My story and suggestions for revenge
 

Hi all,

I'm new here and also to MP3 players. I recently bought 2 x MP3 players from eBay, both of which were advertised as "4 GB No Hacked". The lousy English grammar there should've alerted me to the fact that it was probably too good to be true, but the seller (eby-star) had 100% positive feedback at the time, so I thought it might be true.

Anyway, I ended up paying a total of AUS $85.05 for them both, which is not bad. Then I found they were actually only 2 GB each, through the formatting info found in these forums (ie. repartition and format, and also by looking at the chipset name itself - "AG" in part). So, I was a bit angry, but 2 x 2 GB machines for $85.05 is still a good bargain, so after e-mailing the seller for an explanation (to which he hasn't replied to date!) I let it slide. Mind you, he did always reply quickly when I had questions prior to buying, so he's obviously a lying bastard and disappeared into the ether now. He's also no longer registered on eBay -- shock, horror!

However, when formatting from Windows by right-clicking the disk icon and selecting "Format", it said 1.95 GB free but I could only copy about 470 MB of data to each. I later found another post here that said to do a format via the option found by right-clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Manage", and then clicking "Disk Management", selecting the disk, then right-clicking and doing a FAT32 format that way. Once I did this, I have been able to successfully copy 1.95 GB of songs to both players, and both players do indeed play all the songs with no problems. I can't remember the author of this tip, but thanks -- it seems to be the way to go!

Now then, as for the "revenge" part of this topic: let's assume these players were in fact only 512 MB, and the seller still doesn't reply. What can we do? I say: use PayPal's Dispute Center, and stake your claim in one of two ways depending on how you received your hacked player:

(1) If you didn't have to sign to receive your package in the post, and it was just left in your mailbox or such, then just claim you never received it and demand a full refund from PayPal.

(2) If you had to sign for it (say via courier or at your post office), and Customs hasn't inspected the package (usually evident by a sticker saying they have), then claim via PayPal that the package contained just a notepad inside, in place of the player, and that you want a FULL refund due to fraudulent shipping.

In both cases, the onus is then on the SELLER to disprove your story. Since the seller has disappeared, PayPal will be obligated to refund your money as no resolution will be possible. Some of you may say this is dishonest, but it's not really -- you were lied to by the seller in the first place, so why not lie to the seller back and show them what it's like? If enough people did this, then this fraud might get stopped by eBay and PayPal, because they won't like having to constantly refund all the buyers.

Alternatively, organize a refund through your credit card company for receiving goods that you didn't authorise. PayPal can't stop that.

thanks for the tip SJ2571. Looks like scamming sellers have stooped low enough to blatantly lie about the memory capacity... I should have known it'd come to this. Looks like sellers such as smile_plus168 and power_player88 are carrying on similar schemes. Hopefully now they can be added to our blacklist.

I noticed today my seller is now registered again with eBay, so I emailed him to ask about a partial refund because I'm not 100% happy. I'm looking for $10 in total ($5 per machine) -- I could ask for more but don't want to push it. If he agrees (he wanted to know the eBay item numbers) then I'll just leave it at that and be happy. I also noticed his latest feedback from others are for 2 GB machines, so maybe he's advertising truthfully now? Anyway, I'll keep you posted here with the result.