Ebay
Ebay protects Fraudsters so they can continue to collect their share of sales

I purchased 3 gemstones from one ebay seller gemvillage. This was a frudulent sale first because the seller doctored the picture of a yellow stone, coloring it green and calling it Demantoid (a rare (green) gem inducing a higher price/bid) and second because ebay requires that a seller state where the item is located and shipped from and the ebay bidding screen on all three gems said Thailand. Thailand has a well known gem trade, where many trained gemologists work from. Again, inducing trust and a higher price/bid this seller said the item location was Thailand and charged me $8.00 for shipping from there. The package came from California with a postage stamp of $1.98. Upon reporting this to ebay, of course like everyone else receives, the response was a canned form e-mail. PayPal's (PayPal is owned by ebay) response to my claim was that they would collect the refund of the gems to me, the cost of shipping to me would not be included and that I would have to return the gems by mail with tracking, (take a loss in the cost of shipping to me) and further that I must pay to ship these items back to THAILAND (not California where they really came from) a total loss to me of $23.00. Paypal's representative and then a requested supervisor stated to me that they don't or can't request the shipping be returned to me which is a lie because they have done this before when I have received fake gemstones. I also called and spoke with customer service at e-bay and went through the live chat trying to speak with someone from security. I left messages with customer service for security and voicemail requesting someone from security call me back. I have not received response, however, customer service did tell me it is not within their power to do anything about this or tell me what the punishment would be to the seller if any took place. The seller is still online selling so I would say it is not much of a punishment that would ever sway a seller from continuing to defraud buyers. Ebay's and PayPal's lack of concern, refusal to call me back, refusal to make the fraudulent seller take the loss rather than me, the buyer, continuing to let the seller sell items make it clear that their main concern is making money from these sales and they are willing to overlook the fraud which continuously grows on ebay. This should be considered fraud in itself. Not once did anyone ask to see the envelope or gems or accept my offer to scan and forward pictures of the envelope and gems to them. I have limited ability to test these gems. I can test the stones with a refractometer which shows the so called Demantoid not to be Demantoid at all and I can test the two so called Paraiba Tourmalines with the refractometer which shows them both to be tourmaline, however, Paraiba Tourmaline is different and requires a highly technical machine to see if the stones contain cooper and/or manganese which is what makes them paraiba. Paraiba tourmaline glows in neon colors. One of these stones appears to be Paraiba tourmaline, the other stone does not appear to be Paraiba tourmaline at all. So many buyers buy gems, trusting at the word of these ebay sellers and have no way of testing the stones. How many people are these fraudulent sellers and ebay ripping off unbeknownst to buyers. Of course ebay and paypal should be holding sellers to the highest of honesty and integrity and if they are not honest, they should not be allowed to continue to sell. The total sell was not that much this time, $178.00 plus the shipping of $15.00 to ship to Thailand but this is not the first time this has happened in my gem collecting. This is just the last time I will allow ebay to get away with it. To flagrant. (sp) especially now that they own PayPal. The only thing I can do about this is cancel my account with e-bay which I have done and report them to consumer affairs which I have done in hopes that something can be done to stop the losses to ebay and paypal customers. I hate unethical crooks the continually get richer and richer at the expense of others. There has to be a better way to handle them, and put a stop to it than just to complain like this.

Does anyone who has an account with ebay remember getting an email from ebay regarding the huge lawsuit against them in France. They said they were just writing to assure us that they take fraud quite seriously and spend billions of dollars protecting us. Can one person here attest to actually having a live conversation with ebay security or getting satisfaction from the fraud department. I fully expect ebay to send one of their cronies out here to make something up, so the rest of you who feel totally violated, please leave your response as well.

Company: Ebay
Country: USA

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