And now for something different - being screwed by a buyer

[plexus]

In this case I wanted to help a new laser enthusiast out. He seemed to know his stuff and I wanted to find a good home the lasers I built. He bought one in the same manner of shipping as the second disputed one. He paid promptly and I shipped. He got it and was satisfied. Later he said his friend wanted the last remaining one. So he pped me again and asked to ship to his friend. I outlined before hand that I can not take any responsibility at all what so ever once I put them in the mail. I offered 1 or 2 box split, with or without tracking and/or insurance. Like the first shipment he wanted 2 boxes, no tracking or insurance. I reiterated the risk is all his and he agreed. Now he's opened a pp dispute. Nothing I can do about it. He says in the pp dispute thread that he knows he won't get financial compensation and that he felt the pp dispute process was a better way to discuss the issue. I really I said I would help but I can't. There is nothing I or Canada Post can do. I have not had one get lost. But another package I shipped at the same time to the US also hasn't arrived. But that doesn't help this dishonourable buyer holding my pp account hostage over a dispute he agreed shouldn't have happened.

 

[plexus]

OK this issue seems now to be sorted out. I just left the dispute open because there was nothing else for me to do. because of the shipping I used (canada post small packet air) there is no tracking or insurance and nothing canada post can do. I deposited enough back into my paypal account to clear the negative balance caused by the dispute purchase cost being withheld, so I could use paypal for other things. I resigned myself to losing the $310US, unfortunately.

Today paypal notified me that the dispute was closed and the $310 was moved back into my account. there was no email from the buyer. either he came to his senses (not likely) or the laser showed up (more likely).

Unfortunately I was being nice to the guy and the first one he bought went fine so why wouldn't the second unless he was scamming me, which I didn't think would be likely. I dont think he was trying to scam me, however if the dispute when to claim and lost the money, I would never really know. I guess I am happy that wasn't the case. However, my lesson from this is "do not be nice". ship things out in the manner in which is needed to protect one self. with paypal that means with tracking and insurance. if that means the buyer has to pay more, too bad.

 

[grainde]

It actually sounds like your buyer cancelled the dispute, as PP didnt actually side with you and you didnt win the case. I mean how could you without any proof? Rather than being negative and continuing to tell us how dishonest this buyer was, perhaps you should admit you were wrong be grateful that they were in fact honest and not out to scam you. :tsk:

Anyway I agree that you shouldnt send items without tracking if you dont know the buyer well.:beer:

 

[plexus]

It actually sounds like your buyer cancelled the dispute, as PP didnt actually side with you and you didnt win the case. I mean how could you without any proof? Rather than being negative and continuing to tell us how dishonest this buyer was, perhaps you should admit you were wrong be grateful that they were in fact honest and not out to scam you. :tsk:

Anyway I agree that you shouldnt send items without tracking if you dont know the buyer well.:beer:

It's very disappointing when you make an agreement with someone, they break the agreement and other people then claim I was the one that was wrong. In the context of paypal's policies, I was wrong. But sending a laser under any conditions would be wrong so there would be no right way to send a laser paid for by paypal. I think, and common law dictates, that if you make an agreement with someone and they break the terms of that agreement that they are in fact wrong. However, on here, I guess I can be deemed the one that is wrong. Such is the topsy turvy world of dealing with people.

However, I reject your assertion that I was wrong. I did a good thing by helping the buyer out with the transaction. By informing them of the risks and offering to mitigate those risks as long as they accepted all risks moving forward. Yes it was in their right to file a PP dispute because I accepted a regular PP payment. In the future I won't of course, but in this case the dispute should never have been opened by the buyer based on his agreement to me. If we didn't have that agreement then sure I would have to accept the risks. That was not the case.

And you are right, in the future any sales I make on here will be gift only PP, full tracking and insurance. because lets face it, again, selling a laser through PP is against their T&C's and so in order to be fully protected as the seller, you should only accept gift payments.

One bad apple...

 

[grainde]

But he wasnt a "bad apple"... In dropping the case he proved that he was infact honest, as he could have simlpy said he never received it. The case would not have been closed and you would have more than likely lost your money as you had no proof what so ever that it had been sent. If he were a bad apple, as you suggest, he would now have a nice laser and your money.

In the past I have also opened disputes as a matter of course, as the 45 day deadline drew near. This was just to protect myself should the item have never been shipped. In all cases where the item was received, the case was simply dropped. So it sounds like he was just protecting himself against non delivery. Dont forget he doesnt know you from Adam either and just because you sent him a laser the first time round it doesnt mean you were going to send one the next.

