First of all let me start off by saying that I love eBay. I have always been a buyer on eBay, and I have never had a single problem. I even made some pretty HUGE purchases on eBay. How Huge? How about three cars purchased on eBay. If I have a purchased a car in the past on eBay, you can tell that I am a loyal eBay user, and I have the confidence to bid.
About one month ago, my mom asked me to purchase for her a Dani Johnson DVD package that was being sold at the official website for $299, she asked for me to purchase it on eBay, so that we could buy it cheaper. My mom received the items normally, all was fine, after my mom had finished watching the DVDs, she had an idea for me to put it up for sale on eBay, since she no longer had anymore use for the DVDs, as she had already watched it.
I had never sold anything on eBay, I have always been a buyer. So I decided to finally sell on eBay. I also had some books that I needed to sell, that was just lying around the house, that I was never going to need again. So I put those up for sale too.
The official first item for me to sell on eBay was a book, and that went well!
Back to the DVDs…… We originally purchased the DVD set on eBay for around $110 dollars. We lucked out to get it for so cheap. The person selling the DVDs had a feedback rating of (0) as he had never purchased or sold anything on eBay. Its always risky to purchase from those, and thats why most people are afraid to bid on them, I believe. So we got a cheaper deal on the DVDs.
Here is the link for the eBay auction that I put up for the Dani Johnson DVD set.
I was shocked and happy that the item had sold for $172.50 plus 15 dollars for shipping, I wasn’t expecting a profit gain from the sale. I would have been happy to break even, or fall a little short of profit. To my dismay, the auction winner, was someone from Israel. I had specifically stated in the auction sales, that I wanted to ship to USA and Canada Only.
However me being the nice guy, I did not complain, or send an email to the guy telling him that I wouldn’t ship it to him. I went to the post office, and even though it cost more than $15 to ship it, I still went ahead and shipped it. I was happy enough that my mom was getting her money back that I did not care to pay extra for the shipping. And off it went to Israel!
I received an email message from leskovshalosh@gmail.com eBay from the buyer from Israel , his username is leskovshalosh.
Heres the message I received
Hello.
Receaved DVDs todays. its low quality burned copy’s.
Not original, bootled DVDs.
Before I left negative feedback and open claim in PP - wish hear your commen
First off, disregard his horrible English. As you can imagine, I was shocked that he had claimed that the DVDs were burned and bootlegged. I had personally seen the package, and the DVDs and they were very much authentic.
Here was my reply to him.
I purchased the DVDs from someone else on ebay. I watched the dvd’s myself. The quality seemed fine to me. The person I purchased it from said that they bought the dvds from the Dani Johnson seminar.
In the past I have purchased Joel Bauer’s dvd set at a live seminar, the quality of the dvd was actually worse than that of the Dani Johnson.
Thank you for contacting me about this before making a negative feedback.
He never did reply back to me, and later I saw that he had charged back on his credit card. So What do i see now? A red -$179.89 USD on my paypal account.
Have I received the item back?
No, he still has the items in his possession, and acknowledged it in the email that he sent me.
Some Thoughts
It really is just too easy for this buyer. He purchased the DVD set, obviously has watched them. Now he has successfully made a charge back on his credit card claiming that the DVDs I sent him were pirated and burned copies. So he has already consumed the goods, and now he gets his payment back too. Do you see how I lose out on this big time?
I don’t have the DVD package in my possession, and I am short changed $187.50 dollars!
How could I have avoided this?
The truth of the matter is I should have never shipped to the buyer. Yes he sent me the payment via paypal, but the shipping address on the paypal internet was unconfirmed. According to paypal, by sending to an unconfirmed address, I as the seller lose the seller protection. Meaning that, in case of a scammer, I would not be protected.
Even if the buyer had a confirmed paypal address, I don’t believe I would have gotten my money back, because under the seller protection rules it states that, The transaction must be between a US, UK or Canadian buyer and a US, UK or Canadian seller. Meaning that, by sending to Israel, according to the Paypal seller protection, I have absolutely no protection at all.
Lesson Learned
Do not sell to outside of the USA or Canada on eBay, as you will have no protection at all.
