...I know a lot of you are wondering why I was not filing a paypal claim right away... well, there was a perfectly good reason for this.
And many of you can learn from this experience for your future transactions here, or anywhere else.
The Paypal claim/buyer protection here in North America DOES NOT cover "Significantly Not As Described" items purchased OUTSIDE OF EBAY, and you can only legitimately claim "Not Shipped" items. Yes. Appaling but true. You can dispute, yes, but your CLAIM request will be pretty much denied automatically more or less immediately. As a matter of fact, I just tried it out of curiousity without much hope or expectation (really had no other option...), and sure enough I got a automated rejection email within a minute. Yup. Now, this apparently does NOT extend to Paypal UK users who have apparently amended their policies so that you DO Have protection for SNAD items purchased outside of ebay. But here in North America, people are out of luck in this matter.
There are a lot of stories on this on the net already. You can try to google "paypal protection for items purchased outside of ebay" for more information on why Paypal here essentially leaves you unprotected.
Double whammy on my part is that I did not fund this sale through Credit Card. I did it through my chequing account, so I cannot do a chargeback or anything either. Yup. Painful and possibly (likely) costly lesson on my end...
So please, all buyers from this forum, and anywhere else on the internet for that matter, please be aware of these following points... learn from this painful experience... especially for expensive items:
- NEVER use Paypal for non-ebay purchases. You have basically no protection if the item is damaged for whatever reason.
- If you HAVE to use Paypal then make it payable with a credit card instead of directly from chequing account.
- ALWAYS look for a local sale first... or better yet, just go directly to the actual retailer.
... I am just very frustrated and hopeless at this point. The seller has been very inattentive with all this thus far, and although he says he has legitimate reasons for not being so, I DO NOT think it is unreasonable to ask him to at least reply within a DAY. He has failed to even do that. Here, on this open forum, I'm giving him one more chance to show himself to this thread and explain himself and save his reputation. I will wait until 9:00 PM EST today. If not, I will go on to post the PM's of the past conversation. Not gonna be responsible for whatever that will happen after that.
I have very little hope for this now... just tired with this whole process now. Not enjoying this hobby much anymore due to all the stress from this... and honestly, a hobby shouldn't be like this...