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EBay user fen_vivia. Aka kenneth Cheung from San Fran Ca
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159 posts in this topic

3 minutes ago, hobbyguy said:

These are the facts:

Fen_vivia purchased a Raw ETERNALS #1 from us on May 1st

On July 15th he filed a not as described claim with PayPal because he sent the book to CGC and it supposedly had a popped  staple.

He reqested a 80.00 refund and for him to keep the book.

I said no thank you, just return the book for a full refund.

He got upset because he would lose out on CGC grading fees

I advanced the dispute to a claim with PayPal so that I could get my book back and to get the hold off my paypal account.  

He sent the book to our p.o. box which we closed out last month but paypal still had that address in their system.

The book was returned  back to him.

I emailed him asking him to resend it back to us with the correct address on both the paypal and eBay site

PayPal refunds him in full

He doesnt respond to 3 emails requesting that he return the book back to us and I would pay for the return shipping

I appealed the case with PayPal.

PayPal states that since he sent the book we lose the appeal

PayPal agrees to send him a letter asking him to resend the book to our correct address.

He doesnt respond

I send him another request through eBay which he doesnt respond to, eBay sends us an email stating the the buyer complained about us harassing him.

I file and IC3 federal fraud claim and contact the Hayward CA DA office reporting the mail fraud incident

I was advised to file a civil action fraud lawsuit which I will next week

I warned the CGC community about this scammer

These are the facts.

To me, as soon as the buyer received the book and left you eBay feedback, that should be the end of the transaction.  It is the buyer's responsibility at time of receipt to inspect the goods and determine whether or not it is to their liking.  Depending on how descriptive you were with your sales post determines who's in the right or wrong here.  If your post specifically stated "9.8 copy guaranteed" without any support to back it up, then you were in the wrong.  If you simply said "NM, but i'm not a professional grader, please refer to photos", that's on the buyer.  I would think something like a popped staple would have been apparent to either you and/or the buyer upon receipt.  What the buyer chooses to do with his book is up to him and you should in no way be responsible for it (unless you guaranteed a certain result).  The popped staple could have be incurred by him, by a press, or somehow through shipping.  In any case, it should have been caught when he first received the book.  He certainly should not have requested a refund and keeping the book, that just makes no sense.

That said, the incorrect shipping address was on you.  Had you maintained your records, you would have gotten the book back and it wouldn't have progressed this far.

From there on out, it just appears to be a case of degrading communication by both parties to the point where he just no longer wants to deal with you, perhaps because he doesn't think it's worth the hassle anymore, especially given how he feels he's currently overspent on CGC fees as well as spent money shipping to a phantom address.  I mean, depending on how many or how few books he sent for grading, the grading fees alone could have cost him as much as $80 (shipping to Sarasota, pressing/grading fees, return shipping to SF).  I'm not sure the evidence points to him being an active scammer.  If he was, he never would have sent you the book back in the first place.  That said, he doesn't sound like the kind of guy I would want to transact with so it's good to notify other boardies to add him to their blocked list.  A call to arms though seems excessive.

 

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See @hobbyguy, facts are fun!

Word of advice - this guy has reported you once for harassment, the last thing you want to do is implore others to start harassing him too.  If your legal action does move forward, be it through the FBI, DA, or civilly, its a bad look for you when homeboy can come back and say "not only has the complainant been harassing me, but he also recruited a bunch of strangers to do it too and its been ongoing."

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39 minutes ago, hobbyguy said:

He reqested a 80.00 refund and for him to keep the book.

I said no thank you, just return the book for a full refund.

He got upset because he would lose out on CGC grading fees

Is the $80 amount the purchase price of the book, or was the buyer trying to get more than the purchase price to recoup those fees?

**edit**
Or was this $80 a lesser amount than the purchase price?

Edited by DeadOne
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23 hours ago, DeadOne said:

So he bought an Eternals #1 from you on May 1st and then sold an Eternals #1 and #2 together on May 12th.

I'm assuming you were in the hospital when this return procedure took place. Did PayPal even listen to your side of the story, or were they more like what's done is done? Contacting eBay directly may help if the book was redirected back to the buyer after the first return. Perhaps eBay could ask the buyer to attempt the return again.

It is odd that the buyer took 2 months to file a claim.

 

1 hour ago, DeadOne said:

Was this a graded copy? Any chance you could link to the sale or give your eBay handle and let us search it out for ourselves?

