Best practices when buying off eBay

silver · Post by **silver** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:44 pm

Ladies and gents, I'm not having a great day. And lately I haven't been getting that "warm and fuzzy" feeling we all like to get when buying something off ebay. What do you do when you've received something that is less than "good" ?

sickle44 · Post by **sickle44** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:13 pm

John,
If you had any idea what kind of luck I've had with my purchases lately, you might count your blessings that you even got your item.

Anyways, you should start a dialog with the seller, getting the phone number and trying to call them can work real well if they actually pick up the phone. If that doesn't pan out for you, then you need to begin a dispute, this is best done through PayHoles if that's indeed how you paid. Then you must play the waiting game, and wait, and wait, and wait!

Not fun but.....
I've also had succes once just calling PayHoles. Right now though, I've got to play the waiting 30days game for my $300 for a screwed up amp.

dragracer1951 · Post by **dragracer1951** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:20 pm

John
I just looked at your email. That's pretty messed up but....it's not the end of the world. You can at least cure it. You may well have to bribe a good welder...but you CAN cure it. That said, It may well be easier to just get your money back from the seller.

stan · Post by **stan** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:11 am

In the disputes i have had when a purchase went wrong, my first mistake was to go outside the ebay system.

This guy played me like the novice i was :bfg

Keep all corospondance via your ebay account, so it can all be tracked,

tan

hotcam · Post by **hotcam** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:44 am

+1 to what stan said. It's one of the first things ebay will check when their staff look into a dispute, and because it's recorded by a third party in the sale (not you or the seller but ebay) it counts as an independent record of what was said, admissible under law. At least that's what the cops said when they arrested my bad seller for mail fraud

silver · Post by **silver** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:11 am

Thanks for your advice. I'm going to be paying a whole lot more attention to my ebay purchases. I do almost always use PayPal and all correspondence is through the ebay messaging system.

FYI, I just sent the latest seller an email through ebay stating :

"I think we need to talk about this frame. For one thing one of the the rear motormounts is broken and missing. You can see what I'm talking about at :
http://www.fzr1k.com/images/fzr1k_frame_mmount.jpg
I have already asked one machinist who owns and works on FZR's/YZF's and he states that it can be repaired but it's not going to be easy or cheap."

The other purchases were less than $40 each so they weren't a huge issue. But this one was for $255 plus the cost it took for me to drive over and pick it up (probably $70 in gas). I've stripped it down to the frame already so this could be a little ticklish. Note that in his ebay post (item # 150153088342) he never said anything like "as is" or "no returns" and I really don't want to return it but I also note that there are obvious signs that the bike was involved in a flood. Possibly a Katrina victim. Things like having an extremely rusty steerer tube and water in the wheels. To add fuel to the fire, this guy (country1340) is a motorcycle mechanic at the Memphis Victory shop and pulled the motor out himself so one would think he noticed that motor mount issue.

Post by **jjs777** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 5:15 pm

As a rule I wont buy from anyone unless its through paypal.
Matter of fact I wont sell anything to anyone unless they use paypal as well.

It protects both buyer and seller.
I have yet to be screwed when dealing with paypal.
They will auto suspend the funds on the seller once you log a complaint.

NEVER not use paypal. n Of course there are limits to the $ amount of protection.

-John

silver · Post by **silver** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:52 am

Well it's been two weeks since my email to him through Ebay and no reply so I finally just left him some bad feedback.

Specifically - "Flood damaged,broken mtr. mount, bnt whls,water in everything.Bad communication."

Seller goes by country1340.

hotcam · Post by **hotcam** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 5:41 am

Also make a claim through the regular ebay system. You may be able to get some money back under the premise "significantly different condition than was described"

WickedFZR1K · Post by **WickedFZR1K** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 9:22 am

silver wrote:To add fuel to the fire, this guy (country1340) is a motorcycle mechanic at the Memphis Victory shop and pulled the motor out himself so one would think he noticed that motor mount issue.

I would say more than likely he "caused" the motor mount issue. Sorry to hear about your bad luck Silver, I have tried to deal with shifty sellers in the past and havent had much success from ebay on their part either.

silver · Post by **silver** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 12:35 pm

While it wasn't a great deal I think I can make it work. I doubt it's worth the effort to get any monies back and I have the YZF frame still sitting outside so i'm going to cut the mount off it. Should be a breeze to get it welded onto the FZR frame. I just hope the fork are in good enough shape. The seals were leaking but at least they still had oil in them.