eBay negligent for not removing a reported fraudulent listing prior to sale?

[pazstone]

I recently bought a Saxophone of eBay. I was logged onto eBay Uk and limited my search to items in the UK only. The listing stated that due to the value of the item £3667 payment must be via Bank transfer. I won and paid, stupidly, by transfer. Hence the item never existed and the seller disappeared.

 

The item was listed with a Scottish post code and the seller had stated that I could collect in person but he banked that it would be too far for me to travel to do so. Turns out that the sellers account was registered in the U.S. but had been hacked by someone based in Spain (Police) told me this. eBay UK wash their hands of it saying that the deal was done on the U.S. site so I have to deal with them. This is despite me being logged into eBay.co.uk

 

The key point in this is that shortly after losing my money I left negative feedback on the seller. This enabled other users to identify me and a kind gent got in touch with me to say that he had reported the item twice, days before the sale, as being suspicious. We have records of the reports to eBay and they did nothing about it. The same gent reported the same suspicious item in November last year and eBay removed the item.

 

I know I have no eBay Buyer Protection because I didn't use Paypal but I raised a Case to eBay U.S. requesting a refund on the grounds that they failed to take action to protect me by removing the item when it was reported as being suspicious. It took them 10 days to the decide in favour of the seller because the item was still marked as 'Unpaid'!.

 

I appealled the decision stating that it appears as unpaid because the seller hasn't marked it as 'Paid' even though he has the money (I have Bank Transfer proof), also, I was not suspicious because the Bank details given to me for the transfer were to an account at Lloyds Bank in the UK. The money was then transferred out of the country immediately, eBay then closed the appeal saying that I could not get a refund because I didn't use Paypal. They completely ignored my detailed report and made no comment as to why they had taken no action.

 

At the point where I realised that it was fraud, I raised the alarm on a live eBay chat and it took only 5 minutes for a Chatroom guy to identify that a serious problem had occured with the Sellers Account. So why did eBay miss this when the item's were reported as being suspicious, prior to the sale ending.

 

I now feel that I have no option but to take eBay to Court in some way. I have asked them for an address to where I can deliver legal papers and they gave me their Luxembourg address.

 

Can anyone give me advice on how to go about this and do I have a case against eBay for not taking action to remove the item. The gent that contacted me has agreed that he is willing to act as a witness and stand up in court if necessary.

[andydd]

Hi.

 

First things first, if you are going to pursue legal action then you will need an address, Im unclear as to whether the Luxembourg address will suffice, but people have taken legal action against ebay (and won) so clearly it is possible.

 

You will then need some basis for your claim against them, its not really clear what that may be, but it may well exist, in common law or ebay's T&C's, ebya themselves do offer some protection reagrdkess of whether you use paypal, it would be worth reading their T&C's.

 

Clearly you were rather foolish to use a bank transfer for such a large sum of money and not using paypal (it's irrelevant that it was a large amount).

 

Andy