 

21 minutes ago, DeadOne said:

Is the $80 amount the purchase price of the book, or was the buyer trying to get more than the purchase price to recoup those fees?

**edit**
Or was this $80 a lesser amount than the purchase price?

Never mind. I did some research on past eBay sales  and answered most of my own questions. (thumbsu

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19 minutes ago, DeadOne said:

Is the $80 amount the purchase price of the book, or was the buyer trying to get more than the purchase price to recoup those fees?

**edit**
Or was this $80 a lesser amount than the purchase price?

The book was 221.00 raw 9.4 with 9 pictures.  There was no popped staple. I researched his sales and noticed that he sold a raw Eternals 1 and 2 on May 12th. He informed me that since I checked his sales records I would see that he purchased many Eternals #1 in the past and that he had already advised paypal that the Eternals #1 that he sent to CGC was indeed the one I sent him.  I can't understand why paypal would allow him the refund since he admitted that the book is no longer raw , but graded.  He never even provided pictures of the graded book.  Paypal and EBay sure makes it easy for buyers to commit fraud.  Unbelievable 

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I agree that if he has been refunded, he should return the book. The grading fees should not be on you.

If I may give some advice, and you can take this for what it's worth from someone who occasionally buys books on eBay, I think the wording in your auctions is a little combative towards buyers (especially the last part). I think there is a better way to say all of what you have said without that last part in the description. 2c

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1 minute ago, DeadOne said:

I agree that if he has been refunded, he should return the book. The grading fees should not be on you.

If I may give some advice, and you can take this for what it's worth from someone who occasionally buys books on eBay, I think the wording in your auctions is a little combative towards buyers (especially the last part). I think there is a better way to say all of what you have said without that last part in the description. 2c

Ok thank you.  Will restructure our description.

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6 hours ago, hobbyguy said:

Ok thank you.  Will restructure our description.

This entire problem rests squarely on your shoulders. Here's why. If you had the corrected shipping address registered with ebay and paypal, this never would have occurred, because a buyer is directed to return to the seller at his return shipping address. This is whether you print out a shipping ticket for him or not, authorize it or not. The buyer did this. Returned it to you at the address that he was given by ebay and/or paypal. Ebay or paypal sees that the book was returned, as tracking will verify, and the case was closed, buyer refund issued based on that tracking info.

Now, I'm not going to go into who I think was right, because this above fact, my paragraph above supersedes right or wrong, scam or not. Good guy/Badguy. That's all a moot point given that the return address was not updated. Once you were aware that you were getting a return, the very first thing you did should have been to assure that the address for the return would have been the correct one. That's the mistake, the error, or oversight, that supersedes who's a good guy and who's a bad guy.

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8 hours ago, revat said:

Here's the thing.  When you're tying to convince people to take a side, ACTIVELY TAKE A SIDE, not only do the facts matter, but also how they are presented (completely? emotionally? logically?).  You're asking people to come to a specific conclusion, and that specific action is warranted, you need to lead people to that conclusion, not shove it in their faces. 

Best portion of the best post in the thread. Words of wisdom.

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First off, I'm sorry that you have to be going through this because it sucks dealing with unethical people.  Having said that, as many have already pointed out, your expectations are unrealistic.  And as others have mentioned, it's a huge burden to have to ship things, let alone the same package twice.  Curious though, If the "buyer" lives in San Francisco, why did you file a claim with the Hayward DA?  Or does he actually live in Hayward?  I have to say, your articulation hasn't been all that thorough or clear.  I'm still not EXACTLY sure what all went down.  Now, I don't go picking on people's grammar or writing skills but it's important to clearly and objectively articulate if you are going to make accusations.

Also, as others are also confused by, I don't understand how you thought it would be rationale for anyone here to get involved.  This is your problem.  No one else's.  If I recited all of the eggregious transgressions that have been thrust upon me by dealers/buyers/"friends" in 35 years of collecting coins, cards, comics, etc., I would probably break the internet due to it's lack of bandwidth. 

If you want to hassle the guy, create a fake ebay account of two using a different ISP address and start buying the guy's stuff and never paying for it.  That will likely bother him A LOT more than a handful of random strangers sending him nastygrams.  Money (even small amounts) always seems to elicit much more emotional reaction that it should.

 

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