Two cases of this, from both sides of the field have happened to me.
When I got my newest laptop, I was searching for an affordable version of Photoshop for it. I found a copy on eBay titled "Linux Photoshop." I paid for it and it was shipped out shortly.
Once it arrived, I got a fun surprise. All I received was a burned disk copy of a freeware program called "GIMP." I'm familiar with this, and did NOT want it. The seller told me I was SOL, so I filed a charge back through Paypal, listing it as a fraudulent item. Paypal insisted that the only way to get a refund was to ship this burnt CD back to him, and I could get a refund for the item, minus shipping (to me and from me).
So, in the end, a seller who sold me a freeware item as a totally different product got to keep the $9 he charged for shipping (of which, he only spent $2 including packing). He also left me negative feedback: "Lame Ebayer Ever. Should get a Sweet Chin Music in the Facial for acting dumb." Not the brightest crayon in the box, but he did sell over 700 copies of this on eBay before they finally stopped him. I was only around 200.
The second was only a week or two ago, and was as a seller.
I've been running around 100 auctions for my extra DVDs, staggering the sales to make it a bit easier on me. One person bid on seven and won them all. I combined shipping for him and mailed them all out the next day. Less than a week later, he thanked me for receiving them in such great shape, left positive feedback, and bid on several more.
He won three of the next series of auction (about two weeks after the first), and I sent him a total with combined shipping. He sent payment that night, and I shipped them out the next morning. Both times were to a confirmed address, which I would later learn were both different address, one in California and one in Florida, and to different names.
About 10PM the night I shipped his second order, I got two messages on eBay within a few minutes of each other: (as I went to pull them up, eBay has deleted them. They were only two weeks old, and I was saving them until this was resolved)
Both messages were very panicked and said that he gave me the wrong address and needed them shipped to the first one. I told him that I shipped them out about twelve hours earlier. He never replied.
By an odd twist of fate, the second package went to a friend of a friend, down in Florida, who immediately recognized my name and called me. They'd recently bought a PSP from the same guy who bought the DVDs from me. Apparently, Paypal had a major glitch and temporarily put their address as a confirmed address on his account. Once I realized what happened, I emailed him and said that they would ship them out to him in the morning and asked for a confirmation on the address to make sure we had it right this time.
At 3AM that night, he filed a charge back through Paypal for both shipments.
Paypal has been a pain to work with over the phone. I've gotten eight different answers from eight different people, including escalations. Tell my friend to ship him the item, don't have them ship it, Paypal glitched on the address, the buyer stole my friend's bank account info, I can keep the money and just wait for a call back (which never came), he gets everything back. It's a huge mess!
The end conclusion was to have my friend send him the second shipment and provide a tracking number. Then I can keep the money from the second shipment.
The first shipment is a lost cause. Since I didn't track the package, I can't prove it was delivered by eBay/Paypal standards. It doesn't matter that he emailed saying it arrived in good shape and left positive feedback. They don't care about that. What is also compelling, is that he's done this to someone else in the past. I didn't catch it at first because he has 100% positive feedback, but a previous seller amended their feedback to include that he filed a charge back and kept the item, saying it never arrived. None of this matters to eBay/Paypal. He gets his money back, regardless of anything else.
If I hadn't been so lucky as to locate the second shipment, he would have gotten all his money back because of this ridiculous rules.
The worst slap in the face, though, is that Paypal will still make me pay the fee for receiving the money in the first place, but charge me the entire amount when refunding him.
Words don't explain how angry I am over this. I really feel spit on by a site I helped build and make great.
Jaden
Norman, Oklahoma
U.S.A.
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