I've been told I don't know how many times that this CANNOT HAPPEN.  It is impossible.  eBay is an Internet-based company and doesn't own any phones.  Go away and send us an email to which we will send a canned, inappropriate and untimely response.

But as we know, I am TENACIOUS.

I dug DEEP.

I found a presentation entitled "Introduction to Trust and Safety" that had the presenter's name and email address on it and [gasp] I wrote to her to complain about, well, EVERYTHING Trust and Safety has  and hasn't been doing right.

Want to read it?  Sure you do!

Dear Ms. Talgo

I have just finished reviewing your subject presentation and I must inform you that your Trust and Safety Department is failing utterly to live up to the standards you intend.

Specifically, as required by Slide #4, they have not:

• Focused on enabling a terrific trading platform
  • Do the right thing for buyers
  • Help sellers do the right thing for buyers

In my personal experience, this Department has failed to achieve the goals set forth on Slide #5, especially:

• Improve the overall customer experience
  
• For buyers, this means we are enhancing eBay as a place to get great value and selection from sellers they can trust

My recent (and not fully resolved) experience revolves around Slide #20's list of "Live Wire" Policies, specifically:

• Any type of fraud

The Trust and Safety Department has repeatedly responded to my reports of fraud, persecution, defamation and abuse of eBay policies and procedures by a specific user with impersonal, pre-prepared, non-responsive and inappropriate replies.

If you are curious, and I hope you would be, to know more about this situation, I urge you to investigate the circumstances surrounding the sale of defective item 220262628059, my PayPal dispute/claim and reversal of charges for "item not as described" granted on my behalf, and the subsequent opening of an eBay dispute by Seller ID "itsyoda" under the Unpaid Item Dispute process claiming payment for the item had never been received.

With absolutely no help to be had from ANY department within eBay Customer Support, I located on my own from within the eBay Help Topics section the following:

Unpaid Item Abuse

eBay policy does not permit members to abuse the Unpaid Item process. Sellers may not file for a Final Value Fee credit on a transaction where the buyer paid for the item.

If a seller filed for a credit on a transaction that was completed, please contact us so we can investigate the situation.

Sellers who falsely report Unpaid Items may be subject to a range of actions, including:

• • Reversal of all credits for the time period in question
  • Loss of the right to use the Final Value Fee Credit system for a period of time
  • Account suspension
  • Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
  • Loss of PowerSeller status

This tidbit of information finally moved the seller to request the dispute be closed, but under false pretenses (i.e., to state the parties agreed to close the dispute based on mutual agreement and that the seller should be awarded a FVF credit, amongst other untruths).  I opted to tell the truth, having never received any or engaged in any communication/discussion with the seller and not being in agreement that I had never paid for the item, and the fraudulent dispute was closed without an Unpaid Item Strike or FVF being issued.  However, this did not negate the fact that a false/fraudulent dispute had been initiated, although eBay Customer Services seemed to be satisfied that the outcome let them off the hook!

Only one person within eBay Trust and Safety ever provided an adequate response and removed one of the seller's slanderous feedback comments (a comment that she subsequently also left as a reply to my factual feedback comment and which I have yet to have removed).  Every other person FAILED to provide either a reasonable response or take appropriate action.

This has not, as they insisted, simply (so sorry) "inconvenient" for me.  It was negligence and incompetence of the highest magnitude.  I have, of course, retained all correspondence for review upon request.

I trust that you will give this matter the attention that it merits and turn it over to a managerial level that has the authority to investigate the user and take the parties who failed so miserably to task so that both eBay 2007 Annual Report and your excellent presentation can begin to reflect reality.

As Ms. Talgo's representative, Mr. Roberts is going to (1) remove the defamatory "reply" the POS made to my completely honest feedback comment and (2) ensure that the POS is investigated for her false dispute under the Unpaid Item process.  Yippee!

It only goes to show that Customer Support should be number one with every business, whether they're an ignorant woman selling polymer clay supplies on eBay or a mega-conglomerate like eBay itself (are you aware that Ebay also owns PayPal and Skype?).

Am I good or what?  If my rotator cuff wasn't still bothering me, I'd be clapping myself on the back.

It wasn't until the POS found out that her account could be suspended for filing a false Unpaid Item Dispute that she hastily tried to get me to agree to close the dispute on the basis that we were in mutual agreement that the dispute had been amicably settled and that, oh yes, she should get a Final Value Fee credit (i.e., eBay should give her back the percentage they took of the sale she made to me of the defective item).  There were only two choices; I chose (of course) the other one.

I might have played it the way she wanted if she had contacted me and, oh say, apologized for all the aggravation, defamation and frustration she had caused me, or maybe even just admitted that she should have handled the matter differently from the very beginning, but she didn't and now she will have to face some very discordant music.

My inner Contracting Officer is doing Olympic tumbling, flips, jumps, leaps, and pirouettes!  I may take the gold yet.

But you know the New Jursey POS didn't stop with putting her slanderous comment in just one place...oh, no, this woman is not that smart.  She put it as a reply to my totally honest feedback comment, too.  So, back to Customer Support went I to report her idiotic slander once again.  Look for exciting Slander Smack Down Two!

