Looks like ive been screwed

[Irish Lager]

I won a Victorinox Sportsman SAK on ebay the other day for $1. Cost 3.95 to ship it, so $4.95. They didnt take paypal so i got the money order and sent it to them. then sent the email that told them payment was on the way w/ a copy of the email included. They replied who are you and for what? I tried to explain it to them, and have gotten no response. I used the email they provided, so i am not sure what is going on. I think ive been screwed. I know its only $5 but at the rate im working it may as well be $50. Besides its the principal of the matter. The sellers name was blyn101, has anyone delt w/ them before? Any advise or am i just screwed. If it doesnt show up soon i will be leaving negative feedback, and will contact ebay as well.
J

[ghostrider]

I won a Victorinox Sportsman SAK on ebay the other day for $1. Cost 3.95 to ship it, so $4.95. They didnt take paypal so i got the money order and sent it to them. then sent the email that told them payment was on the way w/ a copy of the email included. They replied who are you and for what? I tried to explain it to them, and have gotten no response. I used the email they provided, so i am not sure what is going on. I think ive been screwed. I know its only $5 but at the rate im working it may as well be $50. Besides its the principal of the matter. The sellers name was blyn101, has anyone delt w/ them before? Any advise or am i just screwed. If it doesnt show up soon i will be leaving negative feedback, and will contact ebay as well.
J

Don't know what to say IL. Remember when I expressed to you my concern over getting my Spyderhawk. After that, there was quite the scare on these forums over the subject. Everything turned out fine in the end. When was you last correspondence with them? If it was yesterday, I'd say wait untill Mon. or Tue. for a response since they may have left town for the weekend.

[BlackNinja]

Don't know what to say IL. Remember when I expressed to you my concern over getting my Spyderhawk. After that, there was quite the scare on these forums over the subject. Everything turned out fine in the end. When was you last correspondence with them? If it was yesterday, I'd say wait untill Mon. or Tue. for a response since they may have left town for the weekend.

I agree, however I would let ebay know the situation ASAP.

[skcusloa]

I would do everything possible before I left bad feedback.

Talk with ebay.

I hate doing deals that do not invovle paypal.

[WORKER#9]

As a long time Ebay user I must say that dealing with Ebay is the worst thing possible once you have been screwed. So good luck with that. I once bought an item that I never recieved, and Ebay first blamed me, and then later canceled the sellers account. I never got my Item or my money and since they canceled the sellers account I did not even get to leave negative feedback!!! It was lame!!!!

Good Luck!

[The Deacon]

Your seller is an eBay "power seller". They have over 200 auctions that are running or have ended in the past thirty days. Many of those auctions are for SAKs. I would assume you included the auction number, item description, auction end date, and your eBay name along with your money order and in your email, but even with that information, I would not expect much in the way of hand-holding from them. On the bright side, assuming you supplied the needed information to link your money order to the auction, I suspect you knife will show up eventually.

[JD Spydo]

I totally agree with my cousin Worker #9. He is absolutely right about Ebay not monitoring or policing the bad sellers that operate in high numbers in their on-line auction house. There just has to be a better way to rate these sellers and to devise a way to keep these sellers honest to a large degree. It seems like more and more sellers know that if they screw someone on a deal that the customer's chance of getting any justice are almost non existent.

I am glad the VINCENT was lucky enough to track down a phone number to report his maladies on EBay but most people I talk to agree with me that Ebay's avenue for a way to resolve problems has a lot to be desired. With the astronomical amount of money that they make they should certainly be to the point in their business where they have to be well aware of the problem. ON the other hand I have had some great deals on ebay as well. I suggested about a week ago on Bladeforums that we knife aficionados ought to devise our own seller's rating system at least in the knife arena so good fellow collectors don't keep getting burned by the same bums over and over again. It can be done, I know it can

[DAYWALKER]

Aloha IL...

Ugh...I hate this kinda stories...but such is the state of the world nowadays. That's why I like coming here...shows that there are good people left in this world, especially after the people I deal with in Hell.

I pray all works out for you. I definitely understand about "principals of matter"...try working that one with our admin here in Hell!

Take care and God bless

[ASmitty]

From what Deacon said, it sounds to me like the seller is just selling a whole lot of stuff on Ebay so they probably wouldn't be able to connect your name and email address to the particular item. My policy when buying from sellers like that is to send payment and wait rather than trying to correspond. I'm sure that you'll get your item as long as you sent the Item number, email address and all that along with your payment.

[Irish Lager]

Your seller is an eBay "power seller". They have over 200 auctions that are running or have ended in the past thirty days. Many of those auctions are for SAKs. I would assume you included the auction number, item description, auction end date, and your eBay name along with your money order and in your email, but even with that information, I would not expect much in the way of hand-holding from them. On the bright side, assuming you supplied the needed information to link your money order to the auction, I suspect you knife will show up eventually.

thanks deacon, i included the email from ebay stating what knife and the likes. it had all the necessary informaition on the auction. I will give it a few days for a response. thanks again. I will never do another non paypal, that is for sure.
J

[Irish Lager]

From what Deacon said, it sounds to me like the seller is just selling a whole lot of stuff on Ebay so they probably wouldn't be able to connect your name and email address to the particular item. My policy when buying from sellers like that is to send payment and wait rather than trying to correspond. I'm sure that you'll get your item as long as you sent the Item number, email address and all that along with your payment.

alright, i included all of those things, so i hope you are right. thanks to everyone for the response.
J

[ront]

I have been screwed one time on eBay and eBay was absolutely no help at all!! You may still be ok Irish Lager. Just give it a bit more time.