How to protect yourself as a seller on eBay
1. Be sure to purchase an item shipping tracker.
2. Be sure to send only to verified paypal addresses.
3. Seller protections are only covered for packages sent from US to US, or US to Canada.
4. Familiarize yourself with the Seller\Buyer Protection Policies from eBay and paypal.
What do you think of all this, Please leave your comments below!
If you have any suggestions on how I can get my money back, please leave them below!
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I’m not a big Ebay using, but I use it from time to time. I sell mostly my used books from the previous term on half.com, which is apart of Ebay, and I never had a problem. I guess it’s because I am selling to other college study. My biggest transaction in Ebay was selling my Xbox 360 with a few games, I sold that to a kid in Floria. That transaction went very well for me. I am always afraid to buy/sell on Ebay because of stories such as yours. My girlfriend loves Ebay but she never buys anything from anyone who doesn’t have a feedback. She does though, sell to those people.
Personally I would never shape anything to a place as far as Israel, there is just too much risk in that, and as you say in your post, payPal protection is void if you do that. Sorry for your bad experience. I think there will always be people like the one you encounter no matter how good of a TOS a site has and how good it is at cracking down those things. People with bad intent will always exist in every place they can find a loophole in.
Great story about the perils of being an eBay seller. It goes to show that the sellers carry all the risk.
I just hate it when people does things like that!
Can’t we all just get along?
Well good luck, maybe you get it back after a while…
Hopefully I at least get my items back. But by the looks of it, thats not going to happen.
That is quite the unfortunate story. I only wish that you had decided to be a mean bastard and say, “No, I specifically said only to US and Canada.” I’ll admit that I almost got suckered into that once. I was trying to sell a cheap cell phone that I was no longer using; probably posted for about $20 on craigslist. Anyway, I got an email from someone in Nigeria who wanted it and said that he would have sent the money via Western Union or something. Luckily, after careful consideration, I backed up and sold the phone locally instead.
The moral of our two stories? Don’t send things to people from third-world countries. As nasty and possibly offensive as that may sound, there are just too many risks involved. There’s no way that someone in Israel couldn’t have gotten those bootleg DVDs his/herself.
I’m really sorry you lost out; I honestly don’t know what to say to make the situation better except to tell you to keep your head up and continue warning people like you are now of possible scams.
Thank you for sharing your story!
But like you suggested, I will move on, and keep my head up. And hopefully my post, will help others not make the same mistake!
YOU CAN STILL GET YOUR MONEY. Just hang there! You’ll get your day in court. Although the credit card company credit the money back to the buyer it is a “temporary” credit to him/her. You will get paperwork from the card company stating that a claim had been made. Fill out the paperwork and return it to the credit card company. They then contact the purchaser and tell them thay you have responed to the “dispute”. If the purchaser continues to “dispute” you may have to respond to a 2nd and perhaps 3rd set of questions from the card company. At this point you are really playing “chicken” to see who will quite first. Eventually the card company will make a decision. Most of the time if you state you case fimly but fairly, and you comply with all their paperwork and question, you will win. They will see the scam for what it is. I know thes because I am a merchant and I’ve had to do this several times.
gregS
Hi Greg,
Thank you for your comment, I appreciate your knowledge on this matter. The problem though is that, the payment and transaction was done through Paypal. So the money was sent to my Paypal account. I linked the transaction history about the case through a link on the blog post.
Here -> http://www.jeancosta.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/transaction-details.gif
As you can see, Paypal has closed the case, and the reverse charge was granted.
I called up Paypal today, and they said that even with proof that they buyer has received the item, under Paypal terms there is no seller protection for transactions outside of USA, Canada, and UK. So basically I am only protected if I ship to USA, Canada or UK.
Are you suggesting that there will be more on this to come?
Let me know your valued thoughts!
Great advice Jean. Seems like everyone has gotten ripped off by someone else on eBay one-time-or-another. It is sad that people do this.. *sigh*
Sorry to hear about the loss.I have never used ebay or any online shopping site because I read so many scams about that instead of going to some online company for sale/purchase,I would prefer to go to a local dealer and get the deal done.Maybe there would be some loss but something is better than nothing.
