Anyone sued anyone on ebay?

[Energize]

I sold a product on ebay for a decent amount of money and then the buyer backed out which I contested leading to a strike on his account, a subsequent relisting of the item sold for significantly less, and I had to pay final value fees which I would not otherwise have paid because I took advantage of an offer on at the time and ultimately led to a delay of 2 weeks before getting money in my bank account which affected my cash flow.

Now given that I already have a letter before action template ready for exactly this kind of thing and the cost and effort of going to court is so small at a mere £25 it seems like a small price to pay to destroy this guy's credit rating even if I never get compensated for the loss he caused me.

Has anyone attempted civil court action against similar scammers and time wasters on eBay?

 

[Energize]

How much have you actually lost? I can imagine the time lost to pursue this will far outweigh any tangible benefit.

Around £100, I've sued people before and won and it's no time at all because they never respond to the court summons to defend themselves so a judgement by default is issued in my favour with 8% statutory interest and court costs added, my question was more in relation to ebay specific issues.

 

[Energize]

cancelling the second sale

What is this even supposed to mean? Continually cancelling sales and ******* off bidders until I get the result I want and strikes against my account when I could have the money in investment accounts accruing interest?

 

[Energize]

Set a reserve then. If you are happy to sue for 100 quid, go nuts, seems petty to me when there were other safeguards available.

Setting a reserve puts people off and further delays the sale causing more damages, as claimants we have a duty to mitigate such damages.

You want to **** people's credit scores over because they cost you £100?

So I should bend over?

 

[Energize]

What was their reason for backing out? They are on the hook for the money I assume so eBay must have accepted their reason for not paying.

Couldn't you have offered the next highest bidder the opportunity to buy? I've had this in the past

Apparently they had just changed their mind which is not an acceptable reason to me.

No ebay did not accept their reason which is why they issued a strike.

I attempted to offer a second chance offer but technical problems on ebay's side meant that was not possible.

 

[Energize]

Sue ebay.

More seriously, I'm not sure why you started this thread. Based on your replies so far you seem to have already decided what you're going to do.

The question was clearly not "should I sue?".

 

[Energize]

Indeed, you're going to sue anyway and no two cases are identical so asking for the experience of others seems rather pointless. Even more so when the reason you want to sue is less about being financially compensated and more about destroying this guy in some way. You're a man on a mission.

You seriously think that absolute parity is required for other people to weigh in with their individual experiences? Wow.

Please. This is a contemptible individual who decided ex post facto to change their mind. This is not some poor person who has fallen on hardship who I would be fully sympathetic with, they decided on a whim to change their mind in their own words. They are basically everything wrong with he eBay platform distilled.

 

[Energize]

Individual experiences of small claims aren't going to help you. The same case before two different judges could end up with two different results.

If I told you I had a similar case, and lost, I doubt it wouldn't make a ha'p'orth of difference to what you're going to do.

He was honest with you, does that make him truly contemptible?

For 99.99% of us this wouldn't be worth the candle but, as I said, you're a man on a mission. A mission to destroy this guy for his honesty.

There was more to it than that, he tried to make a derisory offer for less than the item ended up selling for, which completely contradicted his own story, if he had changed his mind then why start trying to negotiate below the market value? "Chancer" comes to mind.

No. A contemptible individual would have broken the item and then opened an Item Not As Described case against you, claiming it arrived that way - resulting in you being out of pocket for shipping both ways, plus stuck with an item worth significantly less than before.

Which is exactly what you'll be encouraging them to do if you decide to try and punish them for their honesty.

Also if you are selling as a business (which it sounds like, since you mention it affecting your cashflow), then they are absolutely within their rights to "on a whim to change their mind". If not, then perhaps you need to look at budgeting better so that you aren't reliant on ad-hoc Ebay sales to manage your personal finances - after all, what would you have done if the item hadn't sold?

No I'm not a business.

 

[Energize]

People will try it on to save some money. Doesn't mean they deserve to have their credit rating nerfed. You have to accept that you'll come across messers and chancers on eBay.

Nor does he have to, there is plenty of room for negotiation before initiating court proceedings.

People seem to be under the wrong impression here. If a judgement is made and the defendant pays there is no impact on credit rating. The persons credit rating is only damaged if they fail to comply with the courts directions.

 

[Energize]

I don't think we are.

That's because you don't understand how the county court system operates, financial disputes get settled and only if the person acts like a total ass does a CCJ get issued and only then if they fail to comply with it does it affect their credit rating.

I have used ebay for over 10 years and people have cancelled for various reasons such as financial issues which I'm fine with, people have cancelled for less legitimate reasons but we have come to reasonable agreements. But never before has someone cancelled because they decided to buy a different product, caused a significant financial loss and then tried to profit from the situation before. All reasonable attempts at settling this have been ignored.

 

[Energize]

You didn't try and sue the guy straight after he pulled out of the deal and a court can see that you was happy to relist the item for sale again without any reserve which means you have started a new personal contract under Ebay terms of sale in selling the item to the highest bidder?

