Being Ripped Off By Online Sellor

[Growltigger]

Atrocities, my 2 pence (worth about 3 1/2 cents at today's exchange rates) for you.

Point 1 - Amazon do have a point, in that you do have to give someone a reasonable time to perform their end of the contract. Frustrating acts may mean that the sellers ISP is down, or he is just busy, or even just delayed in sending you the goods. I would watch and wait till nearer the 31/1 and then raise hell;

Point 2 - the US does have sale of goods legislation similar to what we have in England. You should have recourse to Amazon if the package does not arrive. Use their AtoZ guarantee first. If that doesnt work, raise hell.

Point 3 - you paid this on credit card. Your credit card company will have to reimburse you for the fraud.

Summary - You are 99% likely to get your money back.

For what it is worth, I have been stung several times on Amazon and Ebay. Amazon in each case refunded my money. In relation to Ebay, sellers kept my cash on 3 occassions. On each occassion, my credit card had to refund the cash spent and Ebay kicked the people of the sight.

On one the occassions, the seller sent me an email from his work, but didnt realise that his firm's server or whatever stuck a message on the email giving its name, address etc. Complied documents, got the CEO's name and personal address from Companies House, sent the bloke a letter saying "wouldn't normally trouble you but as this bloke (the seller) did send an email from work and has tried to stiff me, a lawyer etc..."

Got a cheque and an apology from the CEO on behalf of his employee (what a nice bloke) and a promise from the CEO that he didnt like the idea of his staff being crooks, and would therefore have words with said ****.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Growltigger:
Got a cheque and an apology from the CEO on behalf of his employee (what a nice bloke) and a promise from the CEO that he didnt like the idea of his staff being crooks, and would therefore have words with said ****.

I take back every bad word I ever said about your honarable profession Gt.

[Growltigger]

Thanks Geo,

It worked quite nicely. I simply wrote to the CEO of this small company, and explained that I had entered into email communications with one of his staff, who had responded from work. I explained that I had purchased something from this bloke, but that now he was refusing to answer my enquiries and not letting me have the goods, notwithstanding that he had been paid.

I then said that I was a solicitor, and said that much apologies but I would have to start legal proceedings against this bloke, and as the only address I had for him was at the office, please would the CEO accept my advance apologies that notice forms etc would have to go to the office until such time as I had the guys residential address. I apologised for contacting him direct, and apologised for the inconvenience, but explained that I would take it kindly if someone gave me advance notice re one of my staff, and hoped he appreciated it.

He called me, we chatted through the issue and he send me a cheque for the £30 the twat owed me. He said that he appreciated my candour, but felt he would rather deal with this internally by having a quiet word with the member of staff about sending personal emails from work, potentially dragging the name of the business into legal proceedings and all sorts of stuff. Decent guy. Hope he sorted the numpty out!

[Atrocities]

Thanks Growltigger. I had already planned on letting the matter run its course.

Amazon no longer lists the seller as a merchant seller, and the guy I talked to on the phone, Todd, had let it slip that others had been calling about the same thing.

So the ball is rolling, albeit slowly.

And BTW, that was an inventive way to get your money back. Good for you. I had a guy I worked with run a Ebay scam where he would list new Computer parts for diret cheap then send the poeple junk with a little sticker on them that said they were P 150's when they were actually P 75's and such.

He got away with it for a long time, was actually able to buy a corvette with his earnings, but the law caught up to him and he got in some serious trouble. He was a weasel so he got what he deserved. We all found out about it when they showed up to work to arrest him for mail fraud or something like that. Come to find out he was stealing stuff from work as well and using his position to order stuff, using other peoples names, then intercepting the package, his position allowed him to do this, and then take it home and sell it on ebay or whatever.

I hope the SOB who ran this scam through Amazon gets caught, but the chances are he is already running a new scam through them much to the same as his old one. Oh well, buyer be ware.

[rdouglass]

I thought this post was relevant to this discussion....check out this news about Identity Fraud on ebay...

http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.c...265162&EID=551

It remains to be seen how seriously the authorities deal with these folks. If you read between the lines, it looks as though Civil Court isn't going to get all these folks money back. Do you think they'll get jail time?

[Combat Wombat]

Oh man that is why I won't buy things off the internet unless its a established company

[Wardad]

Growltigger, you are a class act.

Good to hear of someone puting in some well thought out effort.