Frankly if he was that worried, it would have been wiser on his part to spend that little extra on shipping and have the item sent via registered mail.

Anyway no harm done the deal went through and you sold all your lasers. :beer:

Edit: You should perhaps change the thread title too. You werent actually screwed over...

 

[Thejoker301]

Hi ,

I am selling lasers here for a long time now.

And I have seen it all. Buyers opens a dispute after receiving a laser etc ...

Basically you did all the wrong things that can be done. I always send all packages with tracking , it is sometimes more expensive but it does not worth the risk to send it without it.

Sending it to another address ... I would suggest that next time you will refund the buyer and make him pay again with a new address. That's what I do.

I can tell you that it happened to me a lot. And sometimes I ate it. I sent new lasers to many customers ( and in many cases I was not sure the laser was broken as they said it was ).

Also the whole "laser" thing with PayPal makes it harder. But I never write that word on PayPal invoices.

At this point this is what I recommend to do :

* Take screenshot of emails showing he wanted it to be shipped to another address without insurance tracking etc ... If you got emails without the "laser" word in it , it will be the best idea. Upload these pictures and attach them to the PayPal dispute.

* Write in your own words what happend. And make sure PayPal understand that the buyer take advantage of the PayPal disputes system.

I just always make sure to contact PayPal by emails and by Phone sometimes. If you use PayPal a lot like me .. they usually will refund you eventually as you worth more to them than the buyer. You make them more money than him ...

I know it sounds like a conspiracy ... but I never lost a case in PayPal after writing these words. And I always tell them that exact words. That if they will refund the buyer and will steal money from me ... I will stop using their services. For some reason it works.

I hope you will solve this soon. I know this bad feeling of being cheated by someone ...

Do not take it too hard. I know $300 is a lot ... But life goes on. I learned the hard way. Lost a few $$ in the way ... but we got to go on.

Continue to build lasers ! They looked awesome. Hopefully your money will be back to you soon enough :beer:

 

[plexus]

@thejoker Yes, I agree with you. I did it all wrong. I put trust in this guy and he reneged on our agreement. Your guidelines make a lot of sense and after this experience I 100% agree with you. For future sales I will handle this much differently and not extend any trust to the buyer. If the terms of this are not suitable for a given buyer, then oh well. I will follow your guidelines from now on, thanks for that!

@grainde I still feel like I was screwed: the buyer agreed to accept all risks including non-delivery. So no dispute should have been opened by them. that screwed me because I had to deal with my PP account being unusable because of the dispute. Even though they closed the dispute, as I said, it shouldn't have happened and it caused me time, money and stress. So I feel no need to change the subject title.

 

[Marco Polo]

Maybe the package was lost in the mail for 3 weeks. It can happen. You have no proof that the buyer tried to screw you - all you have are assumptions. Read that again. You are assuming that the buyer acted in bad faith when you have no objective evidence to prove it.

Glancing over your posts here, you made no indication that either of you tried to discuss the issue or otherwise communicate anything at all. Did the buyer contact you about the delayed shipping? If so, what did they say about it? What was your reply?

If neither of you tried to communicate, then that was a mistake. It doesn't prove ill intent on either of your parts. It does suggest negligence on both your parts.

Look at it from the buyer's point of view. The buyer forked out 300 dollars and three weeks later still hadn't received their laser. The buyer probably assumed (there's that word again) that the laser was not going to arrive, and based on that assumption, the buyer opened a dispute. Opening a dispute might have been an overreaction that could have been avoided by communicating, but it doesn't demonstrate ill intent.

It looks like both of you messed up. You should change the thread title because a) you have no proof that the buyer acted in bad faith, and b) you do have evidence to the contrary, i.e. the buyer closing the dispute without a ruling from Paypal.

That is what I'm interpreting here, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Marco Polo]

granted I shipped it a little later than I planned to because of a mix up on my end, but it went out 2 weeks after he paid. I shipped to the address he provided.

The packages have been in the mail for 3 weeks now, which is not really enough time to conclude they are lost. However, the buyer opened a paypal dispute.

You deceitful little shit. Did anybody else catch the above in his gigantic wall of blaming all of this on his customer and glossing over the fact that PLEXUS caused the whole fuck-up by not mailing the laser promptly like he was supposed to?

Let me get this straight. You took his 300 dollars, but couldn't be arsed to mail the laser for two weeks. The laser has been in the mail for three weeks, which means your customer has been waiting five weeks, i.e. more than a month. The 40-day dispute deadline was coming up and your customer had waited 35. You do the math.