Why would any court think that you was now entitled to a higher price (or made a loss) when you yourself have agreed to sell the item again to the highest bidder without taking this issue to court first?

Because court action is a last resort and claimants are expected to mitigate their losses before going down this route.

 

[Energize]

You used the word impression but your opening post makes it clear your main objective is to destroy this guy in some way.

Yes I realise now that I gave members too much credit in assuming they understood how county court disputes work.

If the original buyer, paid the same price as the person you sold it to. Would you of been happy ? @Energize

Possibly, it would have avoided the fees I incurred and would have shown some attempt at good faith, obviously I can't go into specific details but there is more to this particular buyer than just changing their mind.

@Energize

I think that suing someone for pulling out of a sale is a bit unfair - people are allowed to change their minds no?

Is everything okay at the moment? PM me if you want to chat

Well the terms of the auction state that the winning bidder must pay and multiple strikes will lead to removal of their account, the terms of a private sale don't legally allow people to change their minds after the fact, but I usually do make concessions.

I appreciate the offer, might take you up on it at some point when is there not something going on? Haha.

 

[Energize]

the european directives which still apply here, for the time being, do allow people buying on auction sites to change their mind, so long as they do not have the opportunity to inspect the goods in person beforehand, and/or basically that the auction is not taking part in a physical auction house. It gets a bit more muddy for private sellers vs private buyers and the listing wording comes into play, which unless the OP gives us a copy, we are in the dark over.

The County Court needs to see evidence of your losses and how they are reasonably attributed to the person you are claiming against. Then you also have to demonstrate what steps you have taken to avoid the case going to court in the first place. One of the first things the County Court looks at are whether there has already been any form of arbitration that affects their ability to rule on the case. Ebay's internal arbitration is such an example.

Absolutely, the buyer refused all attempts to engage in eBay's arbitration process.

they don’t allow cancellations, hence eBay has a strike rule on their account. OP wants to take it further, outside the rules he signed up for and into the courts.

The courts authority governs such sales so I'm not exactly taking it outside of the auction framework here.

 

[Energize]

If this goes to court and gets contested, I'd be very interested in the outcome against these two costs. My very very rusty memory on contract law would suggest it'll be hard to get them to accept the additional FVF as a cost, as they are a cost that you would normally have expected to pay on the transaction. The cashflow delay is also an interesting - I assume that you'd value the delay in cashflow against the cost of funding (e.g. overdraft interest for those two weeks for that amount etc)?

My guess is the buyer who pulled out won't bother contesting though.

I'm not putting a value on the cash flow as it was so small as to be trivial, but it was obviously an inconvenience. Unlike the OCUK millionaires in this thread £100 is actually a lot of money to me though.

Seeing as you're not giving details - I can only assume you tried to get the 'non' buyer to send you money - for something he decided not to actually buy.

I'd have not engaged with you either.

Well that reflects on your character. He was contractually obligated by the eBay agreement to pay within 48 hours as the winning bidder, the fact that people are actually defending people defaulting on their agreements is shocking and explains why the courts are overflowing with cases....

 

[Energize]

I am sure that sales of goods on ebay in the Uk fall under the consumer contracts regualtions which in this case would not help the OP's crusade to screw someone over

Cancelling goods and services
The Consumer Contracts Regulations also give you key cancellation rights when you enter into contracts at a distance over the phone, online, from a catalogue or face-to-face with someone who has visited your home, for instance.

That being said I sincerely hope this massively backfires on the OP and he ends up even more out of pocket. This would be karma and I would laugh a lot.

Doesn't apply to private sellers dude.

If you have a non paying highest bidder, can't you normally give the next highest bidder the sale? I'm sure I've done it that way in the past.

Tried to do that and would have accepted the hit, however there was a technical issue preventing that on ebay's side unfortunately.

Do you actually think that here, in GD, where we hear about the ebay idiots at least twice a week, we are defending this guy? No, nobody is. We're collectively telling you to stop wasting your time, his time, ebay's time, the courts' time, our tax money, and whatever else I could think of to prove my point, for the sake of a few quid. Ask yourself this: is your time really worth that little? what if he fights back? That £100 will become the most expensive £100 you're likely to ever have to get back.

Don't be that guy. Cmon.

People are attacking my position to the extent that it gives that impression, it's alright to say it's probably not worth the time and effort, but to suggest that trying to get money back after someone defaulted on an agreement is wrong or immoral is definitely defending this guy, the County Courts were created for exactly these small disputes, they even have a category for claims less than £100. I thank the useful advice that some posters have given but there seems little point in posting anything else in this thread because people are just trolling.

 

[Energize]

So as a resolution to this thread, after receiving my letter before action he finally came around and offered to meet me half way which I accepted. I suspect this is half him being spooked by court documents and half due to the fact that straight after refusing to pay for my auction he managed to buy a similar item at the lower end of the market price.

So no need for court action. I just don't understand the mentality of bidding on an auction and then refusing to pay, it's not bloody Amazon!

 

[Energize]

Once again, would you mind giving us your ebay account name, just so I can avoid. Thanks.

I don't give out my username to scammers thanks.