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silentsnake09 · Mar 31, 2007, 02:50 PM

I sold a laptop a week ago on ebay. It was working fine and was in perfect condition. The guy got it 2 days ago and than emails me last night saying its not working. First he tells me there is no picture on the display. Than he tells me that there is a very faint picture and that its probably the lcd backlight. He also tells me that the laptops external monitor hook up doesn't work either. So its obviously not the backlight if he cant get the external hook up to get picture and its obviously not the video card if he gets some picture. He probably doesn't have the brightness up or something retarded. This laptop worked fine when I mailed it. Now this guy wants his money back he says. Why should I give him his money back for a laptop that he possibly broke or dropped or something. I need to know how I can protect my ebay,paypal, and money from this asshole. I am an honest person and would never sell a broken product but im not about to give $500 back in return for a laptop he may have broke. Please help!

design219 · Mar 31, 2007, 02:56 PM

Oh, the problems with Ebay. Whatever you do, don't refer to him as an "asshole." Try to work this out as professionally as possible. Something may have happened in shipping, or who knows what. Think about if you were him and you got the laptop and it had these problems. You would be upset also.

silentsnake09 · Mar 31, 2007, 03:02 PM

yeah i haven't been contacted by anyone but him yet and i have been very professional with him. I am not ripping him off but what protects the seller from if he damaged the laptop ya know?

cgc · Mar 31, 2007, 03:28 PM

Did you insure the shipment? A lot of things can get damaged in the mail. I'm sure eBay has some recourse...check their FAQ.

Mrjinglesusa · Mar 31, 2007, 03:48 PM

Why did he wait two days to let know there was a problem? Did you set a return policy in your auction? As someone else asked, did you insure it? I always insure things I sell on EBay for over $100 or so. I'm selling an XBox 360 on Ebay right now. I set a STRICT 3 day return policy on it. I will also insure when I ship it. Not sure what else you can do. You say it worked when you shipped it, he says it doesn't work. You can't prove it worked when you shipped it and he can't prove he didn't break it himself.

mac128k-1984 · Mar 31, 2007, 05:00 PM

Originally Posted by silentsnake09

Why should I give him his money back for a laptop that he possibly broke or dropped or something. I need to know how I can protect my ebay,paypal, and money from this asshole. I am an honest person and would never sell a broken product but im not about to give $500 back in return for a laptop he may have broke. Please help!

Take his perspective, say you bought a laptop from somone on ebay, you get it and it doesn't fire up. What would you want to do. If it was me, I'd want my money back. Right now you're not giving him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he's an honest person who wanted a laptop and now it doesn't work.

In your auction did you state "as is" or any type of implied warranty? I'm not a huge ebay person but if you sell stuff there you need to work with him so your feedback stays positive. If I saw someone selling something and there was negative feedback I'd avoid the auction especially if the feedback was selling defective equipment.

brassplayersrock² · Mar 31, 2007, 05:14 PM

this is why i stopped using ebay (check my thread, it's around here somewhere) to recap: i sent a perfectly working set of speakers (no external/internal flaws either) to some kid. he replies 3 weeks after saying that the sound is all hissy and crackly after he has been playing them "as loudly as possible", and wanted his money back. i don't reply because he has obviously blown them. a week letter i get a very rude e-mail from same kid and a thing from ebay saying that they are doing an investigation into this. i tell the kid fine, if you want some money back, go to ups and ask for a damaged package report (as said should be done by another member here) so he does that. in the mean time after some talking with ebay they find the kid at fault and not me. now i have to deal with the ups people. 4 weeks later all that is settled after many phone calls. fun thing is, the kid had to pay an extra $30 to ebay for doing the investigation, and because of the ups rules, the kid had to send the box along WITH the speakers back to where the closet ups warehouse was from him, to do a physical check of the package and contents. he never got them back for whatever reason. after he found out he wasn't getting them back he had the balls to e-mail me again very rudely demanding that i give him his money back or else he will "sue the life out of me" i pretty much tell him to bring it on and ever since no contact.

anyways, thread derail ended. don't give him the money back unless he sends you video evidence that it is not working, and only video. pictures can be useless in something like this.

good luck with everything

alex

Mar 31, 2007, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by brassplayersrock

this is why i stopped using ebay (check my thread, it's around here somewhere) to recap: i sent a perfectly working set of speakers (no external/internal flaws either) to some kid. he replies 3 weeks after saying that the sound is all hissy and crackly after he has been playing them "as loudly as possible", and wanted his money back.