I was duped by Bloggerwave.com.All the $100.00 which came to my paypal account by then got reversed after a week.I can understand what you must be feeling but lessons are learnt that way only.I have stooped using bloggerwave or any new site which claim to pay.Now you too will avoid this mistake of going off the territory of US/canade for using ebay.
Ouch, sorry to hear that, especially for being a nice guy. It also stings as it will hurt your seller rating…
Bummer.
Well fortunately the guy did not leave a negative feedback rating on eBay. So I still have 100% feedback rating on eBay.
But then again I’d rather sacrifice 1 negative feedback rating for the money back.
Lesson learned though!
Very sorry to hear about this Jean, but thanks a million for the advice I will take it into consideration next time I sell on Ebay. Love the new blog by the way
Too bad for you my friend
I think Israelis are bastards anyway 
I like your stories and I’m definitely adding you to my RSS reader
Sorry about your ebay experience. I do ebaying every now and then (with a rating of 60). Had a hard time trying to keep all the ratings positive to the extent that being held hostage by a seller who sent me defective goods. She threatened to give me a bad rating if I do it to her. I had to hold on the the defective item and didn’t give her any feedback. Likewise she didn’t leave me any feedback even after funds are in her account!
I became abit paranoid thereafter and only purchase and sell items of relatively low value (less than $10) to minimise my exposure.
Furthermore, I heard that Ebay is disallowing sellers to give buyers bad feedback. I don’t know how it’ll work out though.
Hi jean. You should stay away from ebay. i gave up on ebay two years ago. They thrive on scams. I like your new website design.
Thanks! I like it too
Dear Jean,
Thank you for your personal recount regarding an “E-bay BUYER Bully”. If you have not left feedback on this person as of yet, you can. You can leave words to the affect of:
_
BUYER BULLY: Has product & reversed payment on LEGIT item, check my purchases.
_
Then, other SELLERS who review high item buyer feedback will at least have that information. Seller’s will also be able to check your purchases to see that you did indeed purchase that same item prior to selling it. Other Seller’s will then be able to BLOCK this person from making purchase.
E-bay Seller Support line is 1-866-322-9103. Call them, ask them how to appropriately go about having the item returned in a manner that your account is not damaged in any way via FEEDBACK. I mean, if this guy has NOT left feedback, then it was his intention all the time to not leave it so that he would get the item and then get the money back too.
Click on the guy’s feedback number, then click on VIEW SELLERS ITEMS: Is this person re-selling the item that he purchased from you?
I wish that someone from either e-bay or PayPal Corporate could tell you (and all of us) that they protect BOTH buyer and seller, unfortunately, with e-bay’s new release of 1/29/2008 that is not true. E-bay’s latest changes will no longer allow a SELLER to leave any form of negative feedback for a BUYER, even if the BUYER is a professional scammer or BUYER BULLY.
Our store has sold pretty much around the world with success, but it appears those biggest bully’s we have faced are from within the USA. They write to tell us that they want refund or more item or will leave a negative feedback. We sale Native American themed fabrics. Our wholesale purchase price on most is $4.40 per yard and with e-bay & paypal fee’s our listings are $6.00 per yard while others on e-bay are selling for that amount on 1/2 a yard. However we are a bit different. Operating on a non-profit 501-C-3 we are attempting to help American Indian’s to have access to fabrics they would not normally have access to. If other’s purchase along the way, that is fine with us, we have no problem with that. If our little low-end store can suffer as it has the past two months with BUYER BULLY’s, it is hard to fathom what a high-end (item’s costing more than 100.00) store or seller has to face without support of that very system which extract’s 1/4 of item’s final value fee.
What is your REFUND policy listed on that sales page? What most sellers do not realize when they set up a store is that if you do not have the very minimum of “NO REFUND” listed, that chargebacks will happen so much quicker if payment was made through any form of credit-card.
Also, go into the COMMUNITY section of e-bay and find the boards there. Tell this story to other seller’s. I wish that someone had the guts to set up some place online, a BUYER BULLY list of e-bay ID’s so that other sellers could go into their systems and BLOCK that seller from making purchases.
