8

I’m sorry this happened to you.

But to play devil’s advocate…this is why you never deal with anyone on an eBay listing outside of eBay. Keep all correspondence written within Ebay’s messaging system, pay with paypal through eBay, etc. Even if someone gives you a phone number, only call it after you’ve gone through the proper channels of obtaining the number from eBay, and that is a last resort. eBay has done a lot to set up systems to prevent fraud (at least for buyers), but if you go outside of that, there isn’t much they can do. They can close his account, but there isn’t much to prevent him from making a new one and doing it again.

Even making a purchase through Paypal isn’t enough to really help you. They can help to research the transaction and may be able to get your money back, but they don’t likely have a record of discourse between the buyer and seller, just the record of the payment. I’ve picked up a few things from Gearslutz via Paypal, but that was only because it was with longstanding members there and not someone with no post history. I’ve also purchased one item found on eBay locally and outside of eBay, but that was at a local pawn shop where I could check it out first hand.