[gallery]

If she wasn't so damn stupid, I might feel sorry for her.  Not.  She's a nasty, illiterate shit of a cunt* and I'm just the woman to clean her up.  Kat, tell us how you really feel.  I know, I've never used profanity before, but I've had it with this sorry excuse for what passes as human excrement and I'm now determined that, should she ever see the light of day, it will be when she is totally blind.  Believe it or not, it's not the witch in me who's pissed, it's my inner Contracting Officer who can't stand this woman's behavior.  The position of being a warranted Contracting Officer for the Federal Government requires integrity, ethics, morals and trustworthiness above and beyond what is expected of any other civil servant because we are the individuals who are reaching into the public's pocket and dealing out the money.  We hold the public's trust and are held to a higher standard of behavior -- and I always did and always will take my responsibilities seriously.  I will let no one get away with SLANDERING my reputation.  I worked long and hard to earn my reputation for excellence and no no-name bitch from New Jersey who can't spell or compose a cohesive sentence in the English language is going to get away with it.  If that comment is not removed, I will SUE her ass.  That's how I feel about it.

*A written statement that I can support and prove in court and, as such, is not slander!

I have won!  Sorta.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to send the piece of crap back cheaper than  she charged to send it to me so I come out a tad more ahead than she does and I'll be quite satisfied.  She charged $10.00 and I can send back it for $9.30.  Oh boy, I made 70 cents.  I have to say, it's been worth every damn penny to have her admit she was wrong -- to have her admit DEFEAT!  [insert GT281 evil laugh here]

I need some input on a situation that is occurring to me personally.

I purchased a Polymer Clay Press (i.e., a pasta maker dedicated to rolling out polymer clay) on eBay and it arrived on August 5th.  The item was advertised as new, but the rollers were so rusty that the machine is useless for the purpose of rolling polymer clay (or pasta for that matter).  As anyone would do upon receiving a defective product, I contacted the seller to discuss the situation and emails flew back and forth with the seller simply restating that she would never have shipped something that would make her customers unhappy (never mind that I was UNHAPPY or that she never actually addressed my comments, questions or concerns, just side-stepped everything and gave me the broken record routine - a good ploy when you have a bad hand and you want to stall somebody, by the way).

After the 12th email, I finally took 22 (!) photographs documenting the rusted conditions in excrutiating detail and emailed them to the seller.   Her reply finally, actually (!) acknowledged everything I'd claimed about the condition of the machine to be correct, then continued to claim that the machine in the pictures was NOT the machine she had mailed me, but some other machine that I had conveniently substituted (she said what? I almost poked my eyes out and I'm sure the noises coming from my throat traumatized my dogs for life).  She actually accused ME of malfeasance rather than admit she was responsible and reimburse me the measly amount to which I was entitled!  I have to say here people, WTF?

Of course, I started the dispute process, but Dear Readers, tell me how do YOU respond to crazy, criminally-minded assholes like this?

It would NEVER occur to me to devise such a bait-and-switch plan; I don't have the deviousness of mind to think up ways to rip off other people.  Apparently she does, but apparently she's pretty stupid, too, because she claimed in the dispute process that she had pictures of the item in question showing it to be in perfect condition.  When I asked her to send the pictures, her response was to "look the ad" (yeah, she's a Harvard graduate, top of her class).  Of course, the picture she used in her eBay ad was a stock photo that is used on hundreds of websites across the Internet and it took me seconds to find one and send in the URL, noting that the stock photo had NO value as evidence of the condition of the item while it was in her possession.  So far she hasn't offered any explanation (gee, could that be because she doesn't have one, just like she doesn't have a legal leg to stand on either?).

I've never had a bad experience on eBay, but this is ticking me off, (1) because the eBay system is allowing her to jerk me around since buyers can no longer give sellers negative ratings (and thus there are no consequences to behavior like what is going on here) and (2) because she accused me of being a cheat (and nobody calls Baby a cheat and gets away with it) and for that I want her to suffer the consequences of her actions.  I did point out that the evil she is doing will come back to her three times and I know the Goddess will mete out a just punishment; so I suppose I shall be content with that, and getting my full refund from PayPal.

If you want to read and see all the evidence for yourself, visit http://paypalducksinarow.wordpress.com/.

Ebbene si, ci sono caduto pure io! nonostante possa vantare una certa esperienza su ebay sia come venditore sia come acquirente, sono stato truffato da un grandissimo figlio di buona donna, un truffatore esperto e scaltro.

Per questo motivo, voglio dare 4 buoni consigli agli acquirenti di ebay.

1° : Pagate sempre con PAYPAL, Bonifico Bancario o contrassegno, MAI con POSTEPAY.

(PayPal offre una copertura da 200€ fino a 1000€, il bonifico bancario è tracciabile e con il contrassegno paghi solo a merce ricevuta... postepay invece, non offre nessun tipo di copertura ed è tracciabile per modo di dire....)

2° : Controllare SEMPRE il feedback del venditore.

(Non fermatevi solo al numero positivo, leggete che tipi di compra-vendite ha effettuato il "venditore" se qualcosa non vi torna, lasciate perdere).

3° : Non fidatevi MAI dei prezzi troppo bassi.

4° : Se non siete sicuri della vendita, prima di tutto recatevi nella community di ebay, leggete il forum ed eventualmente postate il vostro dubbio, tra acquirenti ci si aiuta sempre). Se non vi basta, esiste questo sito :  http://www.ebayabuse.it/ dove sono segnalati tutti i truffatori.

Se siete già stati truffati, fate denuncia alla Polizia Postale oppure ai Carabinieri (Anche se la truffa è minima, ad esempio 50€) contattate ebay/paypal per aprire subito il reclamo. Avvisate sempre la community di ebay, nel caso di truffe o di aste sospette!

Oggi ho ricevuto una buona notizia, paypal mi ha rimborsato una parte dei soldi che ritenevo ormai persi! :D e sta lavorando per recuperare anche l'altra (ma qui ci vuole un miracolo ) :(

Quindi, su ebay usate PAYPAL e mai la POSTEPAY.

e state ATTENTI !!!!!