Ron

[The Deacon]

alright, i included all of those things, so i hope you are right. thanks to everyone for the response.
J

Well, seeing as the auction only ended Monday evening, your time, am guessing the earliest you could have sent the MO out was Tuesday. Assuming you sent it First Class, so while there's a chance they could have received it as early as Thursday, Friday or yesterday would be far more likely. Really think it's way too early to worry, muchless paint the seller as a rip-off artist.

Think to some extent you may be suffering from the rather common eBay malady of "I-got-it-so-damn-cheap-and-my-luck-sucks-so-bad-that-I-know-something-is-bound-to-go-wrong"-itis. Having a mild case of that myself right now but mines been over three weeks since the auction ended and payment was by PayPal within a minute after it ended. That seller finally got around to responding yesterday to the email I sent her last Saturday. She apologized and said that she and her family had been down with the flu and my knife had shipped the day before. Time will tell. Would feel a lot sorrier for her if she had not been running auctions the whole time.

[zenheretic]

Well on the plus side...I once had an ebay auction with a "buy it now" with paypal. After a month of nothing and no replies to my emails, I turned them into eBay...which referred me to Paypal...once I did the online report, I had a refund the next day. So eBay does help on some occasions. I always bang my head against the wall when I find I've won an auction but forget to check whether or not they accept Paypal. I worry on every one. It is easy to worry, but hang in there it is very early in the game.

On the down side, I won a SE Jot almost a month ago and the one and only email I could get from the seller claimed the age old excuse of a family emergency. He claimed he would mail it off Friday Oct. 28...but nothing yet.

I tell you what Irish Lager, if you don't get your item and do get screwed, send me a Forum PM with your address and I'll send you free Leatherman Micra and another no name mini multi tool for free (hard to get a better deal than that.) Both will be in good condition, but may have a tiny bit a bad karma as they were stolen I mean liberated from potential hijackers who were wanting to board a plane here in Vegas. (you would be amazed at how much stuff is taken at the security check point here).

P.S. If you ever see a really good auction from a power seller who sells mostly condoms and lube and who says "don't flood my email with inquiries" you might be better off passing on the auction.

[spydutch]

Stories like this are keeping me from doing business with E bay . I hope things will turn out ok for you in the end .

[greencobra]

This is not a problem only indigenous to e-bay. With a 100 or so transactions on e-bay, the only time I felt I was getting shafted was from my first deal at BF. I bought a mini grip off of someone, e-mail flowed through the deal, but then no knife, no more e-mail. Finally got the knife after more than a couple of weeks and was told it was in the sellers briefcase and forgotten about. Hmmmmm, you can find funky sellers anywhere JD.

[Gerard Breuker]

In general I have had more problems buying in stores then I had on eBay.
One item took two months to arrive for reasons unknown but not related to the seller. One item was no longer available but my money was immediately returned and one item was clearly not the one I bought but welcome none the less.
Considering I had to return to a store twice before I finally had a working MP3 player with the accessories that were supposed to go with it and I have had for more of this kind of experiences than I am willing to remember I find eBay a reliable way to buy things. I do of course look at the feedback and I try to use PayPal if possible.

[zenheretic]

Stories like this are keeping me from doing business with E bay . I hope things will turn out ok for you in the end .

I wouldn't let it influence you that much Spy. People will always talk about the bad over the good. If you compare cloudy days as bad transactions, I've had only one cloudy day and the 390 sunny days to enjoy. That cloudy day cleared up to a beautiful sunset too. Gee sounds like living in Las Vegas.

P.S. knock on wood, I got several pending....

[Irish Lager]

I tell you what Irish Lager, if you don't get your item and do get screwed, send me a Forum PM with your address and I'll send you free Leatherman Micra and another no name mini multi tool for free (hard to get a better deal than that.) Both will be in good condition, but may have a tiny bit a bad karma as they were stolen I mean liberated from potential hijackers who were wanting to board a plane here in Vegas. (you would be amazed at how much stuff is taken at the security check point here).

P.S. If you ever see a really good auction from a power seller who sells mostly condoms and lube and who says "don't flood my email with inquiries" you might be better off passing on the auction.

thanks for the help, it is good to see that this forum still has all of the good people to keep me company.
J

[The Deacon]

Well, I've bought a LOT of Spydercos via eBay auctions. Some brand new from dealers. Some from folks I recoginzed as fellow forumites before I bid. Some from folks who turned out to be fellow forumites. And some from just plain folks, with varying degrees of knowledge and interest in Spydercos and knives in general.

I can honestly say...

• I have never been screwed, in the end I have always received what I paid for.
• .
• The one and only knife that I would describe as having been misrepresented was still very much of a bargain, just not quite as fantastic a one. So, at least to my mind, it would not really be fair to cry foul.
• .
• The few cases where knives appeared to be in worse condition that the photos indicated, I had not looked closely enough at the photos (and I alway save copies of the auction pictures before it ends, so the seller cannot pull or switch them). Fact is, I was wearing the knife collector's version of beer goggles when I bid.
• .
• For every case like that, there has been at least one other where the actual condition of the knife was better than the photos had led me to expect. What had looked like scratches was merely hairs and dust, or a "stain" on a micarta handle turned out to be nothing more than a reflection. .
• .
• I have had a knife take darn near two months to arrive and a couple others take close to a month, but they all finally arrived.
• .
• Have gotten annoyed, mostly at sellers who charged high shipping, then turn around and send an item they got an excellent price for by FCM. But, in the end, the knife always arrrived.
• .
• I must admit that I got more annoyed when an eBay seller who is a fellow forumite took over a week to ship than I ever do when some guy who sells mostly baseball cards, or some gal who sellls mostly Beanie Babies, takes twice that.

I do realize that, to some degree, my experiences so far involve a degree of luck, and that I could get screwed on my very next buy. But I'm not going to worry about it. Too much good stuff out there.