Ebay scams against buyers and sellers

Consumerist.com is fast becoming my favorite blog to read. Here’s a recent piece about a seller who got scammed on ebay and paypal:

Complaints: Seller Gets Scammed On eBay Despite Doing Everything Right

Read the tragic tale of this screwed eBay seller over on Metafilter. He did everything Paypal told him to do to avoid being scammed when he sold a cellphone, including, when the buyer returned the item, opening it in front of a police officer. Problem was, the buyer/scammer sent back a smashed gold cellphone instead of nice $500+ cellphone that was sold. Seller protection policy should apply, right? Nope, it doesn’t cover "items not as described." Failure.

But that’s not the worst part - for that, read through the comments and see the litany of complaints from both buyers and sellers. Apparently, there are many many ways to get scammed since it appears ebay and paypal are not always particularly active in investigating, or refunding your money.

Talk about one sad and depressing thread. I use ebay from time to time, and now I’m definitely less inclined to do so.