Consumer Advice Required!!

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:04

Morning all, longish post this but any help is greatly apprecieated.

Basically, in late february i purchased an item off ebay. After much faffing and having to put a paypal claim against the guy he sent the item. When it arrived (late April!) it was not as described. Thanks to his incredibly long sending time, PayPal won't do anything about it because (A) Its out of the 45 day 'limit'. and (B) You can only claim against one user once (WTF!?).

Because of this im stuck with a £90 paperweight. I have contacted the seller hundreds of times through both his email account and his ebay account, he is simply ignoring me.

I know the email etc. is still right because he's still selling away on eBay as we speak.

Thanks to some excellent detective work between me and Zefan we have managed to get the guys address, email and a few names!

Details removed.

Now i've tried through eBay/PayPal and both of them basically say "tough ****". Where can i go next, unfortunately hes absolutely miles away so I can't confront him about it, any suggestions?

Really can't afford to be 90 quid down at the moment!

Help me ocuk peeps!

Oh yeah feel free to bombard the little scrote with emails/signups to gay pr0n and such.

Zefan · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:08

Should totally just turn up on his doorstep and beat him to death with the broken spoiler.

I'm sure a couple of peeps would want to see his face and would be willing to pay petrol

wez130 · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:13

how did it take so long to arrive?, i mean, 7 weeks? I would ahve started tha ball rolling much earlier.

Kristoph · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:14

I'm sure if a few hundred people from OCUK emailed him with some worrying letters he'd start to get scared.

fini · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:18

I don't understand, if you'd already started a claim against him, when he agreed to send it why you didn't tell him to get stuffed?

EDIT: You could always sue him - through small claims it'd be cheap (free if you won).

PhilthyPhil · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:20

If you can't get anywhere with Paypal/eBay you could make a small claim through the County Court.

alexakasloth · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:25

Small claims court, if the paypal is linked with a credit card can you not get your bank involved?

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:25

PhilthyPhil said:
If you can't get anywhere with Paypal/eBay you could make a small claim through the County Court.

Think this is what im gonna end up with, how do i go about getting this going?

As for why it took so long. At first he wouldn't accept PayPal so i kept badgering him to. After about 3 weeks he accepted, i paid him. 2 weeks or so after this, I set the paypal claim against him. Right at the end of claim 'period' (about 4 weeks!) while PayPal look at it, he sent thes spoiler via parcelforce, paypal deemed this good enough proof of delivery.

Now a month later (been at uni all this time, blissfully unaware the item was incorrect, and was waiting for me at home) I phone paypal saying its incorrect (broken, but clearly not in transit) and they literally say "its to late now, theres nothing we can do sounds like your stuffed mate".

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:26

$loth said:
Small claims court, if the paypal is linked with a credit card can you not get your bank involved?

The paypal account is linked to a bank account, not credit card. Not sure if this matters but i will head over to my bank tomorrow and have a chat.

PhilthyPhil · 5 Jun 2007 at 19:26

The easiest way is probably online via http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:00

PhilthyPhil said:
The easiest way is probably online via http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/

Wow didn't know you could do this. Thanks for the help I'll get to work on it.

Ouch £30 court fees, oh well I guess he'll have to pay my fees when i win the case?

the-void · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:03

Put a monetary figure on everything you do. Phone calls, letters, even emails and put them all down as costs. He will have to pay those as well. (If you win)

It would not be unreasonable to charge say £3-£8 for every letter you send.

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:09

the-void said:
Put a monetary figure on everything you do. Phone calls, letters, even emails and put them all down as costs. He will have to pay those as well. (If you win)

It would not be unreasonable to charge say £3-£8 for every letter you send.

Haha as tempting as that is i havent sent any letters, it would be a bit cheeky charging for emails/time I don't want to push it.

...maybe emotional damage though

.

alexakasloth · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:16

Could you interest on the £90?

the-void · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:19

$loth said:
Could you interest on the £90?

Yes, you can. I believe the rate is 8%. (It was last time I had do something like this)

the-void · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:20

Chris1712 said:
Haha as tempting as that is i havent sent any letters, it would be a bit cheeky charging for emails/time I don't want to push it.

...maybe emotional damage though .

No, but how long have you spent trying to recover your money. You are still entitled to claim for this.

I would send just the one letter, explaining that if you do not get your money then they will receive a court summons and be expected to pay costs.

Zefan · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:24

He's sent it now for £116. That's the amount he paid + court costs.

I wanted him to go for more including costs but if I was in his position I'd probably try to not push it too much

Chris1712 · 5 Jun 2007 at 20:25

the-void said:
No, but how long have you spent trying to recover your money. You are still entitled to claim for this.

I would send just the one letter, explaining that if you do not get your money then they will receive a court summons and be expected to pay costs.

Yeah i did consider sending him a letter first, but decided whats to stop him just ignoring that too. At least this way hopefully it will shake him up a bit and he will get his arse in gear to sort it out.

Chris1712 · 28 Jun 2007 at 18:22

Hi all, just a quick update on this fiasco.

OK well he's decided to 'defend' the claim. I received a notice in the post today that its /actually going to court and what not, and also his account of the situation.

It basically says "I didnt send it damaged, Chris has been 'harassing' me with emails and if you do want me to come It will cost you £160 a day (loss of earnings he reckons) and solicitor fees etc." He has twisted dates around saying he sent it and "my address wasnt found" which delayed the postage, and he asked continuously for my address via email which further delayed it (complete bs). He also now says i can have the Royal Mail stub so i can claim on the insurance, so why has he ignored me this long and tried to get out of it. Its pretty obvious to me that he is lying out of his arse, you can see from the pic below (Taken BEFORE i had unwrapped the item) that the end is snapped off, and where is that end! (ie not loose in the packaging) See how on the left the spolier tapers off pretty much to a point, whereas on the right it just ends flat.

The guy is clearly a gyppo, the language in the letter is hilarious, no capitals in names, and he even wrote 'Thru' along with some other txt style words.
£160 a day my eye mate, he's 19 and clearly a ***** chud.

Unforunately, i just cannot be bothered with this anymore, for £70 its not worth the hassle for me.

Through some fangly detective work i have his address, anything evil i can do to him, or just hope he gets whats coming to him?

So the point of the story is, if you get scammed on eBay, dont expect PayPal to do jack **** about it and dont expect everything to go swimmingly for you because justice prevails and all that ****, at the end of the day scummy pricks like this guy exist and they will do whatever they can to con you out of your money. I just hope he gets whats coming to him.

Zefan · 28 Jun 2007 at 19:18

Sounds like a total *******.

I wish you'd take it all the way, people shouldn't get away with this sort of crap.