What makes it worse is that instead of coming clean and apologizing to your customer, you instead come here and write us multiple dishonest, manipulative, sympathy-fishing posts in which you go to considerable length to play the victim and paint your customer as a complete lying scumbag when in fact the customer did nothing wrong.

Later he said his friend wanted the last remaining one. So he pped me again and asked to ship to his friend. I outlined before hand that I can not take any responsibility at all what so ever once I put them in the mail. I offered 1 or 2 box split, with or without tracking and/or insurance. Like the first shipment he wanted 2 boxes, no tracking or insurance. I reiterated the risk is all his and he agreed. Now he's opened a pp dispute.

Notice how he re-hashes the transaction but completely omits the fact that he failed to ship the laser for two weeks. But he sure does pile on the manipulative double-talk and pleas for sympathy, doesn't he?

Unfortunately I was being nice to the guy and the first one he bought went fine so why wouldn't the second unless he was scamming me, which I didn't think would be likely

You made your customer wait TWO EXTRA WEEKS because you couldn't be bothered to mail out the laser ASAP after taking his 300 dollars; you call that being NICE? What kind of bath salts are you snorting? On what planet do you think it's OK to provide such ROTTEN customer service, and then shit-talk your customer in an attempt to cover it up?

Your customer was not scamming you in the slightest, it is QUITE the other way around because you have been dishonest from the start. You have no grounds to be anything but GRATEFUL that your customer, having received his laser, dropped the dispute and refused to cheat you of the 300 dollars which he agreed to pay.

For future sales I will handle this much differently and not extend any trust to the buyer.

Handle it differently by not conducting any sales at all. The whole mess never would have happened if you had just shipped promptly. You lied, and lied, and lied to cover it up. You impugned your customer's integrity and manipulated us to believe that you were the victim when the TRUTH is the exact opposite. You have shown NO remorse whatsoever. Nobody in their right mind should EVER do business with you after what you tried to pull here.

And as for your arguments about the "agreement" you can cram those up your ass, because your right to expect adherence to it went out the window the moment you decided that shipping promptly wasn't worth your time, and that defaming your customer to cover your ass was fair game.

I think Plexus needs to be banned. The whole situation would never have happened if he had shipped promptly. It could have been avoided and all he needed to do was be honest. He wasn't. The cold calculation and amount of effort he put into trashing his customer, covering up his own mistakes, and emotionally manipulating us is disturbing. He wrote hundreds of lines, eloquently worded, to do those things. He wrote barely two lines about FAILING TO SHIP FOR TWO WEEKS, and those were deliberately worded briefly to gloss over it. His customer was honest and dropped the dispute and plexus has NO appreciation of that whatsoever. That's not negligence, that is malicious intent, without any shadow of a doubt.

Plexus' actions demonstrate such contemptible disregard for common courtesy and fair dealing that he absolutely cannot be trusted to never do it again. People like that don't belong on LPF. Please show this trash to the curb.

 

[grainde]

^^Ok a little harsher than I was, but pretty much to the point. As I mentioned he refunded your money once he received the laser, ergo not a scammer.

If you had simply shown some humility and gratitude toward your buyer (for actually being an honest person) and admitting you were wrong, instead of attacking them for your own failings, you wouldnt be getting slated now. :tsk:

Once again please change the thread title, you were not scammed!

Edit: I rarely give these, but -1 from me.

 

[Frankie9011]

In the future, don't request payment until the item is ready to be shipped. That 45 day dispute goes by fast when we're considering 2-4 week shipping times, and as a buyer there's practically no reason to not open a dispute before that period ends if the purchased item hasn't arrived. Other posters have pretty much hit every point that I could make, but I hope you learn from this experience and take it in stride.

 

[plexus]

The buyer knew I was not going to ship immediately and we remained in contact during the tim between payment and shipment. I omitted these details from this thread as it felt it was too much detail not relevant to the point that the buyer agreed to accept all risks and reneged on that. In retrospect I could have mentioned this here to avoid the kind of abusive post marco polo posted. Hindsight is 20/20.

Bottom line: all risks were accepted by the buyer. no dispute should have been opened. in the end the laser was delivered as promised. buyed said he really liked the laser. dispute was closed.

All your advice here has been valuable thank you.

 

[LaserBeams]

Hey man, sorry to hear about that.

This is a tough one, he maybe trying to scam you... But you have no proof of delivery without a tracking number.

You don't have a leg to stand on, not without some kind of tracking number to prove the item was delivered - Paypal favors the buyer, it's down to you to make sure the item gets to your buyer...

You really should of used a shipping service with tracking to save false claims via Paypal etc.


Do you have the receipt from shipment? that may help but I cant see it.

EDIT: I should of read the outcome before posting. ^