee THANKS Paypal. Way to protect the buyer! Needless to say, I had to suck it up and keep everything. I tried to get the fake parts sold for just a little more than shipping, but nobody wanted them because I was upfront about them, and you could tell when compared to originals that they were close but not quite right. So I kept them all and had since moved on until this post.
eBay and Paypal have been the same company for some time, and neither really protects the buyer or the seller. Feedback is a joke. As a buyer, I still haven't left feedback for the above transaction in fear that even though I would be in the right to leave negative feedback, and even though I paid right away and did everything a buyer should, the seller would turn around and leave me negative feedback just to be a jerk.
Last edited by nickbuol; 05/05/08 04:40 AM.
