Time to fight back and stop being ripped off

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

I don't understand sellers who cheat their customers. Why bother, especially over the (relatively) small value items we deal with (Leon excepted, of course, from the value limitations, since we all know his cards stay in the Presidential Suite when he visits the National).

I have another one brewing (must be my week). I purchased a 19th century card online. Seller had good feedback and a nice track record. The "card" is a blatant forgery. It is not even a card, it is two copies (a front and a back) on heavy paper stock stuck together with glue. The edges on the two copies don't even match up--whoever created this item did a crappy job--must have cut them out independently and did not even bother to recut them after gluing. The scan was poor quality but I relied on the seller's good and large feedback. I sent the seller the above information this a.m. with the following:

"While I am of the opinion that anyone with even a little experience would know that this item is a fake, I see that you have good feedback and are an established ebay seller, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this item. I would like my money back. Please refund to my Paypal account. I will be sending the item back via certified mail with return receipt requested once you confirm that a refund will be made. Please note that if I do not hear from you by 5:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, I will report the matter to the eBay and Paypal fraud investigation units, will post negative feedback for you, will email all of the other boxing card collectors I know with the details of this transaction and a warning about your auctions, and will refer the matter to the postal inspector and state attorney generals office for your state as a mail and wire fraud."

If the seller steps up and makes amends, I will publicly praise him here. If the seller does not, I will post his information for everyone to have, will make good on my threat to email the details to everyone I know who collects stuff that this guy sells, and will make scans of the $40+ piece of scrap paper available for anyone who wants to see it, to back up my story.

There is way too much Wild West stuff going on right now. I think we need to create a code of conduct that will bind members of this Board and that we also need to band together for concerted efforts against the evildoers, like a consumers union. The BRSZ thing is a good start; several people have emailed ebay to complain about this shill bidding stuff. Between the people here and the people we know, I bet we could readily assemble a big coalition of consumers against fraud. Imagine if the shill sellers and scam artists (and their willing accomplice ebay) received hundreds of complaints at a time about particular parasites. . . they might pay attention to that many pissed off voters (in order to head off appeals to legislators). This might, just might, result in some positive change. Any ideas or feelings on it?