Bad eBay Seller, Bad eBay, Piss-Poor PayPal, VISA Good

I bought some electronic parts on eBay from seller gowin_electronic in China:

They are defective.

I sent gowin_electronic a polite message without opening a complaint.

The TL084s and TL082s that you sent me are bad. I tested 5 of each type.

The circuit I used for testing the TL084s is in Figure 1. The circuit for testing the TL082s is in Figure 2.

The TL084s and TL082s that I bought from another company work fine. See Figure 3.

The TL084s and TL082s that you sent me have a very slow slew rate and do not meet the parts’ specifications. They are not even close.  See Figure 4.

Please send me a full refund.

JM

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Seller gowin_electronic ignored me so I gave him negative feedback and opened a complaint with eBay.

That got seller gowin_electronic’s attention.

The seller replied to you

Hi Jed,

gowin_electronic sent you a message about your request:

Hi , we are sorry for the inconvenience . first we have replied you , second ,no other customers complain about this . if you can't use , kindly return it back , we will check . thanks

To reply now, see the request details.

If you haven't agreed on a solution by May 05, 2018, you can ask us to step in and help. If you and your seller need more time to work things out, your request will stay open until Jun 13, 2018.

Seller gowin_electronic sent me a return shipping label and a return shipping address.

I packaged up the parts and went to the Post Office.

Unfortunately, the return shipping label did not have any postage on it. It would have cost me $49 to send it.

Also, the postal clerk wasn’t sure if the Post Office could send a package whose address was mostly in Chinese.

I contacted USPS by email and asked them.

My question:

I have a return shipping label from an ebay vendor in China. Does that mean they are paying for the shipping cost? 2. Most of the return address is in Chinese (except for the city). Will USPS accept a shipping label that is mostly in Chinese?

They replied:

RomantizDear JED,

Thank you for contacting the USPS® Internet Customer Care Center.

Does the shipping label have Romanticize translation?

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact us again.

Thank you for emailing your Postal Service™,

USPS Internet Customer Care Center

Their answer is basically illiterate but I think they said No.

Because of the stage that my complaint was in I could not communicate with eBay through their Web site but I found their phone number: 1-866-540-3229.

Amazingly, I was able to talk to someone right away.

They weren’t very helpful. After explaining the problem she said I needed to talk to the Returns Department and transferred me.

By now I have lost track of all I times I had to call eBay. Sometimes I was told I had to talk to the Returns Department, sometimes I was told I had to talk to the Escalation Department. When I was transferred I asked if I was talking to the Returns Department or the Escalation Department and I was told that they are both departments. Once I was hung up on.

They did all agree that the Return Shipping Label was invalid.

At one point they said they would give me a refund.

The next day they said No, they wouldn’t, because I had opened a dispute with PayPal.

I had opened the dispute with PayPal because I wasn’t getting anywhere with eBay after spending several hours on the phone with them over several days.

PayPal is worse than eBay.

This is what PayPal decided

Hello Jed Margolin,

You’re eligible for a refund of $7.86 USD once you return the item(s) associated with this transaction. You must return the item(s) before May 26, 2018. Before you do so, please read our instructions carefully.

To receive your refund, you need to:

Return the item(s) to the seller at the address we provide. If you purchased multiple items with this one transaction, you may only be required to return specific items. Please return the specific items listed below as instructed. If no specific items are listed in this email, then all items from this purchase must be returned in order to receive your refund.

Provide online shipment tracking information in the Resolution Center before May 26, 2018. The returned merchandise must be in the same condition as when you received it and you are responsible for any costs associated with the return. If the transaction was $750.00 USD or more, we need the seller to sign confirmation of receipt. Mark "Returned Cargo" on the outside of the package to avoid tax charges. 

Return address:

陈瑞虹

海珠区中大银岭广场, D区八街1811SA, 广州市, 广东省 510000 China

Transaction details: 

Case number: PP-006-881-929-329

Seller's name: 陈瑞虹

Seller's email: top-electronic@hotmail.com

Seller's transaction ID: 8NW0901104093260U

Transaction date: March 31, 2018

Transaction amount: -$7.86 USD

Your transaction ID: 73R79364KK515610H

Important information about return shipping

To refund your payment, we need to confirm that the merchandise was delivered to the seller. To do this, you'll need to use a shipping method that provides online tracking information. If the transaction was $750.00 USD or more, we need signature confirmation from the seller. This is an additional service that most shipping companies can provide.

After you've shipped the merchandise, log in to your PayPal account and go to the Resolution Center to enter the online tracking information. We suggest you retain a copy of the shipping label to verify the address of the shipping recipient. In some instances you may be required to provide this document to PayPal.

Once we’ve confirmed your seller has received the merchandise, we will issue your refund. The refund should reflect in your PayPal balance within 5 business days. If you paid using a card, the money will be refunded to your card. It can take up to 30 days for the refund to appear on your card statement, depending on your card issuer's timeframes.

Remember, you need to ship the merchandise and provide online tracking information in the Resolution Center before May 26, 2018. You can also cancel this claim at any time in the Resolution Center. If we don’t hear from you before the deadline, the case will be closed and you will not receive your refund.

Sincerely,

PayPal

This is bullshit.

1.  The parts are defective.

2.  A few weeks ago PayPal sent me an email. It said “Lighten the stress of Shipping costs. Return Shipping on Us can help fix the day. Activate Return Shipping on Us. Then, the next time you need to return a gift that wasn’t a hit, we can refund up to $30 in return shipping costs on 12 eligible items a year.”

I activated it but I guess defective items don’t count.

It would cost me $49 to send the defective parts back to China. Seller gowin_electronic knows it. He is a scam artist.

By then I had already called my credit card company to dispute the charge and they handled it in about five minutes.

We will see how that goes.

There was another problem with eBay. Every time I called I was greeted with the message,

“I see you have a Seller Restriction on your account. Is this what you’re calling about?”

For an mp3 of the message click here.

I would ask the eBay agents about it and they would always say that there was no Seller’s Restriction on my account. (I don’t sell things on eBay.)

Eventually they got tired of my asking about it and they said that the software had recently been upgraded and there was bug in the new software.

But on one of my calls the eBay agent said I should contact my Internet Service Provider about the problem. I asked him why, since it was eBay’s  message over the public switched telephone network. It didn’t have anything to do with my Internet Service Provider. Then he told me to contact my Phone Company.

I told him that his suggestions were insane. It was right after that call that I opened the dispute with PayPal.

So, eBay seller gowin_electronic is a scam artist. I wonder if he has other eBay user names.

eBay is crappy.

PayPal is complete Shit.

My VISA credit card company is great (so far).

One last thing.

Every time I called eBay (1-866-540-3229) they answered the phone right away. No waiting in a queue.

Thinking back about my numerous calls I began to wonder if I had been talking to an AI.

I called them one last time and asked: Are you a human biological entity or are you an AI? 

Naturally, if they were an AI they would be programmed to say “human.” which she did.

I said, “Well, let’s find out.”

I told her that I was going to read her a short sentence and ask her one question about it.

“In order to be effective an AI needs a good speech recognition program. One of the primary problems with speech recognition is How To Wreck A Nice Beach.”

{pause}

Now, what was the last word in the sentence that I just read to you?

I had said the last part of the test sentence very clearly and distinctly. At her request I even said it twice.

She said the last word was “speech.”

She failed the test just like most speech recognition programs that have not been specifically programmed to recognize the phrase in order to pass the test, also known as cheating.

eBay customer service is an AI.

Jed Margolin

Virginia City Highlands, Nevada

May 16, 2018