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Others' Buying Experiences: Story #2.

[ Story #1 | Story #2 ]

Other people have sent me their buying experiences. This is the story of a man who wishes to remain anonymous, so I'll call him "Mr. V." He bought a U101 through eBay. He's given me permission to post his story on-line. The words are entirely his:

Wow, I couldn't believe it when I found your report on your experiences buying your U101. They were amazingly similar to mine, right down to the problems with Paypal. I suspect there are a LOT more incidents with Paypal than they let on.

I'm in the export business, so the U101's small size is perfect for me. I can stick it into my fanny pack, or hide it under the seat of my moped, even when i'm in a place where I might otherwise worry about it being stolen. I carry it just about wherever I go now. Its like having a PDA, but where everyone else is playing chess and othello clones on the go, I can play Tux Racer! (well, not yet... <crosses fingers!>)

Anyway, I saw a great deal on the U101 on eBay from a seller that I don't want to disclose because I wasn't happy with his service, but don't want to antagonize him. I contacted him via email, and arranged to buy it for $1500 even. I was ready to send him my credit card, but he claimed he didn't have a secure site, and that the $1500 represented a "Paypal Discount". I know it seems stupid now, but I wanted that U101 so much, I agreed, and quickly sent him the $1500 via paypal. He sent me another message telling me it would arrive in 4 days.

The fourth day it didn't show up, and on the fifth day it didn't either. On the sixth day, I was so sure it was going to arrive that I ran out to meet the UPS guy as he pulled up! He actually had to tell me to "back off!", so he could "do his job". It turned out to be something for my next door neighbor, so I went back inside and called the EBay seller.

He claimed that he had sent it. I told him to please check, and he immediately replied that he had checked already and he had shipped it. I asked him how he could have checked so quickly, and he laughed and told me to stop whining and I should expect delays when I got such a great deal on the U101. At this point I realized I was in trouble. That guy reminded me of one of those jerks from high school with more aggression than brains.

I called Paypal and tried to cancel my payment, but they said it was already withdrawn! I got the same runaround you did, with their 30 day stalling tactics. I got so mad at one point that I said I was going to "kill" them, and they threatened to call the police. I told them to go ahead, because they had stolen my money, and hung up.

I stayed home for two days because I was worried the police were going to show up, but they never did. To make a long story short, the next time I called Paypal they said my account was "flagged" and I would have to communicate in writing from now on. I didn't care though, because my U101 arrived the week afterwards, and I couldn't be happier!

I didn't have the problems with Windows that you did, because the only thing I installed was VMWare, and my custom linux image I made on my main machine. The fact it is a virtual machine makes my system run a little slower than it should, but emacs and pine is still a heck of a lot faster than word and outlook! Can't wait until people get up and running so I can make my system Free! I heartily recommend the U101 to anyone with the patience to get one!

Feel free to share my story. I don't want other people to get suckered by Paypal again.

Well, he got it; congradulations, Mr. V!

I sent him back a few comments that are worth noting here as well:

• A smart tactic in these kinds of negotiations is rather than to "ask him how he could have checked so quickly," to ask him to "please provide the tracking number." If he really has shipped it, he'll have the tracking number, and be eager to provide it, and from that point, you can go to UPS's (or FedEx's, or USPS's) web site and follow its progress yourself. If he hasn't actually shipped it, he won't have a tracking number, and will sheepishly admit that he hasn't shipped it. The request-the-tracking-number tactic almost always works, because he's either got it or he doesn't.
• Death threats are usually a bad idea in general, no matter how angry you are. The better solution is to threaten legal action (lawsuit) against them as being an accomplice to wire fraud and/or theft. Even if you don't intend to follow through on that (or even have the resources to do so), it will often scare the other person into submission, or at least slow them down a bit. You may not get what you want out of them, but they'll be a bit more circumspect about how they interact with you. This works especially well if you already know the name of the "customer service representative" that you're speaking to, because they know their name could potentially be on the suit too.

  Frankly, given PayPal's behavior in these experiences, the best solution is really to call your credit card company and tell them to issue a chargeback. At that point, it becomes a tug-of-war between the seller, PayPal, and the credit card company --- and the credit card company has deeper pockets and the law on their side. Most credit card companies already have been through the whole chargeback-through-PayPal mess before and have special policies for dealing with PayPal. My credit card company (élan) required no more information from me than the original five-minute phone call to get it resolved, and the lady at the end mentioned that they knew how to deal with PayPal. In short, for small charges, it's okay to use the PayPal Buyer Complaint system, but for anything significant, talk to the credit card company: you can trust them to do it right.