New Seller Pulling Fast One

[uggg2008]

I recently bought an item which was Buy It Now at £10 FREE POSTAGE, I didn't realize until I paid that the Seller was New Seller with no feedback.

  I was contacted by them a day later to say that the item was broken, it was then alarm bells started to ring, the item weight was over 2kg, so would have cost more to post than the original £10 purchase price.

  So I contacted the Seller and asked if he had made a mistake on not listing postage costs while being new and not used to listing on ebay and I would offer to pay postage costs via Paypal if he was still willing to send, (as I summized he had message it was broken as to get out of contract).

I also said if it was really broken, I would be fine with my money refunded.

  He messaged back, the item was possibly not working, he would test it and if it was fine he would be willing to post, so 2-4 days later he messaged me with the cost of postage and said it would be posted out on the Monday.

  I agreed and sent the cost of postage plus a few quid extra to help towards his packing costs to his listed email address on Paypal, his post was for parcel force 48, so by Thursday I thought something is going on, but it wasn't until I went in to my Paypal account that I noticed he had refunded the original £10 ebay purchase costs.

  Thats when I knew he was planning to scam me out of the Postal Costs, my ebay purchases listing still even now has no refund arrow, so no way of knowing this had happened until I went into Paypal.

  I can't reclaim the money I sent him for postage via Paypal and on ebay I can't really do anything because he refunded the costs of purchase, so I got well and truly sapped.

I just wanted to tell anyone else in this position that not to send any Postage costs directly to the sellers email on Paypal, it isn't covered and I'm not sure if it would be if they requested money via them either, you can't open a case as its not a purchase. 

[023mjc · Accepted solution]

If he knows his way around the system like that, he's probably not new.  Just has a new account.