I’ve done around 200 eBay deals and have been ripped off twice. The first time, a guy charged me $7 for shipping and used the cheapest media mail shipping that came to about $1.75. The second time, I sent a money order and never got the $56 item. It turns out he ripped off a lot of people. He listed several items (”too good to be true” deals), didn’t send them out, and closed his account right then. He was basically raising some quick Christmas money. I never got any satisfaction from that one.
I have had well over 100 EBay deals and only one “more or less” ripoff — I say more or less because in the end I came out ok.
Bought an Aeron Chair (Best desk chair ever made IMO) for $650. Never recieved the chair, could not get EBay person to resond. Was one of 12 that didn’t get chairs. Protested to Pay Pal and got about half the money back throgh thier protection with a promise I would get the rest when/if they collected it.
Well, it turns out it wasn’t a true ripoff. The guy had bought a shipment of chairs and only recieved half of them, but had already sold all of them on EBAy. He panicked and didn’t explain what happened (Dumb ass) because he had used the money already to pay off debt and for Christmas (the chair was my Christmas present).
Well, long story short, 6 months later the chair I ordered shows up at my door out of the blue, and the guy never asked for any of the payment back. While I had to wait 6 months, I ended up getting a $900 chair for $300.