Purchased two bulk lots, that weren't meant to be either small or overly large but somewhere in the middle, back in January from a website that professed to be American and appeared to be trustworthy (I double checked and triple checked and I was still scammed by them!) with American based stock warehouses, I even asked on their Facebook page what the shipping times would be to Australia, to which they responded that it would be 2-3 weeks at the most. The Facebook page had what appeared to be reliable positive feedback which usually indicates a trustworthy business as well. These items were meant to be birthday presents to be gifted later this month. I am in Australia, so of course had to factor in dollar conversions from AUD to USD which means that my order ended up costing me almost double the listed USD price thanks to the conversion rates at the time. The items did not arrive in 2-3 weeks that I was told, they did not even arrive in a month. My emails to find out what was happening were ignored. It was nearly 2 months from ordering to arrival and on arrival I've found that the one, tiny, parcel that arrived did not even have the products described on the listing when I purchased them inside it, and both products were damaged. I obviously immediately lodged a dispute on PayPal with the seller, who tried to claim that it was damage caused during shipping and to contact Australis Post (who will do nothing if it's an international parcel which does not have insurance) and completely ignored the fact they were the wrong items and obviously weren't sent from America. The sellers have since removed the listing from their website so there is now no proof of my statements regarding what items I purchased. After getting the run around from the seller I escalated it further with PayPal who now insist that I must return the items in new packaging WITH TRACKING - that is going to cost just as much as, if not more than, what I paid for the dodgy items that I received, and I'll still end up losing money and still not have the gifts that I'd intended to give at the end of the month. What recourse do I have now? I refuse to end up more out of pocket than I already am, and I did not pay via credit card (I paid via echeque from my regular daily bank account) so I cannot just call up my bank and get a refund that way. I'm out a decent chunk of money that I can't afford to lose (Covid has negatively affected my business for the past 12 mknths and revenue is still not far above $0 per month) with items that really should just be thrown in the bin thanks to these Chinese scammers who pretended to be a trustworthy American seller.
