During summer I bought a 'hammock plus steel stand' from a Facebook ad in a stroke of absolute naiveness. I paid $44.03 in total - $36.04 for the item and $7.99 for 'VIP shipping' (guaranteed delivery within three days). Eleven days later, I receive... a mouldy hammock, no stand. I email the seller's customer service, they offer me a 10% discount. I reject the offer. They offer me 20%. I say I'd like them to send me the stand. Suddenly, they claim they do not actually sell stand or have ever claimed they include a stand. I had screenshots of their URL bar saying they definitely did - they changed the item description after I bought the item but the meta data remained the same.
I then googled the company, find out that dozens of people are having the same issue. They buy a hammock + stand, they receive a piece of cloth two weeks later, and they get offered 10-40% discount. I relay this information to their customer service, and they immediately offer me 40%. I then demanded a full refund.
I was told I could only get a full refund if I returned the item to them. They then said 'if we don't receive your item, you won't get a refund; it's also going to be very expensive for you to send it to us so you should accept our partial refund offer and you can keep the hammock'. By now, it was a matter of principle. I demanded a return address, booked a courier, shipped it off and escalated a claim for a full refund with PayPal, thinking my issue was sorted.
Unfortunately, three months later, I'm still **bleep**. The address they provided, didn't exist. PayPal rejected my claim because 'I did not provide correct tracking information' - I definitely did, the issue was that the seller provided an address in an industrial park where they no longer were. I contacted my courier, who said they located my parcel. They had been unable to deliver it, the seller had not 'picked it up' from the local storage depot, and so they were going to return it to me. I received it back the past week.
I have contacted PayPal twice over this. They insist my claim was denied because I did not provide the correct tracking information. I provided them with the tracking information, screenshots of my courier, screenshots of the seller providing me the address to send it to. When I received the item back, I messaged PayPal again and one of their team said he would reopen the case and escalate it (this was on Thursday). Today I received another email saying my claim was denied.
I am really trying to understand what I can do here. I know I am in the right because I have the information at hand. I have provided PayPal with it. Yet, they continue to side with a scammer/seller who has done this (documented) to -now- hundreds of people and still nothing.
Are there additional steps I can take? Grateful for any advice anyone can give me. Thanks in advance!
Best,
Jasmine
