Writing this today, selfishly, to get this off my back but also hopefully to help others.
I recently concluded an ongoing issue with E-bay, PayPal and NRC collection agency.
It all started back in March 2024. I bought a TourPack for my motorcycle from e-bay. It’s like luggage for the bike but doubles as a backrest for a passenger.
I hadn’t bought anything off e-bay in years but I thought, well, they’re a big multi billion dollar company and they have “BUYER PROTECTION” so what’s the worst that could happen right?
The TourPack was shipped in two separate boxes which arrived at different times. It took more than a month to get both packages.
Both e-Bay and PayPal buyer protection only lasts for a month. They used to be one company at one time. Now the are separate.
When all the parts finally arrived, I put it all together only to find that the parts didn't fit although on Ebay it said “Guaranteed Fit”. I tried contacted the buyer who’s solution was for me to re-engineer the part by drilling new holes! He said “that's what everybody does.”
I explained to him that this was an integral part which required the structural rigidity support a passenger and that I wasn't about to drill holes in the thinner parts of the plastic to try to re-engineer it because he sent me the wrong parts! Plus, if there was any warranty, modifying it would have voided that.
The factory mounting holes in the TourPack are in specially moulded, high rigidity, reinforced ribs within the part. The Seller expected me to drill new holes in the thin part of the plastic in order to make it all fit! Which holes would have been right beside the factory holes, really weakening it! Imagine having a passenger and going down the road over bumps and the part cracks!? This could be devastating. The seller should not allowed on eBay or anywhere else for that matter with such a cavalier attitude.
These sellers are "drop shippers". They live in China and have some relationship with the manufacturer California. They positions themselves between the manufacturer and the buyer so that they can pick up some scratch as a middleman. They have no idea about the parts they're selling or motorcycles! In fact all they know how to do is copy other seller’s listings and put a lower price on them! That way when people search by price, their listings show up first.
e-Bay said to send the whole thing back which came in two packages which I thought was not necessary because the part that didn't fit was only a small part, the steel base plate of the TourPack. It would have cost far too much to send both packages back to China although they came from California but the seller insisted I send them back to China! They know this would deter anybody from sending anything back because of the cost involved! Since it was over 30 days now, shipping would have been on me. See how their “Buyer Protection” works?
Also as a timely matter we only have 6 months of motorcycle season where I live so by the time I sent it back and then they send me something else back and who knows if it would fit or not the season would be over and all I needed was a different base plate and interior plate (sandwiches the TourPack between the base and the interior steel plate, which was not included in the listing).
I ended up having to buy my own base for the system and an interior steel plate. I was told by eBay that I could be refunded for those parts.
eBay says that they record all calls but nobody could find information about who told me they would repay me for having to buy extra parts.
The buyer would not provide me with a shipping label so that I could send even the base plate back.
On top of that he said to send it back to China but the part came from California! I said why would I have to send it to China if I could just return it to California where it came from? They do this purposely because they know it's another deterrent so buyers won't send things back because it's economically infeasible.
I got a hold of a courier company who told me it would cost roughly $600.00 to send the base plate back to China which was only worth $85.00 in the first place. Then to add insult to injury PayPal said that I refused to the item back to the seller!
The second problem was PayPal took the money off a bank account that I had on PayPal as a backup finding source, which had been defunct for the past 10 years.
Every time I contact PayPal they asked me for the last four digits of my credit card always used my credit card for payment but in this instance they attempted to take the money from a bank account which was a backup however the bank account had been closed for many years.
Since they couldn't take the money from the bank, PayPal paid for it themselves and then ask me to reimburse them from the bank account I said there is a credit card online and you've always used it and I don't know why you're attempting to take it from account now but they wouldn't let me pay by credit card! Instead PayPal threw me in the collection agency because they didn't want to collect from my credit card!
PayPal then points the finger and says “it's out of our hands you're in a collection agency got nothing to do with us anymore!” they didn't want to help me so I contacted the collection agency who said that this is a fraud case! They said that they will take 30 days to look into it and let me know what their findings were.
Who’s at fault?
Was it the seller for sending me the wrong parts?
Was it PayPal for taking money from a secondary funding source, not my credit card?
Was it eBay for not exercising the buyer protection? They said the could not force the seller to provide shipping costs!
So I left it in their hands for 2 months and nobody got back to me. When I contacted the collection agency they said they don't handle disputes I was told that they do earlier they said that they were going to look into a fraud case!
In the end I had to pay for the wrong parts plus the correct parts I had to buy myself separately, from another vendor, to make the whole thing work. There was no buyer protection from eBay or from PayPal and the people at the collection agency that told me they were going to look into a fraud did not do so!
I still have extra parts sitting in my garage which I had to pay over and above the initial purchase.
I have some items I had been selling online myself for years however during all this, nobody could send me money on PayPal because the account was locked! Once the account is locked you can neither buy nor sell with it!
The whole thing is behind me now but I just wanted to let people know when they say there's buyer protection or when they say that they're going to investigate fraud, they didn't do any of that. They left me hanging! Threw me under the bus.
Whenever I call PayPal they always greet me with “thank you for being such a loyal customer for more than 20 years!”
They always ask me for the last four digits of my credit card for validation! Never once asked me about a bank account!
Not once in the 20+ years that I've used PayPal have they ever used the secondary backup funding source until now. At least part of this shitshow could have been avoided had they simply used the credit card. And then they wouldn't even accept my credit card as a form of payment! Instead they threw me straight in the collection agency after all those years! That's how much they care about their loyal customers!
My only recourse, as I told them, was to broadcast this all over social media so that perhaps other people learn from it and think twice how about using these corporations that make promises then don’t keep them. Technically they can claim to have Buyer Protection but the sellers know how to get around it! The seller knows that the buyer protection is only for 30 days so all they have to do is not send the item out immediately so that the clock will run out on the 30 days and they are scot-free. I couldn't even put a complaint against the seller as the time limit ran out! My only recourse was to write about it here, put it out onto the internet and off my back.
If this helps anyone, you're welcome. Please feel free to share widely!
Burning sage to cleanse the air of this.
