**bleep**ed by Buyer, then by Paypal. Had enough.

[ciscoguy]

I had a seller with strong feedback buy a cell phone that I rebuilt and worked yet still had some problems, which I described at great length in the auction.  Right after he received it, he opened a complaint with paypal saying it was damaged in transit but he also complained about certain things which weren't really problems but indicated this guy had completely disassembled the phone (eg, a piece of tape on the rear of the LCD display - that's supposed to be a problem I should have mentioned in the auction?)

I told him that if he hadn't opened up the phone and it was damaged in transit, I would give him a refund no questions asked, but since he disassembled the phone, I have no idea what was broken in transit or what could have been inflicted by him in his efforts to work on it.  He then started lying saying he didn't open it up, and I escalated the case figuring it was a slam dunk in my favor.  About a day later I get a notice from Paypal saying they decided in his favor!!  Evidently, not only am I responsible for any damage in transit, but I'm also expected to warranty his handiwork.  Unbelievable.

So, I now have a negative $215 balance in my account, and the buyer has uploaded the tracking number for returning the damaged phone to me.  Do I have any shot of an appeal upon receipt?  If paypal is going to expect sellers to accept refunds that wouldn't be acceptable at Walmart, I am through with them as a business partner and fine with leaving my negative balance indefinitely, as I plan to never use them again.  Will they try to automatically charge my bank account or credit card to zero out the balance?  If so, I'm prepared to have them fight them on that.  If paypal can't be a neutral arbiter in dispute resolution, I'll let them deal with my banks.

[ciscoguy]

What was the value of the item you took them to court over?  This was a $225 cell phone.  I have a feeling the associated costs with that would be close to or exceed that which I hoped to collect.

I just appealed again.  I'm pretty much going to do this over and over until they stop me or decide in my favor.  If they're going to scroo me, I'm going to make them at least review my case over and over and over again.

[SpawnedGSX]

I brought them to small claims court fora $55.00 laptop monitor, it costmeabout $55.00 to file, but you are allowed to put the court costs in the claim. I won and Paypal had to pay me $110.00~ give or take some coins.

When you do it, the people over at Paypal will try to scare you into thinking you don't have this right. Don't listen to tem, they are not the law, their terms of service cannot protect them from breaking the law and ripping you off. As soon as they **bleep** me over with my radio claim that this guy admitted to "testing" instead of installing, I will drop off this claim and court costs at my courthouse down the street and sue them for that too,

[ciscoguy]

Interesting.  So did they actually show up to court and you went to trial and everything?  They didn't just cut you a check beforehand and call it settled?

[ciscoguy]

Did you ever think about suing the buyer himself?  I'd prefer it to come out of his hide.  This guy seems to bouce between CA and Austrailia, however, so even if it's across state lines, I'm not even sure he's a US citizen.

[ciscoguy]

Go sue them.  I'm filing my suit tomorrow.  Go to howtosuepaypal dtc0m - there are a lot of resources there.  I followed step 1 so far and sent an executive email blast to all of the email addresses they had listed - about 5 of them bounced, but the rest went through.

I got a response from Chris at Executive Escalations.  He basically told me everything I heard before (risks of doing business, yadda, yadda, yadda), and then gave me a follow-up call while I was typing up a reply.  I told him I was not going to be a victim of their unwillingness to stop buyers from defrauding their sellers.  I said I am filing a suit tomorrow unless he was willing to settle over the phone.  He tried to want to try to talk me out of it but seemed to indicate there was nothing he could do on the matter.  If you talk to him, tell him Richard Carter sent you, and hey can expect many more suits like yours until they start protecting honest sellers.

Other than that, your only option is to include insurance on everything sold of any appreciable value.  Of course, that means your items will sell for less, costing you more and will also necessitate you defrauding the shipper's insurance if you happen to know any problems were the result of the buyer's malfeasance.

It's hard for me to believe this is a USA-based business.  It feels like something run out of Nigeria.  Keep fighting and good luck.