stung on ebay ouch!!

mattyj

Hi all
well with the weather being as dire as it is i thought it time to put away the road bike and return to mountain biking, i mainly ride road as im into triathlon but decided to return to a bit of off road.

I have allways fanced a Cannondale but couldnt afford a new one...thats when i saw a 2006 Jekll on ebay lefty fork described as good condtion with a few marks it was buy it now £599... well i paid the money and the bike arrived to say i was dissapointed would be an understatement the bike was filthy,,,,,,every componet every inch of it has some ding dent or scratch the front wheel had 5 lose spokes 2 broken the rear mech was bent and the chain ring battered...the seller had 100% feedback and seemed turstworthy i have taken the bike to my LBS who qoute a rough fiqure of £200 just to get the bike trail worthy...i contacted the seller only to received an email full of abusive language....

just wondered if this has happened to anyone else and what can i do about it?

rowlers

assuming you paid by paypal? if so raise a dispute, then escalate to a claim as you are covered up to £500 anyway (iirc). I have made a few succesful claims against items not as described.
If you didn't pay by paypal, then I guess there is not alot you can do!

mattyj

Hi yep paid by paypal and have buyer protection so will odge a claim can you explain the process

Konahed

Take pictures of it, close ups of all the broken and bashed bits, report them to paypal.

You should eventually get refunded, but unfortunately paypal do not make the seller pay return postage.

1340jas

ake photos of the packaging and any damage to the bike.
get a second opinion as to the bike versus its description on e-bay.
save the original advert, any e-mails between you and the seller.

Once you have done all that e-mail the seller and ask for an explanation regarding the poor quality against how he described it.
Its amazing how they will give a really crap excuse, which looks great when pay-pal get involved.

Remember save everything to your computer ot your e-bay account.

Konahed

In the claim just say what condition it arrived in, list all the broken bits, and you could also say how much the bike shop said it would cost to get roadworthy. Say that the listing said it was in good condition, no mention of broken bits and bent bits everywhere ("a few marks" does not mean broken and bent spokes, smashed rear mech and chainring). Paypal wont let him off with that.

carlosthejackal

Then find out where he lives and all the big lads on here will go pay him a little visit...

Papa Smurf

Among all this paypal dispute etc... Make sure you record and write down EVERYTHING.. It'll make it so much easier when it comes to answer questions Paypal will want to know, and trust me, they'll want to know...

scale20

did the seller not list any returns policy?

Yahoobedoo

You should be OK as PayPal usually side with the buyer in my experience.

Must say though that if it's the bike that I've found doing a quick search the seller did say " & is fair cosmetic condition with a couple of scuffs here & there, as you would expect from a cross country/downhill bike" - the fair bit would have had me questioning them further them via eBay as it's obviously less than mint or even good.

That said, the bit "Apart from the above the bike is in perfect working order " referring to:

"This is a well maintained bike with only a couple of very minor faults...

1. It needs a top cap for the handlebar stem, this is just a round piece of plastic which just pushes in to the round hole, these can easily be bought on ebay for a couple pounds?

2. The brakes are a little soft & could do with a bleed, dont get me wrong, they still work very well but not as perfectly as i would like. although i should warn anyone that does not know about some of these american bikes, the brake hoses are the other way around. what i mean by this is, the front brake is on the left & the back is on the right. this is something that can be swapped around by any good bike mechanic & would most likely come in with the price of a bleed?

3. It does not come with the standard remote switch on the handle bars for the lockout on the rear shock. this is something i never got on with very well so i removed it, i no longer have this. lockout is achieved by simply twisting the blue knob on the actual shock".

should be sufficient to find in your favour as broken spokes and a damaged mech don't qualify that statement.

Hope you get it sorted.

Chaka Ping

It'll be really interesting to see how this progresses, so please come back and tell us.

Sounds like you've got the guy bang to rights - so let's see how effective the paypal protection mechanism is.

Have you already left bad feedback, btw?

mattyj

Have filed claim with paypal and a have a file full of pics to show damage have not left bad feedback just yet! really gutted because i ve always wanted a cannondale jekll, if it had been £200 less to start with i would of accepted the condtion and then spent some money puttin it right any how will let you all know how it goes!

David Lund

Didn't the auction page have any pictures on it to show the bike you purchased?
Id steer clear if they didnt put pictures up.
Dave

Mattmanic

Obviously it was posted or you would have asked for your money back when it was collected. Most postal services that would transport something that large should have some insurance, so you could make a dispute with them if the paypal one falls through and claim it was damadged in transit as the seller said it was in good condition.

mattyj

yep good point .....if all else fails i will strip the frame get it powder coated and build a custom bike!

Bmjboy

Just my twopenneth regarding Ebay.

If you contact the seller again, ALWAYS do so via Ebays own messaging system as these are logged and kept on Ebay.

Dont email the guy directly outside of Ebay as this cannot be seen by Ebay.

Ive never had to personally claim via Paypal, but as with most things in life, truth pretty much always prevails and you should be covered, just keep ontop of it and as mentioned previously, try and get some independant notes/advice from your LBS on the condition of it which can be presented to someone.

On a further note, if you paid by CREDIT card, you are even more protected. Not quite so if you paid via Debit card or Paypal funds.

Good luck, I hate seeing people getting ripped off on Ebay.

milfredo

I bought a Kona Coiler Primo frame and had the same experience. I paied £500 and it was scratched but that didn't bother me, it was the worn to shite linkage that made the entire rear of the bike wobble all over the place and the fox shox was in such a bad condition it harley worked. The repair at the LBS was in excess of £170 which I made the seller pay for after I sent the invoice with a thret to claim all the money back through Paypal.

borderboy

I have had good and bad ebay dealings. I bought a specialized enduro from a chap in stockport
I paid about £600 for it looked good on the pics the bloke said he was emagrating to NZ and bike was in very g c never power washed etc

Thankfully it was cash on collection. We got there at 8 am 130 miles from home and his father said "it's in the shed and has been there since he power washed it before he left".
I thought I was hearing things power washed? and when i saw the bike
It had a lovely orange colour rear and front mech, chain was like an iron bar and it was rough as a bastard file. I said that was a bad description of vgc and was not going to pay and left it at that.
All I lost was a days pay and £40 of diesel not the £600

so lucky for me bought a spec enduro from a nice chap in colchester £700 "buy it now" and it was mint not a mark on it. cash on collection again took me a bit longer to get it but i spent hours quizing him before i bought it. He sent me more pics etc so your not on your own.
get recent pics the first bike i went for the pics were from the bike soon after he bought it and were nothing like the bike 1 year later

BigDutch

I've always found Paypal respond pretty quickly when a buyer has a serious problem like this, normally a good deal faster than they do if the seller has a problem.

How are things progressing?

pdid

Mattmanic wrote:

Obviously it was posted or you would have asked for your money back when it was collected. Most postal services that would transport something that large should have some insurance, so you could make a dispute with them if the paypal one falls through and claim it was damadged in transit as the seller said it was in good condition.

Unforunately postal insurance is provided for the sender so it would be him that could claim.

If he is behaving like a tw@t, then there's not much you can do.

Hope you sort it, I think most people have been stung on eBay before. If you bought on you credit card go through them first as, afaik, through paypal you only get a percentage of what you paid back, whereas you get full refunds from the ccard.

Phil