Yet another "Ebay" problem thread..

As if there aren’t enough of these already… I am completely losing faith in ebay. What do we pay them for, anyway? Certainly not customer service..

Anyway, I bought a Game Cube game a couple of weeks ago that was marked as “Like New”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ebay’s categories on items, “Like New” means it looks like the item was just bought, as if it was just taken out of the shrink wrap. There’s to be no damage to the item and it should appear (other than not being in original packaging) to be brand new. Well, I got this game in the mail and the first thing I noticed was the giant “USED” sticker on the front, telling the price of the used game – it looked like it came from Game Stop or Babbage’s or something of the like. Oh well, I thought, and opened it with high hopes! Well, the game itself was not only dirty (some gross dirty stuff on the back) but also scratched to high heaven.

I immediately contacted the seller after making sure that they had the item listed as “Like New”, cause I know I make mistakes and could have bid on something that was “Used” and not payed enough attention to the condition of it. Well the seller came back at me with some ridiculous message, saying that since the game was older (it was first made in maybe 2002) that this condition WAS considered “Like New” (coughBScough). He also told me that I was SOL as far as him helping goes because he was not going to do a thing.

So I did what any normal person would do – I started a ticket on ebay about the item. Eventually they gave me a refund, though they didn’t charge the seller. I gave him negative feedback because my experience with him was a negative one – he was unwilling to help me with my problem and he sent me a defective product.

Here’s where it gets good: He started harassing me. He’s sent me about a dozen emails now threatening me, telling me that he’s going to report me as a scammer, give me negative feedback, etc if I don’t remove the negative feedback I gave him. He’s called me pathetic for even opening a ticket about it, and now it’s just degraded into name-calling and him being bullheaded about the condition of the item he sent me (he accuses me of “mishandling” the disc and ruining it myself), citing his “reputation” and saying that is proof that he did nothing wrong.

Well, regardless of his positive feedback before I had a negative experience and I was going to be completely honest about it. I am not going to cater to sellers on ebay just because they threaten me – ESPECIALLY not because of that! But now, I have reported him to ebay several times, and EVERY email he sends me I report as harassment, but ebay has yet to do a thing about it. In the mean time he continues to send me degrading messages. And this all over a $5.00 game. This person should NOT be allowed to sell to people with this horrible attitude, but I can’t even seem to get a response from ebay about it, let alone get his account suspended. What should I do? Do I have any other line of defense, or am I up **** creek without a paddle?