What action to take against an eBay buyer

[Bronwyn78]

I sold a laptop on eBay back in September of 2008, September 4 to be exact! The item ended up getting lost in the mail and wasn't delivered to the man who purchased it in Houston until the week the hurricanes hit last fall and he was evacuated. Finally some time in October I heard from him that he had received the laptop but that it wouldn't always turn on. I had guaranteed it to be not dead on arrival. I was concerned that it might have been damaged in shipping and wanted the buyer to take the laptop to an Apple store (it was an Apple laptop) he said he would.

Then he opened a case against me on eBay on October 31 saying the machine was dead and that he wanted his money back. I again asked him to at least visit an Apple store to get a diagnosis for the machine. He eventually said he couldn't do that, that he didn't have time for "this" and stopped replying. The case closed on Dec-04-08 at 17:22:24 PST for the reason: This case is now closed. Cases are automatically closed 90 days after the listing ends.

I thought the whole thing was over. In the middle of January I log into my paypal account to check on something and see that I've gone negative $500+ and that a case has been opened against me. It turns out on December 22 he filed a claim with his credit card company and they did a chargeback to paypal who in turn placed a chargeback on me. I've provided paypal with everything I can to remedy the situation and needless to say I'm sitting here, 6 months after the date the laptop was sold with no machine and no money and feeling ripped off.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do to protect my own rights, and while I don't want to end up costing myself more money by suing, I feel like I'm being taken complete advantage of here. Legally what can I do? He lives in Texas and I live in VA, how does that work? The eBay transaction is so old that it doesn't even exist on their site anymore and I had to save the resolution center case history so it wouldn't delete itself. I'm at my wit's end.

To top it all off, paypal has their collections department after me for the $500+ I'm negative and I certainly don't have that kind of money laying around. As a seller I have to have some rights ... I just don't know what to do to protect myself and to get my money back.

I'm also leery of accepting the laptop back because at this point I don't trust that it would be working when he returned it to me ... Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Bronwyn

Hi,
I am a powerseller on eBay as well. I lose over $1500 a year on lost, stolen, damaged and fraud. I spoke with eBay and paypal after charge backs and many disputes from 1 or 2 feedback buyers with nothing to my favor eBay and paypal are doing all they can to have buyers and totally neglecting there fact of existence (the sellers). Any buyer can do anything at any point of time and get away with, as long as it is in the "eBay regulations". They don't really care that the buyer sent you back whatever they want.

I have got to a point where I don't even call eBay, they just can't do anything. Unless your a 10,000 feedback and up.

Please let me know if you find anything that can be done.