How to get some easy publicity for your eBay-wannabee auction website: refund a seller who didn’t read Paypal’s T&Cs before signing up. Hampshire man Alan Spicer sold a £249 mobile phone on eBay last year. He then lost the recorded delivery slip. When the buyer’s credit card turned out to be stolen, Paypal demanded that he either prove delivery, or give back the money: he refused, and they sent the debt collectors round. Mr Spicer said:
“The small print may have said this is what happens when a fraudulent payment is carried out. But I had no idea and I still think it is very unfair. It’s not my fault that it was a fraudulent card.”
Perhaps not. But it’s his fault he didn’t keep the recorded delivery documentation, and his fault he didn’t actually read Paypal’s small print before he opened the account.
Fortunately for Mr Spicer, his cries of foul came to the ears of new auction website For Sale.co.uk, who most generously agreed to give him the money he’d lost on the phone deal. Pretty cheap for an advert in a national Sunday paper, that.
As for For Sale themselves, well, their logo is an oddly familiar combination of four primary colours. It’s not quite clear that they’re going to offer anything different to eBay at all, though as their “send me an email when your site is open” box doesn’t appear to work, they’ve obviously modelled themselves very closely on eBay’s consistently non-functional site.
One Response
I wish I had the time to read the Paypal User Agreement along with the 20 or so policy amendments,sadly I don’t. Nice touch by forsale.co.uk, sadly though they will fall by the wayside, domain name worth a few bob though.