Got my case resolved today. Do call PayPal on the phone! Just be polite and be patient and explain the situation. Tell them about this thread. Hopefully everyone will get their full refund and these shameless scammers will somehow be made responsible!
TL;DR: I called PayPal today, explained everything and told them the postage was going to be over the limit for PayPal’s return shipping cover, and way more than what the items are worth. They looked at the documents in my claim and closed the case in my favour. I will now get my money back, and I can do whatever I want with the cheap laminate boards the scammer did send.
Long story:
I ordered four of those multifunctional table board thing, like many of you here (US $59.97) late August, and got the cheap laminate boards late September. After lots of emails back-and-forth with the seller directly, I realised it was pointless and remembered I could raise a dispute/claim via PayPal. Did that on October 7, and attached all of my previous communication with the seller. (I even cited some Australian Consumer laws in my emails to the seller...in vain of course...haha).
So a few days ago, after escalating my claim, the seller agreed to a full refund but I had to send the items back. I called PayPal on Friday and made sure that I would be able to apply for PayPal’s return shipping refund (there’s no way to make the seller take responsibility though!)
Funny thing though, I got two email replies direct from the seller while this was going on, this time from the business account (szhedezhi(at)vip(dot)163(dot)com, which I got from their PayPal account info and had cc’d into my initial email). I didn’t reply. I was and I am still tempted to reply back now, in Chinese (my mother tongue—I’m from Taiwan) and tell them in their own language how they are a shame to the Chinese people, going around breaking laws, and tell them to please do better for themselves and their children😂😂😂
Today I went into the post office, and like I suspected, standard shipping with a tracking number would have cost $56.30. So I brought the package back home and called PayPal again. Waited about 30 mins on the line (must have been peak hour, or they purposely didn’t want to pick up. I only waited 3-5 minutes on Friday).
After a brief explanation of my case, the person transferred me to a “account specialist” (I think that’s what she said). Waited a bit more and got through. I told the person that I went into the post office today and learnt that the shipping cost was $56.30, which is over their refunded returns limit, and the items are worth maybe $20 max.
For some reason she needed a verbal description from me of HOW the items were different from described. So I described the item in (too much) detail, like if I had to describe it for someone to draw it on paper😂. In the end though, I said that it was a different material, different size, different colour and different number of parts. And that would’ve been enough for what she needed. Then she asked me to hold the line while she looked at the documents I had attached in my claim. After that, she said she’s closing the claim in my favour, I will receive the full refund in a few days, and I don’t have to send the items back. I also mentioned this thread again, and the many other people who have been scammed. She said that there would be a permanent record on the seller’s account, and that if they see a trend, then they might end up limiting the account, as well as ban them from using PayPal’s services in future. (So if anyone’s in the same boat and hasn’t yet escalated, please do! Let’s get this scammer banned and save a couple more people out there from getting scammed.)
Anyway, the person on the phone was polite and possibly even apologetic. I guess we are really helping PayPal by NOT sending the items back—it was going to be either me or PayPal paying for the returns, which is ridiculous and totally not worth it for anyone. It’s just a shame international scammers like this are going to keep scamming cause there’s a very low possibility of them ever getting caught and being held responsible.
Guess I will be sticking to larger, more reputable sites in future. Amazon, ebay, Alibaba (I think someone mentioned them? I’d considered buying from there before but not tried yet). It’s a real shame. Scammers like this are gonna ruin people’s trust and make life hard for the honest small businesses out there.
p.s. I also reported them to Scamwatch Victoria. Didn’t need to mention this to the PayPal person, but I’d say it’s a good thing to do if you can please spare the time. Report them to your local authorities and include the email, full business name, etc. It seems they have multiple websites that they sell/scam people from—the one I used (and reported) was Tool-mighty(dot)store. I also reported the site to Google. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the one that first saw the Facebook Ad (it was my dad) and I’m not sure how one would report them to Facebook.
I’m not sure how much all this reporting will do—but it can do something, then the more people reporting them, the better.
