WonderGamer.net

barrtubwel0

Blacklists Boycotts Downloads Games Reviews

Games eBay IP Phone Steam Twitch Viruses

eBay seller barrtubwel0 is an extremely impatient seller who literally canceled 2 won auctions in under 18 hours from those auctions ending (just over 3 hours after seller agreed to combining the shipping) using a false reason to have it canceled with eBay.

Bids were made on the following listings on 5/6/2017 at approximately 2:12 AM Mountain Time, won at $162.50 for item number 201906467608 & $132.50 for item number 201906468613 at approximately 7:45 AM.  The seller was contacted early that morning to see if the items could have combined shipping:

Both of these listings were won, both have a shipping charge of $13.60. Can I ask whether both packages can be shipped together & combine the shipping into one package so it s only being paid once rather than twice?

He got back to me at 9:17 PM stating that the combined shipping would be $15 & the final total for the entire order (including shipping) would be $310:

My position in this order was as a middleman & the buyer (my friend) stated he was going to be dropping off the money later that day; I was intending on paying it once he had dropped off the money.  I found out before he got the chance to drop it off that he had lost his wallet during his delivery job however, so I (foolishly) contacted the seller to let him know that payment might be a bit delayed so we could get some matters sorted out:

Thanks for combining those, although I'm afraid we have a bit of an issue on our side. The friend that had me order these for him (my position being a middleman on this order) seems to have lost his wallet today, unfortunately before he managed to get over here to pay for the order. Because of this, he had no bank card/ID (the latter being worse given he's a driver) to get the money out of his bank to pay for it. I guarantee you will get your money, it just may take a little longer than I would have preferred (normally I have it paid immediately, within 24 hours if an auction or best offer). He believes he can bring the money on Monday, he might drop off his PlayStation 3 later tonight (I suggested I could hold onto that as collateral), which means you'd have it paid before tomorrow morning if he does. Sorry for the inconvenience, but these things happen at the worst of times...

That message was sent at 10:33 PM, I received a response from the seller at 11:09 PM stating the following:

Not a problem.
Please submit a "Cancel Order" on both and I will cancel these and simply re-list them.

Thanks for being honest and have a great night :).

Barry

Apparently this was a polite means of saying he didn't want to deal with it & not getting himself in trouble for prematurely canceling it himself, as is proven further down the line.  I sent him another message at 12 AM on 5/7/2017 (after getting woken up by the text from my friend) stating that I would cover the rest of the amount just to get it paid, this message getting finished up & sent as a commotion was starting to make noise outside of my house:

He's trying to dig up the rest of it now, I just received a text from him (while I was in bed & asleep, almost didn't hear it) that he's only $40 short now, I'm just going to forward him the rest of it & get it paid off, he'll need to get this matter sorted out before I order anything else for him...

I was intending on paying it directly after sending that message, but considering the commotion outside deterred me from getting it done in a timely manner (nearly having to call the police), I got back in about 1 AM to find that the seller had canceled the order at 12:22 AM using the reason of Buyer asked to cancel the order:

He followed this up with the following reply only 5 minutes later:

Forget it. The order's have been canceled. I don't need the hassle.

Those bundles were quickly relisted after he canceled them under the false reason & sending that retaliatory response:

The fact of the matter was that the buyer was trying to get me to cancel it so he wouldn't get penalized over it, but instead he put in a claim to have it canceled under the allegations that I wanted it canceled, which wasn't accurate & I was trying to complete the purchase before the seller flipped out.  The ironic thing about this is:

eBay policy is you have 72 hours to pay; if I had not contacted him, him jumping the gun would have been his penalty.  In this case he used a false reason to cancel the order prematurely, so he's in violation of eBay policy for not waiting the 72 hours before cancellation & I would have contacted eBay tonight to discuss the matter before writing this review of the seller, if not for the fact that their offices are closed at this hour.  I intend on making a complaint with eBay regardless.  I don't intend on leaving negative feedback because I did leave the option of cancellation up to the seller, however the fact it was processed under false reasons is the reason why this article was written & I could still give the seller negative feedback if hostility goes any further beyond what I expect to be my final contact with him (after this review is published, before I inform him about it).  The only way this review will be removed is if we still have the option of getting both those items at the same quoted price, which we could if my buyer has the money & wants to get it at the Buy It Now price that the seller currently has it listed at.  Currently the seller has not blocked my account from buying from him after he cancelled the order, so a reorder (if you can call it that, I don't think that's accurate when he canceled the previous order against eBay ToS) is still possible (if he doesn't just flat out cancel it right off the bat after being placed), however I expect after he sees this review, he's going to quickly block it just like a number of other sellers have on defective returns they didn't agree with.  If it comes down to further retaliatory hostility or an account block (as a buyer), I'm expecting to leave that negative feedback so people are aware how impatient this seller is.

