I had a similar thing happen to me a couple of years back. I was in the market for a Pioneer CDJ (essentially a turntable that plays cds for the old yins
), I decided to get one on eBay from America to try and save some $ due to the great exchange rate at the time. The UK RRP at the time was £900 and I got it in the auction for £700 + £45 P&P, the seller seemed reputable and had 100% positive feedback at the time. It takes 4 weeks for my CDJ to arrive and when it does it doesn"t work at all. I try contacting the seller and get no response for a week so decide to contact PayPal as in the time since I won the auction the seller managed to rack up A LOT of negative feedback then become *no longer a registered user* on ebay!
I file a dispute asking for a refund and i"ll send back the item. PayPal say I need to come to an agreement with the seller, seller tells me (via PayPal customer service) to send item back and once it arrives he will refund. I tell PayPal customer service I am not willing to do so as I"m not confident of him giving back money due to his current status on ebay and they tell me it"s the only way. This is despite the fact I have 100% feedback and the last 20+ feedback responses left on his ebay page are negative (and have came in the space of a couple of weeks)! PayPal refuse to budge and close the dispute swiftly afterwards.
Last time I ever used PayPal.
Ended up getting the CDJ fixed for £150 from a friend who only charged for parts. Despite being advertised as and looking brand new my friend said it definitely wasn"t. So in the end I got a second hand CDJ for the same price I would"ve got a brand new UK model. Lesson learned though and i"ve not had any problems with the machine since...