Advice for making Paypal claims

fuzztone

Hi Guys,

I bought two guitars last week on Ebay from two different sellers, where both guitars were described as being mint.

Guitar 1 had this in its description: Excellent condition no dings, scratches or marks.

And guitar 2 had this in its description: [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] It still looks brand new - with not a mark on it.

[/FONT]I received one last Friday and the other today. Both guitars are quite scratched up and have dings, one even has a structural crack. So I opened up a dispute for both, the first seller instantly agreed to a refund however the second seller is claiming I am lying and is flat out refusing to cooperate. I have never had to do this before so I'm wondering if anyone had any tips on how to protect myself. I have already taken pictures of all the damage but is there anything else I should be doing?

memomy

Either way. You will be asked to send the items back recorded delivery to the seller ( at your expense ) in order to receive a refund. In any case were you receive an item that you deem to be not as described, be sure to always send the item with some form of track and trace so PayPal can determine that the item has indeed been returned to the seller.

fuzztone

memomy wrote: »

Either way. You will be asked to send the items back recorded delivery to the seller ( at your expense ) in order to receive a refund. In any case were you receive an item that you deem to be not as described, be sure to always send the item with some form of track and trace so PayPal can determine that the item has indeed been returned to the seller.

Cheers man. I already figured I'd be out the return postage, but that's a great point about the track and trace.

I'm just hoping Paypal don't see the whole thing as being suspicious, what with the two disputes being so incredibly similar.

memomy

No they wont. unless it was happening far too regularly to be considered unfortunate. In which case they may take a closer look. but it wouldn’t be a problem. usually in a case were an item is Seriously Not As Described such as a fake or counterfeit item or if its damaged beyond repair, PayPal will ask that you get an independent third party to put something in writing to verify that its fake or damaged etc. But in this case as you were just unhappy with the quality that shouldn’t be the case. It should ( hopefully ) be a simple case of posting it off and once you provide PayPal with the tracking showing delivery they will force the refund from the sellers account whether they like it or not

darrenw5094

I sold a PRS CE24 to a guy in Spain through eBay a couple of years ago for about a grand. The guitar was descibed as mint by me. But the buyer put a claim in with Paypal for a €50 rebate because the guitar had some light scratches on the back. I responded through the Paypal dispute and it just ran and ran untill the time had expired. I did not rebate any money to him and that was that. No more happend from eBay or Paypal, but he obviously left me negative feedback.

memomy

You probably found yourself in the lucky position whereby the buyer had only filed a dispute against you but had failed to escalate the dispute to a claim. If a buyer opens a dispute they have a time period of 20-25 days(memory isn’t what it used to be) to either resolve the issue or escalate the dispute. They obviously failed to do either and after the time frame had been reached the PayPal system had automatically closed the dispute and released the funds back to your account. The buyer then finds themselves in the unfortunate position whereby they can not reopen any claim through PayPal for the item.

fuzztone

So to follow up on this, Paypal ruled against me I called them up to see what happened and the person there told me since the guitar was advertised as 'used' some marks were to be expected. I told her while I normally would expect this on a used guitar the seller did say ' It still looks brand new - with not a mark on it.' in the ad and that this was a deciding factor for me to bid on it. Once she saw the text in the ad she agreed that it should have been returned for a refund and has escalated an appear to the senior claims adjusters (or something along those lines). Hopefully this works out


Edit: Lost the appeal Tried to open another, apparently I need documentation from an unbiased third-party, such as a dealer, repair shop, appraiser, or another individual or organisation that is qualified in the area of the item in question, which details the extent of the damage or clearly explains how the item received significantly differs from the item advertised.

Apparently despite the seller saying the guitar was unmarked and looked like new the fact he listed it as used means it doesnt matter that its got scratches and dings because it still works as a guitar