UPDATE:  Seller was contacted with the following response, pointing out this seller review, as being a result of his actions:

Wow are you impatient... Well fine, let's do it this way then. You have broken eBay ToS by not allowing 72 hours for payment. Furthermore the reason the cancellation was processed was false & I intend on filing a complaint with eBay during business hours for the cancellation under a false reason. I might mention that my sister also works for the fraud department of eBay, however I don't think I'm going to attempt to contact her about it, it doesn't usually go anywhere when I do try to talk to her about anything personal on eBay.

I won't be leaving negative feedback for the time being, but that's still an option if things continue to escalate; I have however written a seller review about this on my personal site. I took more of an issue with this situation due the false reason for cancellation of the order & this is explained in detail at http://www.wondergamer.net/blacklists/ebay_barrtubwel0.htm . I don't expect it will be removed, however there's still that possibility if things get resolved, not that I expect they will be because it think this matter is beyond the point where it can be resolved, especially since you have already relisted the items & will likely be grabbed before I get the money from my seller (he estimated after 2:20 PM today with the additional $40 I was going to forward him, still would have been before you were intending on shipping it) to reorder them via Buy It Now, however I sent him a text when I noticed the cancellation & he probably won't be coming now.

This would have been paid for directly after I sent the last response if not for the commotion going on outside of my house that I nearly had to call the police on; you were trying to avoid hassle by canceling the order, but you're going to get hassle one way or another & you would have been better waiting the period allotted by eBay to get it paid rather than canceling the order prematurely.

As for how eBay is going to see it when I file the complaint, that's another matter to be determined after it happens; it's not something I can really comment on until it's happened & it's probably unlikely eBay will disclose what happens as a result of the complaint, however I can still disclose the details regarding the discussion here once it's been taken care of.

UPDATE:  I later found out that leaving feedback on an unpaid order was not an option, but if the situation doesn't get resolved, this review won't be removed.  Unfortunately the situation is likely beyond being able to be resolved due to the seller canceling the order, unless the complaint against him forces him to reopen the order, but with the items that we won already relisted on eBay, that slim chance of it being resolved before they are grabbed by somebody else is like praying for an oasis in a desert.  I really don't expect the situation to be resolved, I can only hope his account gets penalized after I file the complaint to eBay for violation of eBay ToS & manipulation of eBay policy (basically breaking policy) through false/fraudulent claims.

UPDATE:  eBay Customer Service was contacted within the first minute of their business hours (literally watching the clock & refreshing the page to get the call option at 6 AM Mountain Time, 5 AM Pacific Time).  I explained the situation to the representative that the won auctions were canceled within the first 18 hours under the false statement that I had requested the order to be canceled.  I also told them specifically about this review, which I think they were already aware of as they stated they could see the discussion between me & the seller.  I was put on hold a few times so they could further investigate the matter.

The outcome of this call was that seeing as the invoice was canceled, there was nothing that could be done about it on their end; I could try to work it out with the seller, however I find that highly unlikely, especially after throwing this review in his face, but he broke eBay ToS, I'm going to let potential buyers know about it to avoid him if they don't want this kind of conceited attitude towards tardy payments.  The other thing the representative stated was that seeing as it was canceled within the first 72 hours (time allotted by eBay to receive payment; in reality, it was canceled within the first 18 hours, really only 3 hours after the contact back about merging the shipping), his account has already been penalized for canceling the order, regardless of the reason he gave.

The other thing I asked about was if he was allowed to resell it when he had prematurely canceled the order against eBay ToS.  The representative stated that there is the possibility the listing will be pulled & I asked if that would be the fraud department doing that, stating that I had a sister that worked in the fraud department of eBay; the representative confirmed that to be the case.  I do know from experience that my contact to my sister on personal matters really has never resulted in anything fruitful (other than some tips on how to deal with the problem through standard eBay protocol), but from what my sister has stated about some of the things that have been removed from eBay, I think I'm pretty confident with the logs of the cancellation (including timeframe after order was placed), complaint filed today & the fact it was relisted so quickly, there's a good chance the relisted items will get pulled, likely with an additional penalty against the sellers account.

What it comes down to is if the seller can't relist it on eBay (meaning the listings he's already relisted get pulled), he's either going to need to attempt to resell them on another site, locally or directly to the individuals he screwed over (us) if he wants to get any money out of those items.  The problem with trying to complete what he canceled with us is I won't be willing to buy them from him outside of eBay, given I have a feeling I'm going to need to make use of eBay Buyer Protection if I find any are defective (it already states in his listing the games are untested), so I think trying to get these from him again (outside of an eBay purchase) is out of the question.

