Negative feedback for eBay sellers

[mimarsinan]

I have a word (or two) of warning about an eBay seller, and a member here, @badabumm.

I have conducted business with this seller before. On no occasion would I describe business with @badabumm as pleasant! I had to work with him only because he was the only entity who would sell rare, upgraded ThinkPad 701C systems (his signature upgrade is an AMD P5 CPU for this 486-class system).

For example, one of the earliest systems I bought arrived with a dead LCD out of the box, and it took me quite some time to convince him to repair it, with a lot of shipping money back and forth wasted, escalations to eBay, PayPal, and more. All of this was preventable, but he had done such a poor job packing the system, that it is a wonder the system arrived at all.

Eventually I ended up with an AMD 701C, but this one still has some kind of loose piece inside, which causes some kind of rattling noise anytime I pick up or move the laptop - so I don't know if it too has actually been broken somehow during shipment (although it seems to work fine so far).

I haven't had any issues with other 701Cs bought from eBay - shipping without issues, proper packaging, no hassle, friendly customer service - unlike @badabumm, who is extremely combative, lacks communication skills, and takes absolutely no responsibility for his own mistakes.

However, his latest conduct has completely gone over the top, even for @badabumm's previously established patterns. I wanted a GPU upgraded 701C (about which I found out on this forum itself), and he was the only one who offered to do it. Moreover, we also agreed upon an SSD upgrade, so this new 701C was truly going to be a one of a kind system.

Unfortunately, @badabumm made a mess of things again. For the longest time, I assumed cultural/language barriers must be at fault, but he clearly is acting out of bad faith:

1) He insisted on off-site payments (outside of eBay) for some parts upgrades, and would not cooperate until he was paid off-site. I know, this is a major red flag - but he came up with many convincing reasons (mostly based on German tax code) so I caved in.

2) He kept uploading incorrect or incomplete tracking numbers to eBay. One of this favorite tricks is to upload a tracking number which actually does show up in the system, but when you track it, it says that the package has still not been dropped off at the depot. This would go on for weeks - with a valid looking tracking number submitted, but the actual package still not delivered to the courier.

3) For some additional parts, he opened up a new auction to maximize his profits. He explained this as covering his time and expertise for the hardware upgrades, which were all of course in violation of previously negotiated agreements and prices. I refused to pay his buy-it-now prices and ended up winning the auction anyways, although it didn't earn @badabumm as much of a profit as he had hoped it would.

4) Despite my very explicit shipping instructions to not combine shipments with UPS, he combined two systems into one, which has resulted in my package getting irretrievably stuck at customs, to say nothing of extra fees and duties I would be charged even if I had been able to retrieve it. I literally emailed @badadumm multiple times asking him to send separate shipments, and his only explanation was "they combined it at the courier". Couriers do NOT combine packages on their own, they do not have that kind of authority. @badabumm clearly tried to save himself some money on shipping, despite me having paid for individual shipping for both packages.

All of this makes for a very unscrupulous dealer. At this point, I would recommend everyone to stay away from doing any kind of business with @badabumm. He might be the only guy who can do certain types of upgrades, but its really not worth it when you have someone who is so intentionally obtuse and carries so much ill will towards some of his clients.

This guy will nickel and dime you to death and then still fail to deliver your product and fail to take any responsibility for his mistakes. His latest response to me on eBay is that "buyer has been cheating on eBay several times now."

I have disputed the PayPal transaction, and escalated both on-site transactions to eBay. I knew I should have done this one month ago, but I kept giving @badabumm the benefit of the doubt, all at my expense.

Avoid him at all costs.

[RealBlackStuff]

For everybody's info:
this badabumm signed up on Sat Mar 09, 2013 5:21 pm but has NEVER been on the Forum since!
We have absolutely NO information, because this person never posted anything, and has had NO transactions here.
Location then was: Geneva, Switzerland.

Presumably you are talking about this fleaBayer: https://www.ebay.com/usr/badabumm who now has location: Munster, Germany.

Looking at the prices you paid for your eBay-items:
IBM ThinkPad 701C - Intel 486DX4-100MHz , mit originalem Zubehör und Anleitung (#401589067224) €499.-
IBM ThinkPad 701C AMD-133MHz- US-model with modem and GPU 65548-upgrade-option (#401576402431) €999.-
I would say you have been royally ripped off!
Those prices are WAY over the top, and I am sure you could have bought those cheaper and with a lot less hassle here, on our Forum!

Let this be a warning to everybody: When in doubt, CHECK and/or ASK on our Forum before you buy!

