Date:         Sat, 17 Sep 2011 07:59:09 -0400
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <vanagon@BUSDEPOT.COM>
Subject:      Re: Interesting Experience on eBay NVC Friday Stuff
In-Reply-To:  <58FC3729-4A7B-43B8-BE9D-E2C2E0ACEFF5@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> A few days later Paypal deducts the money from my
> account and refunds it to this scumbag! And he still has
> the item! He never sent it back. The buyer keeps the
> item and gets a full refund. What a deal-for him!!


That is not entirely uncommon. I have had the exact same thing happen once
or twice with credit card purchases, Paypal, and Amazon.  In one case a
customer got to keep a $200 set of custom made seat covers for FREE because
he didn't care for the color that he himself had chosen from a color swatch.
But the most absurd case was with Amazon, where the outsourced Amazon phone
rep gave a customer a refund by mistake AND let him keep my property, and
then refused to correct their error The buyer wasn't even claiming the item
was defective, he just didn't care for it and called Amazon to ask what the
return policy was (not realizing he was supposed to contact the seller
directly).  The Amazon phone rep misunderstood and wrote the item up as
"defective or misrepresented" instead. He then told the buyer he could KEEP
the merchandise AND get his money back under the Amazon "A-Z Guarantee"
(similar to Ebay's "Buyer Protection").  Which would have been true had the
product actually been misrepresented, but nobody had ever claimed it was
(not even the buyer).  I tried to appeal to Amazon - I even had an email
from the buyer himself explaining the mistake - but nobody would listen. It
was like dealing with government beauracracy. I was not permitted to
actually communicate with anyone at Amazon who had decision making
authority, but rather had to pass messages through several layers of
beauracracy ... only to get back canned responses that indicated that nobody
had actually read the documentation. Eventually Amazon told me that their
decision was final since "the item was misreperesented" (even though nobody
had ever said that to begin with) and that they were closing the case and
considering it "resolved." Fortunately the buyer returned the item of his
own volition a month or two later (albeit slightly used). But had he chosen
not to, I would have had absolutely no recourse. Even as it stood I wasted
hours of time. Needless to say I learned my lesson with Amazon.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  www.busdepot.com
  (215)  234-VWVW

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