Disclaimer: the article is not entirely suitable for Habr and it is not entirely clear which hub to post it to, the article is also not a complaint, I think it will be useful for the community to know how you can lose money when selling computer hardware on eBay.
A week ago, a friend of mine contacted me asking for advice, he was selling his old hardware on eBay and faced deception from the buyer.
A used Intel Core i7-4790K processor was put up for sale, the price was set to an average price on eBay. The lot was displayed as usual, a photo of the processor with a serial number and an indication that the processor was used, without any equipment.
The processor quickly found a buyer, from Canada, with an eBay account since 2008 and 100% positive feedback on a large number of purchases.
After a successful transfer of money, my friend went to the post office, sent the processor at his own expense (he decided to make the delivery free). The parcel arrived in 10 days, the buyer received it and even left a short review - "Great!" and five stars. It would seem that everything is fine and you can celebrate the successful disposal of the old piece of iron, but no.
A few days after receiving the package, the buyer opens a βReturn requestβ with the following complaint: βEverything is fine, but the processor that was sent to me does not match the description in the lot, I bought an Intel Core i7-4790K, but received an Intel Core i5-4690Kβ . To which my friend naturally replies that this cannot be, he personally packed the package and is absolutely sure that he sent what was stated (and he never had any i5).
At the same time, eBay offered three options to choose from, a full refund, a partial refund, and a refund with the return of the lot at the expense of the seller. The partial refund option involved the intervention of eBay support. The friend offered a $1 refund to draw support's attention to the request, with the text stating that the buyer was trying to deceive the seller.
The buyer refused the return and the case went to eBay technical support. From which my friend received an answer that he has 4 days to arrange the return of the lot at his own expense (pay the buyer the cost of sending to his PayPal account). I think it is clear that in this case the buyer would simply return the i5-4690K at the expense of the seller. Naturally, technical support was given a detailed answer describing the situation. But, technical support in this case was completely on the side of the buyer. After another template response about the return of the lot, the friend decided to just stop wasting his nerves and made a return without sending the lot back.
The buyer got a free upgrade, got his money back and stayed with his old processor.
After some quick googling and reading forums about cheating on eBay, it turned out that this is a common practice.
The scheme is simple:
- A long-term account with positive reviews is bought, or these reviews are collected for a large number of purchases of 1-2 dollars.
- Second-hand iron is bought from the account, after receiving the parcel, a refund is requested. If a lot return is requested, the seller is not sent what he sold. Accounts are banned after some time after several complaints, but since there are no problems creating / buying new accounts, the scheme lives on.
Unofficially, the advice from eBay is as follows: film the packaging of parcels, make an inventory on the mail with confirmation of the contents (is it possible to do this on our mail, for example?). But it is clear that such a number of actions for each package is not at all productive. And it's not clear if eBay will accept them as evidence.
If anyone has experienced this, please write about your experience and how you solved these problems.
Source: habr.com