I would have replied right then and there. Something like "If you've been playing them as loudly as possible, then you just admitted you blew the speakers yourself. Sorry, there's nothing I can do for you."

If that didn't satisfy him, and he got eBay to look into it, they would have seen him admit to blowing them himself and sided with you.

I find in resolving conlicts, ignoring the initial complaint is far worse than giving them an explanation they don't want to hear.

nerd · Apr 1, 2007, 12:02 PM

I've had I think 2 items out of a 100 or so that showed up DOA. One one of them was an FM Synthesizer that I had no way of telling if MIDI worked on it. The buyer responded that MIDI didn't work so I refunded the money that same day. I know it hurts loose the money in shipping etc but as others have said think about how you would feel if you were the one that received the DOA laptop.

-Brad

silentsnake09 · Apr 1, 2007, 12:08 PM

but im not taking back this laptop if its really broken. I haven't heard from paypal/ebay or him in a day so i doubt he disputed it.

red rocket · Apr 2, 2007, 06:14 AM

I sold a record on eBay once. The girl who won the auction paid immediately via PayPal, so I sent the record out the following day. She confirmed that she got it, was happy with it, so I assumed everything was cool. Three weeks later, I get an email from eBay saying that my money had been frozen, while they were investigating the transaction. I contact eBay and the buyer. eBay acted like complete retards, I get the feeling they investigate nothing, and haven't even read my emails. The buyer was very friendly, but ultimately unhelpful. Another week goes by, and eBay have taken the money off my account. I have now lost both record and money. The girl got banned from eBay, but at least she got a free record.

What have I learned from this? Unless what you're selling is really cheap, cover your arse as much as you possibly can. For the next record I sold, I spent over ten minutes at the post office getting the maximum number of insurance and security measures set up for the parcel, and had everything paid for in advance via bank transfer. The guy got banned as well, but there was no way he could have ripped me off on the transaction. Damn eBay, it's like they're operating on a caveat vendor policy.

/rant

Mrjinglesusa · Apr 2, 2007, 09:00 AM

Another reason to ALWAYS withdraw funds from PayPal immediately. Do not let funds sit in your PayPal account. They have way too much power to "freeze" your account. I always withdraw immediately after I get paid.

silentsnake09 · Apr 2, 2007, 05:05 PM

i withdrew the $500 but now I have -$500 in my paypal

mac128k-1984 · Apr 2, 2007, 07:19 PM

Originally Posted by silentsnake09

i withdrew the $500 but now I have -$500 in my paypal

Does that mean the buyer is now disputing the sale?

red rocket · Apr 3, 2007, 05:40 AM

Originally Posted by silentsnake09

i withdrew the $500 but now I have -$500 in my paypal

Doesn't surprise me.

Personally, I'd talk to my bank/credit card company and instruct them to block PayPal/eBay from transferring any money out of my account. Since they already have something of a direct debit deal with their customers for auction fees, they're probably (I'm guessing) also able to get the $500, unless you do something about it. The obvious downsides are that you might hear from their legal team, and probably won't be able to trade on eBay anymore.

mac128k-1984 · Apr 3, 2007, 08:01 AM

Originally Posted by red rocket

Personally, I'd talk to my bank/credit card company and instruct them to block PayPal/eBay from transferring any money out of my account..

I don't think that's possible, while times have changed, I recall calling my credit card company a few years ago asking them to block a payment and they said they couldn't. I was free to dispute it after the fact but I was powerless to prevent it.

I would also assume that being a member of paypal, you have authorized transactions (debits & credits) so you may not have too much recourse from that direction.