The suggestion by the representative was that I should try to find a similar listing by another seller or work with this seller & get him to complete the original purchase, but the only way this would actually be possible would be to have him relist both listings in the same listing & give the same stated shipping price in a new listing, where if he's gotten penalized because of the previous actions, not allowing him to relist it, there's really no way to get the item with the guarantee of eBay Buyer Protection included on it.  No, I think it's obvious this is a seller we will be avoiding in the future, despite what he may have listed & my buyers (when I'm a middleman) or myself may have interest in that he's selling, I won't allow purchases from his profile to be done on my account anymore.  Depending on how often this kind of thing happens on his account, I would assume it accumulates & sooner or later he will lose his account, I'm kind of hoping this situation with us puts the nail in the coffin.

UPDATE:  Directly after I had published the last update, I noticed a new IP address in my visitor logs viewing this page (up until now, it was only my own IP address & Facebook IPs; Facebook IPs were only in the list to generate a preview because I sent a link to the page to my buyer, the one requesting I bid on these in the beginning); I knew this either had to be eBay or the seller, as I hadn't submitted this page to search engines yet (search engine bots/crawlers are pretty easy to determine anyways).  I cross-referenced the IP address for eBay & determined that the IP address did not belong to eBay; I later determined that the IP address was of the seller, tracing it to the global location on his listings on eBay.  One other thing I noticed was the additional listings of those same items we got screwed on had ended; I'm not certain if the seller himself ended them, eBay contacted him about violation of ToS when (if) they pulled the listings themselves or somebody just had the misfortune of purchasing them from him (hopefully eBay will catch that if somebody tried to buy them).  I'm also checking  his items on his profile to see if he does end up blocking selling to my profile (this is easy enough to check by simply trying to add an item from their profile to your cart, you'll get an error if you're blocked), as that will only be further information for this article, but I don't intend on buying from this seller again, so it won't really matter if he blocks me or not as I'm going to be adding the seller to my do not purchase blacklist (this is different from the one on this site).

I'm expecting contact from the seller regarding this, most likely retaliation to complaints filed against him with eBay, penalties as a result of his actions & publication of what happened.  While it is highly unlikely, if he did unlist those items himself, it's possible he might try to contact me to complete what he previously canceled, but if it's outside of eBay policy, I'm not going to be willing to follow through with it without some sort of insurance (that would be eBay Buyer Protection if done through eBay).  I suppose this shows how a seller can shoot himself in the foot & chase off buyers at the same time; he probably won't be able to sell those games on eBay as they'll keep pulling the listing, so perhaps he'll learn from this & not allow his impatience to get the better of him in future listings (if his account don't get banned, that is).

UPDATE:  I later determined that the new listings were actually pulled rather than sold (although by who is still undetermined, I'm expecting eBay).  Seems loading the site on your phone gives a little further information beyond what you can get from a PC browser, the one thing in particular was that the mobile portion of the eBay site tells you if the item sold or not (this was the case with the original listing that we won...and lost after being canceled, but the relistings did not state they had sold, where accessing the listing over Firefox on my PC said they had).

I got a call from my friend later about this (while I was trying to catch up on sleep, probably didn't even get 2 hours of sleep due to dealing with this situation all night), as expected, he was disappointed it had come down to this.  Currently I can't get a hold of him on the phone, so not sure if he's just busy or upset that he can no longer get those items.  I would expect blame is being put on me for it getting canceled & perhaps to some degree that's accurate, as I tried to give a heads up to the seller when the invoice wasn't immediately paid, but my friend was already aware there was a possibility that it could have been canceled when I discussed this with him the day he lost his wallet.  However it probably would have gotten canceled regardless of whether I contacted the seller or not, just maybe not as quick, as it's pretty obvious he had no patience for late payments (even if what was stated was that it wouldn't be immediate, not that it was going to be late), so we likely would have gotten the same results regardless.  The difference is I would expect if I wasn't up front with the seller, I probably would have gotten negative feedback from them (I'm kind of surprised I didn't) & this was one thing I pointed out to my buyer, that if I got negative feedback due to late payment, I wouldn't even be making Bids or Best Offers unless I had the money first (currently I only require the money in hand on Buy It Now orders; Bids & Best Offers aren't guaranteed, so I don't require I have the money in hand when I attempt to bid or make an offer, but that changes if I get negative feedback for that reason).  I don't charge fees for being a middleman, but I have gotten stuck with a bill for a computer I got out of pawn for this same friend for nearly 2 years in the past (the majority of it finally getting paid off as a trade-in on computer hardware I needed at the time), so I tightened the gap a bit on leisure spending when I stated I needed the money before I would make a Buy It Now order.

Last updated 5/7/2017


Back Home Up Next