Meanwhile, plentiful prayers & bountiful blessings to you and that which you have unfortunately suffered through. Welcome to the life of an e-bay seller.
I had some issues with sellers and buyers on eBay but I solved them through eBay’s system. Got my money back whenever I didn’t receive the goods I paid for.
Best thing to do is contact them directly and inquire about this in person. My advice will also be to watch out who are you selling your stuff to, especially if they are out of the USA.
That’s bad….but this is the risk in selling to strange countries like Israel, to someone you don’t know.
This Israel guy is ridiculous. This problem happens here in Brazil too, and you can’t trust the internet too much, both in selling or purchasing items.
I, like everyone else here am sorry to see your experience Jean. I like very much how you have presented the perils of dealing in what is essentially an anonymous market place. All the checks and balances that we put in place are as nothing if it is too easy for people to operate anonymusly and criminally. I also agree with others that we should all accept payment mechanisms that give recourse across the boundaries that we use. So, PayPal says that it restricts protection to transactions in the USA, Canada, and the UK. There presumably is a reason for this. PayPal itself has probabl recognized that there is nothing they can (or want to invest in the infrastructure to) do when we have this kind of dishonesty.
My advice - choose a payment mechanism that reflects the location and value of the transaction. It may slow down the market place a bit, it may make some deals not go through - but if that is the case, then maybe the deal was a bad one to begin with.
I don’t think my advice completely eliminates the risk, but it does go some way to reduce it.
This doesn’t look like an eBay problem to me - more a cautionary tale when we enter complex markets with untrustworthy people. No different than going to a flea market and being taken because you loved the “antique” chamber pot that turned out to have been made in china last week.
I have researched this for you within the e-bay Seller detailed pages, again, I encourage you to call e-bay at 1-866-322-9103 or 1-866-515-3229. THIS IS an E_BAY problem, and not a PayPal problem in that e-bay allowed showing of these pages in a country where you as the seller elected to NOT sale to and e-bay then allowed that buyer to make purchase.
Per e-bay:
access to Buyer Requirements to manage their buyers?
Yes. The Buyer requirements tool enables sellers to prevent or limit the buyers from bidding or buying their items if certain criteria have not been met. The criteria are:
>>>buyer is registered in a country where seller doesn’t ship to<<<
buyer has negative FB score
buyer has a recent Unpaid item strike
buyer does not have a PayPal account
Hey WandaLou,
Thank you so much for your detailed and valued commentary!
I have called eBay, and told them all the points that you stated. Unfortunately they had an answer for everyone of them, and did not seem very helpful. They stated that eBay simply provides a place for the buyer and seller to do business, and that beyond that, they have no control over what goes on. Meaning they only provide the service for you to use, and the rest is all on the shoulders of the buyer and seller.
There solution was for me to call Paypal…..
When I talked to the person who attended to my call, apparently the user was able to bid on the item, because he has a US address listed in his addresses inside his profile.
I have not given up yet, but it is looking more and more like, a lost case.
I am hopeful that I may get my item back, but if after 2-3 weeks I still do not have my item back, I will then call it a lost cause.
None the less I have lost alot of credibility for eBay. This year I was going to be buying another car for myself on eBay ( http://www.jeancosta.com/personal/jean%e2%80%99s-goals-for-2008.html ), and now I am thinking of just going to the dealership instead.
I’m sorry to hear that but I hate to say it - your not alone. Stuff like this happens all the time. Ebay and Paypal do not always just side with the buyer or seller, in fact after reading their policies they don’t really seem to stand up for either one.
We had 5 figures of chargebacks against us 3 months after we filled the clients order and they reordered 13 times… But does that matter in the eyes of paypal - nope they still want to look into it.
That’s pretty annoying. Ebay can be a pretty dodgy place to sell at times but at least you’ve learnt a lesson!
This is a situation that is happening more and more on a daily basis, so much so that I have completelylimited my selling to UK,US and Canada only. I deal in the collectables area so this has obviously limited my options but at least I am protected against some of the scams out there.
