I have been shopping on ebay for the past 7 years with only minor complications.  Small items never showed up and I never really worried about it too much.  But lately I have noticed that fraud is on the rise.  In December I bought and paid for dvds for my kids for Christmas.  They never showed up, we took a vacation, and arriving home I expected to find my postal box overflowing with packages.  Not so, the seller had left the building!

I tried to file a paypal claim but judging from his December feedback so had hundreds of other people and no more claims could be made on that account.

So, you would think I had learned something.  No, since the seller had thousands of feedback and had been doing ebay business for years, I figured that something really bad had happened to him which prevented him from fulfilling his obligations.  (Do you see the picture here – I TRUST people!)  Plus I owe my children a few gifts.

And so I decide to buy more dvds

Today while leaving feedback for other purchases (which were good, by the way – apparently buying bras and panties online is pretty safe ;), I notice that my new dvd purchases are not listed in my “Items I won”.  Hmmmm….I was pretty sure I had purchased them so off I go to find my paypal receipt.  I click on the listing link in the receipt and get this message:

This listing (230229476xxx) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.  If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it canceled.

Huh?  How can I consider it cancelled?   I paid for it!

Back to paypal I go to file another claim.  Hopefully I will have better luck this time but I’m not holding my breath.

It’s really sad you know, as an online seller myself I know that there is a lot of shoppers out there.  We should have the right to receive the merchandise we pay for.  Not get robbed from the comfort of our office chairs.

archived from January 2008