How often does a buy try to rip you off?

[justisinna]

I'm just wondeing from sellers with experience selling electronics, how often does someone try to rip you off? Just wondering as I have been pulling apart laptops and marking the Part numbers and it gets to be time consuming sometimes and if sometimes only flipping some to make $30 not sure if its worth it if it's rare for someone to try and rip me off.

Have you had someone try it to you? Multiple times? Should I be doing it for everything on the laptop?

[Anonymous]

I now only sell industrial electronics which serve a different class of buyers than consumer electronics do but have sold both types in the past when I owned a computer repair shop just a few miles south of you.

To be honest I didn't give consumer electronics sales on eBay much of a chance as I decided it was more fun to burn or shoot the items rather than pay return shipping for a swapped old broken component or a rock, once I sold a $200 motherboard and had to pay the buyer to return a brick to me. I had another return a 20-year-old video card for a brand new sealed one.

No matter how many times a so-called expert tells you to videotape your item being packaged or to secretly mark the items in ultraviolet ink will eBay take your side in an "Item Not Described" dispute, the default judgement will always go to the buyer even if they return a rock or a box of wind, the truth is once a buyer returns anything and the tracking number shows it was delivered back to you eBay will refund them from your account automatically without any say so from you.

Now I may have been soured by a few bad buyers and many millions have sold computers without problems but I just decided I didn't want to hold up all my money for six months in case of a PayPay dispute - Yes if you don't already know this; anybody who uses PayPal to buy your items has up to six months no questions asked to return it to you for a full refund.

Don't get me wrong not all sellers will lose an eBay dispute, I do remember 3 cases in the last 10 years who by filling police reports, mail fraud reports, did private investigations, and invoked the counsel of the high-value scam team did get their sellers fees returned, sometimes even the money was recovered.

[omgitlightsup]

Suppose you sold a laptop, a buyer complained it didn't work, and when you refunded and got it back you discovered it had dead SIMMs in it. 

If you read around on the forums here, you have no recourse in that situation. eBay will never side with you if you accuse a buyer of tampering with your item. I used to do the same thing, but I don't anymore. Unless you plan on filing fraud charges with the USPS and pursuing a small claim in the buyer's town, you are probably wasting your time.

In the few cases where sellers have described this happening, it's always (to my knowledge) worked out in the buyer's favor, thanks to eBay's "protection." Even if you have a bunch of photographs of the item before and after; according to eBay, you only have a bunch of photos that could be of anything. The buyer's claim that the item doesn't match the photograph is the only one eBay cares about.

I've never had a buyer return something other than what I sold them. But I have had plenty of buyers extort a few extra bucks out of me, citing imperfections that simply weren't there when I shipped the item. You have to decide whether you want to call their bluff and issue a full refund, which means you'll have to eat the cost of shipping.

[premium-audio-tubes]

Hi
I am going through this right now.I was actually told by a seller that he would get his friends to file claims and sure enough he has.The worst thing is as mentioned.Eba y takes the buyers word verbatim.What am I?I find it hilarious that one guy stated that he received only 9 tubes.Yeah ok buddy i can count to ten.,So the next buyer starts off with that.I say really,send me a picture.He replies he cannot do that ebay is stopping him and i send him a photo immediately.Then he says well ten tubes would not fit in the box.Well how do you calculate that because all the boxes that the tubes came in varied in size so you cannot say ten wont fit.So anyway i figured what he would do what he did.He sent me a picture of what is utter GARBAGE!!I would never sell or give anything like he displayed as my item .To boot he filed on Xmas day.Now I realize as the one who threatened me sent a message saying do you understand now?Ebay had told me they had placed these users on my blocked buyer list then i took a look no they had not.So one more thing what is the use of a return policy if it makes no difference?