Mike
PS. Jean, just followed your adsense chat link to here and am glad that I did, great blog :o)
Hey Auction man, I do remember you from the adsense chat
Glad you liked your visit 
Oh on a side note…. I wanted to leave a comment on one of your blog posts, but I had to register for that, and there was no way for me to do so.
Jean, the register screen should come up when you click the comment tag. I have doubled checked and things seem to be working but please check and let me know otherwise..
Jean, you should contact him again and advise him that, maybe the reason for the bad quality on his end, is the sand in his DVD. He needs to clean his stuff.
I’ve been a pretty big seller on the internet and also on eBay. The one thing I always avoided was giving people the benefit of the doubt. There are just too much scams around. The stories are all over the place. I had one site were like half of the bids on electronics where from African people. I’m not saying all of them are fake, but check their story. I generally don’t trust it when I see buyers from strange countries. I’m pretty advanced with computers and internet. But there are definitely some tricks the average Joe would fall for. As for your case, you couldn’t really have avoided this. This is one of the nastiest tricks. The problem is, Paypal always roots for the buyer. I’ve heard some horror stories about this before. And it’s a shame, especially for such a big company. One time I didn’t really trust a sale and used an escrow service. Luckily I did, because I didn’t get any product and could get my money back.
hi
unfortunatly you are screwed as ebay has a thing for these scam buyers as i was a platinumpowerseller for 3 years and was thrown off for something ridiculous- its too long of a story but everything i had built up was squashed because of one guy!!!
it is ashame because ebay and paypal is really getting a bad rep!!
as far as your technorati authority, i have a 256 w/ my 4 week old blog and +5-7/day , you can too, see my site how, i will add u to the master list, just post about my site.done.
http://www.platinumpicks.blogspot.com
100ec thx for that, i will be back here again, nice
Like you Jean, I have made many purchases on Ebay over the years and all have gone well. I credit this mostly to me though, because I READ EVERYTHING thoroughly and anything that sounds even remotely off beat, I move along to the next seller.
It is very unfortunate that your kindness cost you on this occasion. Your attempt to satisfy the buyer IN SPITE of your own rules of not shipping to anywhere but the USA and Canada opened the door and a shady buyer stepped right on in.
With the buyer being so far away, I have absolutely no thoughts on how you could resolve this. Additionally, you don’t want to spend another nickel on this creep.
As much as it hurts, I think that you’re going to have to chalk this one up to a lesson learned. That is unless Greg is correct about the credit card company followup, that would be fantastic!
Its people like that, that makes it hard for us Outside of the US and UK to use ebay. That sucks man.
It’s unfortunate that you had such a tricky buyer. I hope you recover your money and reputation.
I used to buy and sell textbooks on e-bay but never had any problems. I have to be more careful with other items.
The perils of Paypal and unverified members, any news on any developments Jean??? Hope things pan out and this scum gets whats coming to him/her!!
Yes, definitively, israel is a shit country just like all of africa, india and such. By shit I mean they cannot be trusted, although of course they have mostly nice people, laws cannot be enforced, so trading is strongly NOT recommended.
I wish Western Europe was included when they mention “USA/CANADA/UK” but that’s life, european countries are not native english speaking AND eastern europe has a lot of scams going on too…
In the case of african countries, that’s even laughable, I mean even if it was a legit customer, I would not ship it to africa where so many people handling the package could steal it and the legit buyer claim to not have received it. Africa is a big NO-NO, they can try all they want with me, they’ll never get anything back!
Sorry about what happened, but 2 years ago I bought concert tickets from a ebayer to find out the were fakes, and not even the ticket taker knew it was. It was discovered when we arrived to our seats and the other party had the same tickets. Ours upon further review didn’t have the watermark. Ebay was responsive to our concern and we were taken care of.
Thats a real bummer, Jean. Have there been any further developments since then?
Sorry to hear this happened. I’ve always had a policy that I won’t internationally ship anything I can’t afford to lose.
The only other method I’ve been able to use with extremely determined international buyers is for them to send and international money order. I can then take it to the bank, wait until it’s completely cleared (call the bank to ask, too), and ship the item.
It’s truly amazing what people will try to do to you if you don’t treat everyone like a potential criminal (which is sad).