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Seller sold me stolen laptop. Ebay protecting the seller. Should I sue?
This has been going for a while. At the beginning of December I bought a used Macbook off of ebay. When I received it, it had an activation lock. The seller wouldn't unlock it. The only reason would be that the laptop was stolen. I took it to the police qbd they still have it for their ongoing investigation.
In parallel, I opened a case with ebay and called them to confirm that the case would remain open for the duration of the police investigation, but they rather closed it in favor of the seller/criminal.
And now, when I try to call ebay, they won't even pick up my calls. Should I go ahead and sue them? I have already collected all documents and evidence.
Has anyone had experience with something like this? Does ebay always protect criminals? It seems they are purposely promoting illegal behavior on their platform.
fargusd
OP8 months agoAgreed. Every ebay employee with whom I spoke on the phone seemed extremely incompetent. It's probably time to abandon ebay after this whole ordeal.
Thanks for the responses!
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoFiling the police report was the best choice as they have special access to ebay for cases like this. In the mean time I would file for a refund through the payment processor and include a copy of the police report.
fargusd
OP8 months agoThanks for the response!
Let me add more information. I think my original message was too vague (I'm also on the phone with the credit card company filing a dispute now).
I filed the police report and opened a return case with ebay as soon as I received the macbook and noticed it was obviously stolen. I also immediately called ebay and they told me the case would remain open while the investigation was ongoing.
The item was not as described (activation lock + obviously heavily misused), so I am planning on returning it if the police concludes that it is stolen (since it doesn't match the description and it's unusable). For this, or even to return it if was stolen, I would have needed a return label. Ebay said the seller was going to provide one. As you can imagine, the seller stopped communicating when I mentioned to him that the laptop was in the possession of the police.
Ebay, instead, went ahead and closed the case in favor of the seller, citing that I "hadn't sent back the item", even though they knew that:
1. the item is part of an active police investigation, and
2. the seller never provided a return label.
Then I opened an appeal on the case and was asked to provide documents. I provided the letter from the police officer addressing them directly. Since then, they stopped communicating, and now all the "support" tools seems to have been disabled for my account (I cannot call or have them call me, and the automated chat just closes the conversation when I mentioned it's about that case).
This is why I mentioned that it seems that ebay is purposely protecting the criminal.
rfmtm
Mentor8 months agoSorry, but lots of ebay reps don't know what they are doing. Best now to just let the card company and police handle it.