[mimarsinan]

I would have been happy to buy from the seller at even such prices, as I have before, because of the unique properties of the items he is selling.

If anyone else is able to provide this equipment with similar upgrades - CPU, GPU, SSD, please do let me know!

However the seller @badabumm is absolutely a fraud regardless of the price points, because I have not even been able to receive the materials he claims to have shipped.

[hwattys]

I bought an AMD enhanced motherboard from badabumm for the 701C probably 5 or 6 years ago (still have it) and it never worked right. I still hear from him now and then when I post 701 related stuff on eBay. I possibly damaged the motherboard during installation so I am not going to give negative feedback on it but he is a bit "different" to deal with.

[mimarsinan]

Yes, I have found it is his specialty to leave you in doubt as to whether you messed things up on your own...simply a trick of his trade, he deflects like this.

[mimarsinan]

Surprise development here - eBay dismissed one of my claims today on a technicality (requesting @badabumm to declare a customs value less than the transaction value on the site).

I had asked @badabumm to declare a customs value of 75 EUR, and he declared a customs value of 0 EUR - in his usual style of doing something other than specified, to the mutual detriment of both parties.

He also wrote earlier this week, in his own words, "...If you need any help I can write some lines, that these parts are obsolete and only for collector valueable."

So as far as I can tell, eBay should not have penalized me as he didn't follow my instructions anyways, and if a suggestion itself is a violation which neutralizes the eBay Buyer Protection Guarantee, then he himself has committed that violation once again (but I am getting to pay for it).

Has anyone run into this kind of absurd scenario before? Do you have any suggestions?

I appealed the decision, and they dismissed my appeal within minutes - which is certainly another huge irregularity.

Is it just my luck today, does anyone know how to come back from an appeal rejected in the contradictory manner I have described above?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you paid with a credit card instead of through PayPal then you can try to claim your money back through/from the credit card company.
If PayPal, you're most likely out of luck, as PayPal is (still) owned by eBay.
I don't know yet, when Adyen is going to replace PayPal, but that is moot for now.

[ajkula66]

Surprise development here - eBay dismissed one of my claims today on a technicality (requesting @badabumm to declare a customs value less than the transaction value on the site).

I honestly don't understand why you'd be surprised by feebay's decision to dismiss your claim.

You asked the seller not only to break the rules of the site, but the law as well. What they did or did not do in the regards to your request doesn't matter in the given set of circumstances.

I agree with RBS above, if your PP payment was a credit-card backed one, file a dispute with the CC company if you still can. If not, count your losses and move on.

[mimarsinan]

Are there any consequences to charging back to eBay? I wouldn't like to get black-listed there, as there's items of interest on the site from time to time.

I did get my refund from PayPal for the off-site portion of the payment the seller received, ironically!

[mimarsinan]

In a surprise development today, UPS delivered both packages to my address in Ankara this fine AM!

I am beginning to think that a lot of this brouhaha was caused by UPS:

For example, they were showing the packages as delivered on September 20th in Mersin - a city hundreds of miles from Ankara in Turkey - which was nonsense. This is probably why eBay declined my dispute as well. The tracking is now updated to show accurate delivery in Ankara as of this morning.

If UPS had also combined the packages somehow, I can see this all leading to major misunderstandings, exacerbating an already confused communication situation.

So I would also like to formally withdraw my complaint against @badabumm. I have briefly examined both the 701Cs, and from what I can tell, they both have an upgraded GPU, an SSD, and an AMD processor in one (and an Intel in another), exactly as ordered. Both have working LCDs, as ordered.

Hopefully there's no further issues to be discovered down the road!

This whole thing has been one fine mess already, but I suppose, it is a good lesson in that sometimes, people really are honest and doing the best they can, while communication issues/third parties mix everything up, and end up freaking out everyone involved.

I really don't know what else to say!

Edit: I am also resubmitting the PayPal payment which was already refunded over the weekend.

[Cigarguy]

I've experienced something similar before with packages from China. In no way did I blame the seller and just waited patiently for item. 3 months after expected delivery it came. Glad that everything worked out for you.

Sounds like seller did everything he could at his end and the shipper messed everything up. I hate UPS and will not buy the item if the only shipping option is UPS but this could have happened with any carrier. UPS is Useless Pathetic Shippers.

I'm in Canada and have never been to Turkey but have a few good friends who are Turkish whom I've smoked many cigars with. Planning to visit Turkey for the first time next March and will be bringing laptops and cigars with me.

[RealBlackStuff]

No personal attacking here!
Thread closed.