Sellers disappearing and not sending items

TZAHL

Has anyone ever tried contacting the local police of the city of the seller? How has this worked out?

How about filing mail fraud claims?

jimq112

If you file a mail fraud claim please do it at the post office where HE lives, not where you live. If you call your office and everybody else he screwed calls their own offices the p/o won't see a pattern. If his home post office gets 4 complaints all of a sudden they can see the pattern easier.

local police won't get involved much unless he has a reputation there or it's a big $ thing.

storm888

If the seller lives in a small town/little city, the cops may know him/her.
If they do, you can sometimes encourage them to "visit" the seller's
address for a chat. However, most sophisticated crooks know exactly
what to say to the cops to turn the complaint into "a civil matter."

If the cops have a bunch of complaints, they can/will act IF they think
they can make a case that will prevail.

The USPS is the best avenue to cause trouble for scam sellers. Send
a letter - or use one of the forms at the USPS website - and explain
exactly "what happened and who did it." Send the letter/form to the
Postmaster at the crook's ZIPcode. They will usually "look into it."

There is a new website - lurked on it earlier this year - called
cleanupebay.com. It seems not to be a "complaint site," but
they seem to be looking for suggestions as to how "the venue" can
be made safer for buyers/sellers. I guess they will/are using the
suggestions as ammo to lobby eBay to make some changes.

storm

goose3

In a large community....good luck. If it's a small town, you have a decent chance of someone physically visiting the problem.

In a small town like mine......from time to time we'll get calls from people that have been shafted by ebayers within our town. Usually a short pep talk from us and things get straightened out fairly quick.

We did have a local scumbag that was selling thousands of dollars worth of DeWalt tools that he did not have. I don't recall what happened to that one once it was turned over to the county prosecutor.

Snowball

<< <i>Has anyone ever tried contacting the local police of the city of the seller? How has this worked out?

How about filing mail fraud claims? >>




Did you buy this through ebay? Did you pay through paypal?

etown99girl

Please tell us more about it.

TZAHL

I bought it off of Ebay, paid via US Postal money order (he had over 99% at the time and did not have a Paypal acct.) and items never arrived. He has since recieved numerous negs for not shipping items. His contact info does not work. Ebay really won't do crap, I've got to call them today though. I emailed his town's police dept. (Martinsburg, WV). I am considering contacting all of those that got 'shafted' and filing mail fraud claims.

craig19

similar thing happened to me a few months back. The seller gave bogus ph# to Ebay, but i had a friend who worked for the same bank that he cashed the money order on. different state, but same bank. He was able to get me the guys phone #. My local police then called him and read him the riot act. within a few days a refund check came.

TZAHL

Can you track US Postal money orders? I know they have a # on them. How would I go about doing this? It is onlyl about $50, but it is the principal of the matter!

etown99girl

Can you track US Postal money orders? I know they have a # on them. How would I go about doing this? It is onlyl about $50, but it is the principal of the matter!


You have to file a claim with the post office and they do charge you a fee.