Please help me deal with this scam | Rules and safety

jck1992 · 2023-02-04T19:23:30.237000Z

Good morning, I personally buy a product new with tags in a store (a very, very rare item, so much so that there aren’t even any fakes, 3 pieces in Italy). I ask a friend who is more experienced than me to handle the sale of this product through his Ebay, since he is a certified seller with countless successful transactions and 100% positive feedback. I give him the item, which he keeps and puts up for sale. I’ll write in the first person for simplicity.First attempt: the product is sold, I’m contacted by the auction winner who tells me he is abroad and will be able to pay me once he gets home, two months later. Obviously I cancel the sale and relist the item. Second attempt: I put the item up for sale with an auction starting price of 2750 and 100 euros shipping.I’m contacted by a person who asks me to close it at 2750 shipping included. I tell him I’d rather let the auction run to the end and that, only if there are no other bids and he wins the auction at 2750 as the sole bidder, I’ll discount the 100 euros shipping. Other bids come in from other users, while the one who wrote to me nevertheless decides to bid and wins the auction at 2760. He pays 2760 + 100 and immediately writes to me to discount the 100. Obviously I didn’t owe him anything, but I decide to send him 100 euros on Paypal (even though this is actually a loss for me, considering that I had an offer at 2750 that would therefore have paid me 2850). My mistake, and that’s thatI immediately ship the product to England (English buyer) with all the necessary insurance and with the fastest and most expensive method (to keep him happy and make sure he got it by Christmas).When the package arrives in the UK, the user contacts me via Ebay messages saying he didn’t know he would have to pay customs, that it’s not his fault if with Brexit England is outside Europe, and asks me to pay him about 400 euros in customs fees. I refuse. He threatens me (again on the Ebay chat, it’s all documented) saying that if I don’t pay the customs fees, he’ll accept the item and then send it back to me, so that I lose 200 euros in shipping (100 there and 100 back) and about 800 in customs (400 to the UK and 400 back to Italy to get the item back). I’m certain about what I sold, that I bought in store, properly packaged, never used, and shipped right away. I don’t accept his proposal.After a couple of days he pays the customs fees himself and the package is delivered to him. Everything stays quiet for about 3 weeks.After 3 weeks he opens a dispute on Ebay for item not received. I provide tracking and Ebay closes the dispute in my favor.After 1 day he opens a dispute (I think through Paypal) for item not as described. Ebay asks me for proof and I provide the card slip and the purchase receipt.After a week Ebay closes the dispute against me, takes 2850 euros from my bank account saying they can’t know what I shipped. 1) you can’t know what I shipped, but before taking my money you have to verify that the buyer shipped the item back and that I received it2) ok, you can’t verify what I shipped, but the buyer wrote to me in black and white in the Ebay chat how he intended to proceed and that is exactly what he did. He threatened and then acted.Right now I’ve collected 2850, spent 100 on shipping, sent 100 to the buyer, and paid 120 in Ebay fees. They took 2850 euros from me.To date I’m down 2850 + 100 + 100 + 120 = 3170In all this, the buyer has the product, has the money, and obviously I see not a single reason why he should send the product back to me.I’m asking you for advice on how to proceed, because this is a scam and it seems to me to be an absurd situation to say the least. I don’t understand Ebay’s role (they took 120 euros in fees for what exactly?). I feel cheated, scammed, while Ebay protects a blatantly dishonest buyer even with the evidence in the chat. This is a huge flaw in the system that allows anyone to operate this way, exploiting the imbalance of protections between the two parties offered by Ebay and pocketing money without even having to return the products. Honestly, I won’t accept that. I can’t think of throwing away 3 thousand euros when I paid for a service to Ebay that, in addition to not protecting me, supported the buyer in his scam.

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Please help me deal with this scam | Rules and safety | eBay Italy