So last week I was so happy to get this used iPhone sold on Ebay. This is the 3rd time I’ve tried to sell this same iPhone. It’s been about a 3 month effort to sell this iPhone. Part of me feels like chucking this iPhone out the window, except for the fact it’s not my iPhone. I’m doing this as a favor for a friend. It was all part of a help someone else out and feel good effort. But this helping out is getting really ridiculous for me. I’ve sold 3 other iPhones no problem on eBay, but this iPhone seems cursed!!
A couple of weeks ago the buyer was a fraudulent buyer and got canned by the eBay fraud center a couple days after the person won the auction without making a payment. Then this time, I was so excited when I got notice of payment from PayPal right away. With my prior iPhone sales I’m used to immediate ASAP payments, and so this was looking good.
Then I got notice from PayPal that this was paid by a check and so I needed to wait a week for the check to clear. I think, “Hmmm? Oh well that’s OK.”
Then Ebay says the buyer is not registered. I think, “hugh?” I try to contact Ebay’s customer live chat support and I end up being #100 in line with well over an hour to get thru. I give up.
Then I try again and have a tough time getting to the live chat again. Ebay sets up all sorts of hurdles in your way by trying to have the system answer your questions with a list of possible answers and withholding any email or live chat options. So the only way you can get thru is to give it a question that stumps the automated system badly. Even if you don’t get your questions answered, you need to convince the system that it hasn’t answered your question. It’s not enough to just stump it, you must ask questions of sufficient severity to convince it to give you the option for a live chat. So this time I started to convince eBay system, and somehow it responded that it cancelled the transaction, closed the case and refunded my money. This was not what I wanted.
Then with further effort I am able to chat with eBay customer service. They then tell me that some unusual issues happened that resulted in a legitimate buyer becoming unregistered. I spend over an hour chatting with the customer support person, who originally encourages me to ship the iPhone, despite this uncomfortable feeling. After an hour they conclude that it’s impossible to salvage this legitimate transaction and even though payment is coming to me, that events have already been set in motion that will reverse the payment from my account. NOOOOO!!!!
Then the customer service person stated I should abandon this whole transaction and start all over again. I shouldn’t bother waiting for the buyers check to clear, because even it does clear, it will eventually be cancelled by PayPal when it works it way thru the PayPal process and all payment will be reversed. AhhhhhhAAAA!! The customer service person apologized for my frustration.
I’m really getting dragged over the coals in experiencing all the different kinds of things that can go wrong with selling on eBay.