I buy quite a few things on eBay. I comparison shop quite a bit and often find I can get things on eBay cheaper than I can on Amazon or other sites. I like the fact that most of what I see on eBay features free shipping. I have had pretty good luck buying things on eBay 99 percent of the time, but once in a while I do run into some problems. I wanted to write about this to share my experience and perhaps help some people better understand what eBay can or cannot do to assist them when they run into a problem with something they purchased on the site. In this case, eBay did not help me at all. I admit that was partially my fault for being uninformed regarding their policies.
Not too long ago I was searching for a particular product online and was having a difficult time finding it. After much searching I finally located one seller on eBay that was selling it. The seller in this case was ‘homede1175′ and even through I thought they were selling the product for a bit more than I thought was reasonable, I really wanted this product and this was the only place I could find to order it so I ordered two of them. I should also point out that this is not a big money purchase. I paid less than $20 for two of them even though that seemed a bit pricey to me for this particular product.
I took note of the fact that this seller seemed to be located in New Jersey since the product listing indicated that was the location that the product would be shipped from. It took 10 days for the product to arrive at my door, which is not a terribly long time so I really did not have a problem with that.
What I did have a problem with, and it was a big problem, was that both of the items I had ordered were badly damaged. I knew as soon as I saw the package at my door that there was likely to be damage. The seller simply dropped the two items in a flimsy plastic bag, slapped a shipping label on it and sent it on its way. The items I ordered are not particularly durable or tough and I would have thought that anyone with an ounce of sense would know that sending those through the U.S. Mail in a flimsy plastic bag would certainly result in damage to them. Let’s face it, none of us expect that the Postal service is going to treat our mail with kid gloves.
I also would like to point out that the products I received were about the cheapest, flimsiest versions of this product I had ever seen. I had purchased these kinds of things from others in the past and these were by far the worst ones I had seen. Still, even though they were of poor quality, I still could have used them if they were not damaged and they most likely would have served their purpose. To me this is just another sign that ‘homede1175′ is not a reputable seller if they are willing to sell inferior products at an inflated price. Given that they were the only ones that seemed to be selling it online, I was a little peeved about the quality but would have just used them and let it go at that if they had not been damaged and unusable.
I immediately contacted the eBay seller ‘homede1175′ via the eBay messaging system and let them know that the products arrived in a damaged and unusable state and even included some photos of the damaged products. They replied to me within a day and promised to send me two more to replace them. Having had good experiences with eBay sellers during the vast majority of my purchases, I took them at their word and expected the replacement products to be sent. I even suggested that they place them in a box to minimize the possibility of damage during shipment.
My first mistake was that I was too patient with these scammers. When you buy something on eBay the last thing you should be is patient. I learned that lesson the hard way.
After about three weeks (I told you I was too patient) I had still not received the replacement products but was still confident they would arrive. I again contacted ‘homede1175′ to ask them about the status of the replacements and received an exceedingly polite reply promising that they would be sent out very soon. Again, based on my past experiences with eBay sellers, I assumed they would indeed send them.
I let another three weeks or so pass and still had not received the replacements. At this point I started to think that they would not be sending any replacements and never intended to. Still, I decided to contact them one more time. Once again, they responded in a very polite way and apologized to me and once again promised to send the replacements. I rather doubted they ever would but decided to give it a little time anyway.
After about two weeks I was quite convinced that I was being lied to and knew that I would never be receiving any replacements and I decided to contact eBay. I sent them a very detailed account of what transpired with my purchase and I foolishly expected that they might actually do something about it. After all, the evidence that ‘homede1175′ lied to me more than once about replacing the products was sitting right on their own messaging system and would surely be accessible to eBay support staff.
The reply from eBay was polite and apologetic but we all know that only goes so far. I had hoped they would compel ‘homede1175′ to refund my money. Granted, it’s less than $20 but nobody likes getting scammed, even for small amounts of money.
Beyond the polite and apologetic wording, eBay was not willing to do anything about the situation. Since it had been longer than 30 days since the estimated delivery date I was given when I made the purchase, they would not assist me. Apparently, you have 30 days to contact eBay about a problem or you are out of luck. I see that as a failure on my part as well since I did not make myself aware of their policy. That is why I said earlier that patience is not something you want to exercise after your order something from eBay.
At that point I knew there was no real chance I would be able to get a refund for the broken items but I thought I might be able to leave a review for ‘homede1175′ so I could report my experience but since the ability to leave a review for a purchase also expires, I was not able to do that either. So I asked eBay support to tweak whatever they could tweak that would allow me to leave a review. Having worked as a systems administrator for many years, I am quite confident that was possible.
How did eBay respond to my request to allow me to leave a review? They didn’t. I never got a reply and have since decided to just chalk this experience up as a learning experience and let it go.
The real takeaway from this is: Do not let too much time pass after you have bad experience with an eBay purchase. eBay will refuse to offer you any help if you ask them later than 30 days from the estimated delivery date. If you miss that deadline, you are on your own and eBay will not lift a finger to help you.
The other takeaway is that you should not buy anything from eBay seller ‘homede1175′ because they are scammers and liars. They have almost 100 negative reviews on eBay and I am quite confident that all those complaints are legitimate.
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