In February I made a purchase on eBay. The listed seller was Citycams. At that time, Citycams had recorded over 18,000 individual sales on eBay with a 99.5 percent satisfaction rate. I really did not worry about purchasing from this company with that many previous sales. The ad on eBay stated that the cell phone I was purchasing was a SciPhone i68 with all accessories, including two batteries, etc. I paid well over $100 for this cell phone.
When the cell phone arrived I immediately noticed that there was only 1 battery. I sent a message to the seller. They stated that they contacted the "manufacturer" and the "manufacturer" did not have any additional batteries to send me. This response made me worry about the authenticity of the phone.instead of a battery the seller offered to send me a memory card for the phone. I stated that I did not need an additional memory card for the phone. Apparently they felt that the memory card could provide me with additional battery life (?). A few days later I received a memory card in the mail even though I had told them NOT to send a memory card. I told them that they needed to provide the items shown on their ad on Ebay for the phone.
I began using the phone and immediately noticed that I was unable to maintain calls on my own t-mobile network. Calls to landlines seemed to work okay. I did some investigating on the internet to find out why I could not keep a call connected. While doing my research I found out that I had not received an actual SciPhone i68. I received a cheap clone version of the phone from China. The owner's manual that I received in the box was only a "Quick Start Guide" in very crude English. As a matter of fact, the first paragraph of the instructions state that "SIM card are your mobile phone number and PIN, PUK, PUK2 (unlock password) and information network, telephone cata and SMS data etc. So please be careful operation SIM card, friction or bending easily damaged SIM card. Don't use mobile phone, please put the SIM card in children." Obviously we were not dealing with a company that could even take the time or spend the money to translate the instructions into someone that made sense. This was just the first paragraph... As the instructions continued they made even less sense.
I contacted the seller many times and filed a report with eBay. The seller stated that if I would return the phone, along with the memory card they sent to me, they would refund my money. Of course eBay considered this a resolution and closed the case. I returned the phone, along with the unwanted memory card. A few days later I received the phone back in the mail, minus the memory card. The seller stated that I had not returned the memory card so they would not accept the return.
It is now June. I have made several complaints with eBay. I have attempted to reopen the case with no success. I can not prove that I placed the memory card in the box with the phone. I am not able to prove that they removed the memory card and then returned the phone to me. I offered to send another memory card back to them considering the purchase price of a memory card is less than losing over $125. I am still out the money I spent and still have a phone that will not operate on the t-mobile network.
Now, I notice that seller is no longer active with eBay. The phone number provided by eBay no longer belongs to the seller.in fact, after calling that number, the new person with that phone number gave me the actual name of the Seller as Adrian Chen. She found this information by calling from the phone to a caller ID.
Avoid all transactions with Silicon Valley Peripherals or SVP or Adrian Chen or Citicams or whatever else he is calling himself these days.
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