I had a tricky problem a while back, and I was very glad that eBay has a good Customer Service Department! I listed a diamond engagement – wedding band set for a family member. (One of those relationships gone south things…) I went to a lot of trouble to photograph the ring, brought it around to local jewelry shops to get an idea of the type of diamond, size, condition, type of setting, etc. I knew going in, after my research, that the style of the cut of the diamond was out of style, and the current sales prices on eBay were low. My family member wanted me to try for a high price anyway, and so we launched the listing on eBay. To my amazement, it sold! Wow! And we got an email from PayPal saying the item had sold, and the payment had been received! Very exciting! When I saw the address to ship it I was hesitant to ship the diamond. (It was Nigeria.) I told my family member, and she said since I’d been paid, I should ship it. Something still didn’t seem right! My son (out of the mouths of babes!) suggested we look in the bank account to see if the money actually was there! So we logged onto PayPal, and no money! Big goose egg! Nada! Zip! Keine! We laughed till we cried – we’d been scammed AND Phished! I tell you that PayPal email looked GOOD!
So I logged onto ebay and went to the live chat box, and explained to them what had happened. They took it seriously right away, and transferred my chat to the ebay accounting chat line, and they looked up all the information right away. They told me that I had been a victim of fraud, and that they would transfer my chat to the securities and fraud division of eBay, which they did. When the securities and fraud division came into the chat they asked me if I was near the telephone that I had listed on my eBay application, and I said yes, that I was at home, and that was the telephone number that I had listed. They also asked me if I was on a dial up connection, as they were going to call me to verify they were really talking to me. I said no problem, give me a call, I’m on a separate computer line. They called me and verified it was me. They they cancelled the transaction, and returned the listing fee and final value fee. The only thing I was out was time, about an hour at this point.
We relisted the diamond and the same scammer thief “bought” it again! He had opened another eBay account, incrementing the number by 1. I knew right what to do (rinse and repeat…) and did it! Again scam emails saying ship the item to Nigeria, and spoof emails from “PayPal”. What a bummer. Believe it or not this happened a third time with scam emails and spoof PayPay emails, this time to ship it to Spain! Needless to say, we decided to sell the diamond ring to a local diamond wholesaler and be done with it!
Back to the eBay customer service…. excellent! They pulled me out of the fire three times! And it didn’t cost me a cent. All listing fees and final value fees were refunded immediately, and no negative feedback was incurred, because they immediately cancelled the scammer’s account. Good job eBay Customer Service!
Have you had any experience with eBay Customer Service? Good? Bad? Indifferent? What do you think? Join the conversation!
