It wasn't long ago that I dealt with a person who was selling DVDs on eBay that he never actually owned. I made this thread: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/view...105&highlight=

That person was taken down by the Oregon State Department of Justice and that seller account is suspended.

Now I have a whole new lunatic to deal with, and this one is actually just crazy.

Here's the whole story...

I have been looking for a Tiger R-Zone. I almost won one last weak, but I was bid-sniped at the last minute. Fortunately another one came up. Not many people are interested in these to I bid and I won.

Here is the item: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWN%3AIT&rd=1

I immediately paid as soon as I got the e-mail alert pop-up (thanks to Gmail Notifier). I paid via PayPal, and I paid as I always do, using eBay's checkout service.

So, I get a mysterious e-mail just a few minutes later:

you have sent payment to wroung email

plz send to tate_the_god@yahoo.com thank you you have 1 hour to resend payment thank you
My first thought is, "WTF?" So, I look in my PayPal account and see that the payment has already gone through. They, the sellers, are registered as starshine_inc_2004@hotmail.com.

I e-mail the seller back, being polite despite the one hour ultimatum. (Still, I kept thinking, "One hour or what?") I explain to her that the payment has been sent and even copy and paste the information in my PayPal account as proof.

The seller comes back with:

The email address is not incorrect. My husband
and i share a paypal and ebay account. the ebay
account is in my name, the paypal account is in his.
Our paypal account is verified. Thank you.

Please send payment to tate_the_god@yahoo.com

Now I am getting irritated and explain the fact of the matter, that I am not, by any means, going to pay for the item twice, and that her obligation is simply to ship the item that I won, and if she is not happy with the sale price then she can refund my money and relist it.

I get the following response back within minutes:

Sir, i was never asking you to pay twice for the
item. I didnt even know that i had a paypal account
in my name. We use my husbands account. I am sorry
for the inconvenience. It took me a while, but i
managed to get into it, and i do see that you have
paid. Your item will be shipped to you in 2-3 days.
Again I am sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for
your order!!


"Sweet," I think to myself, falsely assuming that the seller has come to her senses, this is a new eBayer after all.

So, I go out for several hours. When I return I have this waiting for me:

you owe me a 20 doller trasfer fee or you get neg feed back and no refund or item for making the mistake of sending payment to a invailed paypal account plz send 20 doller fee to tate_the_god@yahoo.com in the next hour
Oh, fuck no. I do not take threats well. I don't think that eBay takes threats well either. (What $20 fee could there possibly be? I think they just didn't get what they wanted on the item... not that they didn't bust my balls on the shipping, which is the norm on eBay lately.)

I respond:

Hello.

This is a clear violation of eBay policy.

1. You are the one who registered the wrong PayPal account.
2. You cannot threaten negative feedback or your seller account can and probably will be suspended if reported.

I am saving this e-mail. Since you actually thought it was a good idea to send it through eBay, I don't have to prove that it was you, it's part of eBay's record.

I am not paying you any fee. If you leave me negative feedback I will simply forward this e-mail to eBay and your negative will be deleted and your sellers account could be either suspended or revoked.

The last thing I got from the person was the following:

pay fee or you will not get your item iam sorry
All of this was sent through eBay's built in message service.

So, it looks like I am out the item, which sucks, because I wanted it for my collection.

I filed a dispute with PayPal, something that I've never had to do before. I hope it doesn't take too long, not like it's a lot of money.

What isn't cool is that they'll surely make good on their threat to leave a neg.

Anyone ever been in this situation before? I know that eBay should delete the neg because no one is allowed to make those kinds of threats, but will they? And how long does it take, usually?