let's roll the ebay roulette!

[6837ff9b689f1icemann]

Hope you paid with Paypal. Otherwise that moneys gone.

[6837ff9b68b9cvoodoo47]

yeah - for the time being, my success rate of getting money back from scammers is 100%. that's why I'm so surprised they are even trying it in the first place.

[6837ff9b68ce1icemann]

Paypal take a no nonsense approach, which is sorely lacking from most payment options. So if you send a refund request through, they'll take it back whether the person has the cash ready or not.

The negative side is that say you bought something off ebay via a different payment option. Even if ebay knows the Paypal of the person, they wont get your money back that way, if you didn't pay that way. I'm pretty sure I spoke about the time I ran into that situation a page ago or so.

[6837ff9b68df3voodoo47]

yep, the fees are steep (ever tried transferring funds from your paypal account to your bank account? yuck), but they do help you out if you need to hammer a scammer.

the fake X12 guy actually speaks decent english, I think he is going to attempt to wriggle out of this by trying to convince me that the fake is the actual product I was buying - not gonna work, obviously.

[6837ff9b68ef4icemann]

When that happens, you bypass the person and only deal with ebay directly. That's what I do. Did that with the spider guy.

And I can't speak for outside of Australia, but here you don't get charged anything when you transfer cash to or from your Paypal account.

[6837ff9b69017voodoo47]

yeah, this isn't my first rodeo - basically, the easiest thing to do is to request a return, and the seller has a couple of days to reply and solve the issue, if that doesn't happen, you can escalate it to ebay, they will have a look and as long as your complaint is valid, issue a full refund fairly quickly (was less than 24hrs with the ball bearings guy).

things really work nicely in this area, as mentioned, got all the money back from scammers so far.

[6837ff9b6915cvoodoo47]

got a partial refund, and sold the device cheaply to get back the rest (even getting a few extra bucks in the process). and ordered another X12, hopefully they'll get it right this time.


also, a nice video demonstrating that devious fake usb drive firmware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG-Joa3e5Tk

[6837ff9b6925dvoodoo47]

grabbed a five buck ebay win10 license just for fun, lets see how this will roll.

[6837ff9b693e2voodoo47]

and it activated properly. tried a similarly priced office365 licence, and that also worked without a hitch.

so it looks like five-buck ms products from ebay are a real thing - if you don't mind funneling pocket money to some person that probably got it by doing some grey area stuff, and has nothing to do with ms. I personally don't mind, ms is nowhere near bankruptcy, and the prices of their retail sw are atrocious around here.

I'll be waiting with giving feedback until the very last day though, for obvious reasons.

[6837ff9b69783Olfred]

Well, the thing is with these kind of licences. They usually come from some country where the prices are compareable low. But license wise you are only allowed to use them in that country. So it can happen that at some point Microsoft just deactivates it because it was used for too long outside of that country. But for some reason that doesn't happen that frequently. Only had it once with some 12€ Windows 10 Pro key, but that's about it.

[6837ff9b698c8voodoo47]

my experience is that they tend to lean to just (re)activate, should they receive an angry call from a customer that paid for the software in some way. remember, they prefer an user with shady windows vs one with fully legal linux.

I suppose we'll know for sure sooner or later.

[6837ff9b699bfOlfred]

Yeah, but calling them is such a big hassle that I just didn't care about it and just used another cheap one I had laying around.
And yeah, they prefer any license over Linux, that's right.

[6837ff9b69a9dvoodoo47]

I kind of enjoy not being on the receiving end of the support line (shit-shute) for a change.

[6837ff9b69bb8voodoo47]

urgh, never-ever send out items to Asia without tracking - you really, really need some hard evidence you can stick to the buyer's face in case they start to do stupid crap like picking the item, claiming it got lost, then grabbing the refund, AND giving you a negative feedback (managed to reduce it to neutral after a dispute). at least now I know that resolving a buyer claim doesn't mean you are protected against bad feedback.

duh.

[6837ff9b69ccaicemann]

Was wondering why this thread got locked for a few hours.

Anyways. Paypal last week introduced a new rule, that they wont give back the fees already taken on payments to you, even when you've been forced to refund someone. That's just stupid. For large sellers this is really going to bite into their bottom line.

[6837ff9b69dfavoodoo47]

no idea about that lock.

yeah, I'm aware that ebay sellers are drawing the shortest straw there, with all the bloody paypal fees and shady things the buyers can pull and get way with (if you can't prove the item has been delivered, and the buyer starts to complain, you are better off just fully refunding straight away and asking for no feedback, as I have learned). fortunately, I don't sell things too often there (99% of the junk I sell can be sold locally with much less trouble), but I can imagine how frustrating this can get for power sellers.

[6837ff9b69ed1icemann]

I fight it every inch. But I'm a stubborn one.

[6837ff9b6a02dKolya]

This topic was caught by automatic locking, which locks topics some time after the last post was made to prevent edit-spam. Then voodoo replied, not noticing it was locked (because mod goggles). Then I saw his reply and unlocked the topic again.

[6837ff9b6a131voodoo47]

does anyone have an idea whether buying in bulk discounts apply when accepting an ebay offer? basically, buying 4 items for $7.55 will apply a discount, bringing the total down to $26. the seller made me an offer, $7.25 per item, meaning the cost for 4 items will be $29 if no discount is applied. roll the roulette again?

[6837ff9b6a229icemann]

Only applies if the seller has discounts in place for multiple purchases. All they have to do is tick a box and select the discount per amount.

[6837ff9b6a301voodoo47]

not sure whether that's a yes.

[6837ff9b6a3daicemann]

It's a 95% no, 5% chance of a yes.

All depends on the seller.

[6837ff9b6a4a8voodoo47]

not going to risk it then - thanks.

[6837ff9b6a5bcvoodoo47]

not quite ebay related, but it's paypal, so close enough - reserved a parking space for a trip, but had to cancel the entire thing, and it turns out the parking reservation is the only service crappy enough to not have any refund policy. so I'm thinking I'll just try to get the transfer reversed via paypal.

if someone has any experience with something like that, I'm all ears..