First negative Ebay incident in a long time.

[Puff Daddy]

I buy and sell a few things on Ebay. I have something like 400 transactions since I signed up a dozen years or so ago. There has been a time or two when I wasn't completely thrilled with something but for the most part it's been just fine, both as a seller and a buyer. Most people seem to be pretty honest and the shady ones are usually pretty obvious to spot.

Not that it's big potatoes, but I had a pipe listed and a person won it and just ignored the whole thing. No payment. A couple messages sent, no response. It went into an unpaid item dispute after so long, which drug the whole thing out longer, and finally in the end I just got a fee credit. Ebay says they give a negative mark against a person who does this, but the truth is they don't. I could find nothing on this persons feedback page about it after the fact. I couldn't even go give feedback because the transaction was never completed, and this persons feedback page shows all kinds of glowing activity from some of the top sellers in the game (like Coopersark). Scrolling down through this persons feedback I did notice that one other guy figured out how to leave negative feedback, wish I'd have known about it. Before the unpaid item dispute he simply left a positive feedback choice but in the comments wrote "Deadbeat, wouldn't pay, dishonorable".

Wish I could have got his adress so I could have sent him a little something, free of charge

If you want to put him on your deadbeat block list, he's out of China and his ebay account name is tianyagaojie, which translates to Deadbeat Dirtbag

 

[Fr_Tom]

I have seen Ebay listings before that will say they don't sell to China or Russia due to problems getting paid. I am guessing the non-payment is a frequent thing.

I am sorry this happened to you...

 

[Ozark Wizard]

Sorry to hear about that. Tough stuff out there on the web, to be sure, rest assured that it also happens outside of Ebay..................

Too bad those folks can't be yanked from the marketplace.

 

[Puff Daddy]

Funny thing though, if you look at this guys feedback he buys from a lot of the top sellers and has good feedback and over 200 positives, so he buys and pays up. It seems to me that he must just bid on pipes and then walk away from those he decides he didn't want after all. Problem is, a bid is a contract and doing that is pure dishonesty regardless of what country he hails from. Shmucks like this deserve to be outed and blocked, gives the whole game a a bad name.

When I sold off a lot of my high dollar pipes several years ago many went to China and without a lick of a problem.

 

[Puff Daddy]

And I'm not ojt any money, only time. It's the principle of the thing. If he'd stay away from auctions he has no intentions of honoring I'd have had my money from the next highest bidder a week ago.

 

[MisterE]

I don't  buy pipes on eBay anymore. Unfortunately, most won't ship to Mexico. :evil:

I haven't had any truly bad experiences buying or selling, though. Some pipes have just plain sucked. Hard to find a seller saying, "this pipe imparts a nasty flavor to any and all tobaccos." You're kind of stuck with it once you find that out. Caveat emptor I guess the saying goes.

 

[RDPipes]

It's just hard to tell sometimes who's the deadbeat. This has happen to me many times and I've got a blocked bidders list that is probably close to 50 or more strong. I don't give them much chance either, if they don't pay within a give time, usually 4 days, there off to the blocked list and the item gets relisted. I pay as soon as the auction closes or the very next morning if it closes after 10PM or later and I expect the same from others. If one is going to be late for a legitimate reason they better have the decency to message me ahead of time and explain. I've had to put up with way too many scum bag deadbeats and con-artists to have any patience left for them, so they better pay or git on down the road. There's no really good reason not pay promptly, if I can do it even when I was working full time everyone can. And that goes for sellers also, I get so dadburn tired of sellers giving me the excuse that they work full time and are not able to ship my item promptly, BS! I did it, they can. There just to damn lazy and I tell them that if they don't have the time to run a business on eBay , maybe they shouldn't be doing it. Okay, I'll stop for now, just a real touchy subject with me. :fpalm:

 

[joshoowah]

This kind of thing, unfortunately, is all too common from our friends in the East. Ever watched HS Studio, Golden Gate, etc. pipes? I've bid on several in the past only to get sniped by someone in China. They would not pay the buyer so he would shoot me a message asking if I wanted the pipe for the winning price, which I always declined because the amount was ridiculous.

It's not just on pipes: computer parts and peripherals, shoes, TVs & monitors, and the list goes on. I'm not sure why the practice is so common.

 

[RSteve]

Whenever you purchase on Ebay, whether foreign or domestic, after you've paid via PayPal. Immediately log in to your PayPal account and log out. Be certain that you are logged out; the door to the account is shut. It is critically important if you've backed your PayPal account with a checking account, savings account, or debit card. Several years ago, I made the critical error of not following that procedure. I made an off shore purchase on Ebay via PayPal. Within a couple of hours, several thousand dollars were drained from my checking account. Ultimately, the perpetrator was tracked to Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province mainland China. PayPal denied any culpability and I sued. Before it went to court, PayPal restored the funds and paid my attorney fees.
The attorney fees included the fees charged by the investigative firm that located the source of the theft, only because the perp, besides stealing from me, ordered a pair of Oakley sunglasses from a U.S. retailer, charged them to my PayPal account and had them sent to an address at the University.

 

[Ranger107]

One of the reasons I won't buy anything from China or use paypal. About a year ago I bought a gun part from China because it was half the price of us sellers although the same brand. Don't have a paypal account but did use my credit card through paypal. The very next day had two charges for over $100 each in malaysia. Had to contest the charges and cancel my card. Didn't lose any money but was a PITA. Never again.

 

[Donk93953]

I made the same mistake of selling to a Hong Kong resident.
I know the district he lives in, but upon sending the pipe and confirmed receipt, he claimed he never got it.
It was a Dunhill Shell...nice pipe but I was thinning the herd.
Out a few hundred $, but it wasn't worth the battle.
I just wont sell to China or Middle East anymore.....and though I'm a Mexican Citizen, I don't sell there anymore either.
Often the problem in third and second world countries is items coming from the states will be stolen....