scammed by chinese seller and paypal about a 3d printer

[nolife1123]

I have bought a 3d printer off of Sovol.com shipped from Germany, paid with Paypal, and it arrived on in late December. I had one before it from the same brand, but bought it over Amazon, had to return it because it malfunctioned.

The printer felt off from the start, but I kept trying to calibrate it and realized the motherboard and extruder feel broken. Contacted the seller and after 10 emails they confirmed it's broken and asked to send me new parts from China. I refused and asked to return it instead since this is a 2nd printer that broke from that brand. We began communicating on January 8th, I missed the 14 day return window by 2 days, but printer is broken and under warranty anyway.

I have opened a dispute on Paypal since they ignored me when I asked to return it three times. Paypal dispute has been open for 3 weeks now, and they replied today. They agree that the printer I received is "Significantly not as described" and they agreed to a return.

But this is where absurdity starts, even though printer is under warranty, died within the first 2 weeks, even though I'm right, Paypal demands that I pay return shipping. On a broken item...

And not only do they want me to pay for return shipping, they want me to pay for return shipping to China, on a 60x60x30cm package weighing 20kg. They want me to pay 130 euros in shipping on a 259 euro item. I have tried contacting support, but the support staff that handled my case was extremely incompetent, did not read a word I said and just replied with generic copy pasted responses. I have even tried asking them to talk to their superiors, but they completely ignored that request and denied me.

This is completely unacceptable, and a complete scam. Why in the world would I need to return a product to China instead of Germany where I bought it from. Why in the world do I need to pay shipping myself on an item that arrived broken out of the box?

And not to mention their complaints page, it just leads back to the "help" page instead of what it's supposed to lead to.

Is there anything else that I can do in this case? it really feels like I'm being robbed.

[kernowlass]

@nolife1123 

Separate issues here.

Firstly warranties are worthless if you are buying internationally as you would not be able to enforce them.

Even if you bought within your own country what Paypal buyer protection offers you and what your warranty offers you are 2 separate issues.

1.  Paypal buyer protection.

In the event of a dispute you choose your seller and not Paypal so you need to bear in mind possible return trackable costs before you go ahead and buy from that seller / country.

Paypal state this >>
IMPORTANT: You may be required to return the item to the seller or other party we specify as part of the settlement of your claim. PayPal Buyer Protection does not entitle you to reimbursement for the return shipping costs that you may incur.

2. Warranty.

If the seller was in your own country then you could request that they provide return shipping on return of the goods and if they don't then you could take them to the small claims court, however you can't do that with an international seller.

As for the return of the item, a lot of companies have 'despatch' depots all over the world but their return depot is in one specific country like China. This is especially so if you buy from some of these China website merchants selling mostly tat on Social Media.

These sites often do not post return addresses on their websites / have no contact phone number  etc.

[nolife1123]

Can they even sell on EU grounds from EU warehouses without being registered as a company in Europe? If so, doesn't standard EU warranty law apply to them?

And besides, on their own website, on the refund part (https://www.sovol3d.com/pages/return-refund) they state that they cover shipping costs for items that are not correct or have issues.