Slashdot Mirror
Been Robbed Recently? Check Ebay
fistfullast33l writes "A man from Great Neck, Long Island has been arrested on charges of stealing electronic equipment and selling it on Ebay. The police were tipped off when one of his alleged victims was searching for a replacement GPS device and found a perfect match on eBay — almost too perfect. A quick check of the serial number (note to cyber-criminals: don't post those) showed that it was the exact device that had been stolen." From the article: "Police and prosecutors were hesitant to provide details of how they determined all the devices had been stolen, but at least two of the laptops were stamped 'Property of St. John's University.' Detective Ray Cote noted that the GPS devices specifically had the addresses of the legitimate owners programmed in and police were now contacting those victims to eventually return the items."
and my stuff sold on eBay. But I got robbed *on eBay* recently. Bought an item and paid for it Dec 29th, and the seller closed their eBay account and deleted all their listings a couple days later. They have not contacted me or returned my money.
The first thing I thought was "why would eBay let some close their account and delete all listings when they still have open transactions". I mean, they let them *delete* the listings here. If you try and search for it eBay says the item number is wrong or doesn't exist. It no longer appears under my "auctions I won" either. And that's different. I've had transactions with sellers who close their eBay accounts before completing a transaction, I couldn't leave feedback once we amicably worked out our issue, but the auction listing was still accessible. Here, If I try to contact the seller eBay asks for the item number and I get the same error. It appeared at first I would have no way of proving I ever bought anything until I went into the dispute center and looked up the item there, then (and only there) it shows up. But it was "too early" to file a dispute.
Luckily, this was an actual company with a separate website/store, so I have other means of trying to reach them. I'm going to call their regular website customer service (hey, you aren't reachable through eBay anymore) tomorrow and try to get this straightened out. If I can't reach them there, it's now late enough I can dispute through eBay/Paypal.