I would like to bring to your notice the fraud that eBay did to me as a consumer, unnecessarily passing the days of action & making false commitments that my concerns will be taken care of, leading to a financial loss of more than 28,500/- & mental harassment of more than 40 days.
I bought a mobile phone (iPhone) through the website ebay.in on 22nd June 2012, worth Rs. 28,500/- and got the delivery on 25th June 2012, afternoon 2:00 pm. To be on the safer side I bought it with Paisa pay, guaranteeing 100% satisfaction of the consumer or entire money back. At the time of purchase eBay team did not confirm to me that if the product will be ‘not as described’ I would have to struggle for a written proof for everything. Instead they claim refund of total amount within 7 days!
Once I got the delivery I got it checked with apple customer care if the product is ‘genuine’ as claimed by the seller on eBay site. Apple care executive confirmed me that it is a ‘defective’ piece. After confirming that it is not a genuine piece, I immediately requested for my refund on eBay within half an hour at around 2:30pm. I was promised to get a call back from eBay team within 7 days but even after requesting them 3 to 4 times in those 7 days regarding the urgency of my case (as this cellphone was a birthday gift for someone), I only had to call them back on the 8th day to remind them about my case & after being on hold for more then half an hour every time, I finally made the case progress thru them.
After facing this unnecessary delay, I was told by my claim adjuster Mr. Dev Prasad Yadav (team eBay) to provide a solid proof that this product is defective & an authorized letter from any of the Merchant who deals into this product stating in written that this item is not original & not only this, the appraiser should be in the situation to prove the item is not a genuine piece!
To make this convenient, I requested eBay team to confirm the IMEI no. with apple customer care itself but supporting the seller, they denied for this & gave a timeline of 3 days to me to collect the written proofs.
Finally, as it involved my hard earned money, I ended up running all over my city and beg in front of different mobile dealers to give me a written proof for something I haven’t even bought from them!
After all my stressful & painful efforts, I called up the Apple customer care again and begged in front of them to give this in writing that the product that I have got from eBay is a defective piece. Having an excellent customer service, they extended their support to me, went out of the way to help me & provided a statement in a mail stating that the product is a ‘defective’ piece.
I forwarded the same to eBay, on the same day (3rd July 2012) so that I can get my money back as soon as possible but I got no reply from Dev Prasad in return. Worried, I continuously called them & mailed on 4th day (7th July 2012). On 6th day (9th July 2012), I finally got a mail asking me to re-ship the item to the seller again.
Meanwhile while struggling for my refund, I received mail from another buyer who had bought the same product from the same seller and was in a worse situation than me after filing his refund. He told me that he was also asked to re-ship the product and when he did the same the seller claimed that the cellphone is received in broken condition & then the seller wanted to bargain on the damaged condition of the cellphone.
I kept this concern through mail in front of my claim adjuster that in past also this seller has cheated even after receiving the product & what if he does the same with me as well or tomorrow if the seller claims something else to trap me in a situation where I cannot get my money back! I even requested them to provide me an alternate solution & if I can re-ship the item to eBay team only because if any of situation of this sort happens, I won’t be left with either my money or the product. For this, Dev Prasad assured me that nothing of this sort would happen, my case is different, & I’ll get my refund as soon as I’ll provide him the ‘Proof of Dispatch’.
Convinced with the words of my claim adjuster, I re-shipped the product with Blue Dart (on 14th July 2012) & sent the scanned receipt of courier to eBay. On (16th July 2012) the seller received the parcel & as was expected, to create a state of confusion & to block my refund, he claimed in eBay that he has received an EMPTY parcel.
To this, my claim adjuster asked me to again get this in writing, this time from Blue Dart, that an iPhone was there in the parcel. I tried to remind him of the case in past, & my regarding my concerns raised for ultimately landing in the same situation but all of no use again & he gave me a timeline of 3 days for all the written proofs!
Again, I had to beg in front of Blue Dart this time, to get a written proof, to which Blue Dart provided me with a scanned copy of ‘Proof of Delivery’ with the receivers’ signature. Also, they confirmed that they use standard Alfa-numeric codes to represent the item that they are shipping. With this I again went to eBay, provided them with courier receipt specifying the code 022(for mobile phones) & with proof of delivery (supporting intact condition of delivered parcel, if it would have been open or in damaged condition, seller himself wouldn’t have received it!)
But again, Dev Prasad declared this as insufficient & he again asked for a written declaration from Blue Dart for the shipment & delivery of IPhone supporting again seller’s claim that no phone has been received & he gave me another 3 days for this.
I again approached the Blue Dart officials and pleaded in front of them to understand the genuineness of my case and the amount of hard earned money involved into it, to which ‘Jignesh Trivedi, their Regional Customer Service Manager’ initiated an investigation and sent me a mail confirming the same exactly on the 3rd day given to me by eBay.
I forwarded the same to eBay, confirming that this matter is being investigated in Blue Dart, in return I got a surprise regarding the timeline that suddenly has become important to them even after breaching it several times themselves!
And now they closed my case from their end, denying me my refund!
I once again approached Mr. Jignesh (Blue dart) so that he can share the result of the investigation & in hope that I can still approach eBay to do justice to my case. Jignesh told me that they have confirmed this with the consignee (the seller) & now he is agreeing that he has received the cellphone in intact condition.
To support this further, he even suggested me to keep him in loop while mailing eBay that the cellphone is with the seller only. I did the same & simultaneously called Dev Prasad requesting him to confirm the same with seller & at least NOW refund me my amount as the seller is agreeing that the phone is with him only.
But instead of confirming the same with the seller he told me that I have still not submitted the declaration from Blue dart, we are closing down your case completely now, we cant give you any more time on this case and he asked me to sort this out with the seller on my own...
I have decided to go to the consumer court now to get justice !!
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