Droid Craziness (revised)

So here's the update on the Droid Drama.

I got the new digitizer bought from Amazon.com, and it worked perfectly. So I contacted the Ebay seller and told him it works, so you owe me $20. He said okay, and he'd post it to my Paypal account. That was on Thursday, Dec. 16. I heard nothing else from him.

On Monday I received a message from Ebay Buyer Protection, checking on the status of my claim - they knew he'd offered me $20 but wanted to know whether I 'officially' accepted the offer, as if so, he'd have three days to post the refund from the time I 'officially' accepted through Ebay's resolution center.

I told them I had in fact accepted the offer, and they said he then had until Dec. 23 to post my refund.

Dec. 23 was winding away, and I'd received no refund, nor heard anything from him. But - to be fair - I was going to wait until today (the 24th) to do anything, as technically he had until midnight on the 23rd to post the refund.

But meanwhile, I got another message from Ebay Buyer Protection yesterday asking if the matter was resolved, or if I wanted to escalate the case to customer service. I considered just doing that, but - still giving the guy the benefit of the doubt - thought I'd make one last effort to contact him before doing so (as once you escalate it, it's out of your hands - you no longer negotiate with the seller, and Ebay simply makes a decision, and everyone has to live with it).

So I wrote the seller another email asking about my refund.

He responded last night, telling me that Paypal was holding the $40 I'd originally paid, so he couldn't refund my money because he didn't have access to it, and I'd have to "close my complaint" before they'd release the funds so he could refund my money.

I was extremely skeptical of that claim, so first of all, I went and checked, and Paypal had paid the guy on November 24 - almost a month ago. I wrote him back an email saying only "You were paid on November 24."

Meanwhile, I went back to the Ebay Buyer Protection site and did in fact select the option to escalate my complaint. I explained all that had happened, and at the end of the message, I told Ebay that I'd tried to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but in light of what appeared to be him giving me the runaround, I would like to know if I was allowed to rescind my acceptance of his offer of $20, and instead ask for a refund of the entire $40. I didn't know if they'd allow it, since I'd already accepted the $20, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Ebay's Buyer Protection site popped up an automatically generated message telling me that they'd get back to me within 48 hours, though I didn't expect to hear anything that soon due to the holiday.

Less than 15 minutes later I had three new messages in my inbox. The first was from Ebay telling me that they had issued me a refund for the full $40. Wow. That was fast. And the whole amount!!

The second one was from Paypal telling me that I'd be receiving the refund of $40, and that processing could take a couple of days.

The third was from the seller (who, since all these messages came in within one minute of each other, obviously didn't realize what Ebay had done yet), telling me that oh yeah, he did get paid on November 24, but then when I initiated my complaint, Paypal "took the money back" and was holding it.

I ignored his message and thought that was the end of it, until 15 minutes later when I received another couple of messages - one from the seller saying that Paypal had 'just' released the money, and so he had refunded $20 to my Paypal account; and a second from Paypal telling me I had received $20 in my account.

Well, hell. Now I've got the seller's $20 refund sitting in my Paypal account, and Ebay's $40 refund on the way.

The seller's statement that Paypal had "just" released the money made me wonder if I was wrong, and in fact, there had been a hold on it - which of course, when Ebay notified them the case was resolved, would have been released right about the time he said it was.

But none of this makes any sense whatsoever. First of all, while Ebay and Paypal do a lot of business, they aren't the same company, so why would Paypal be able to unilaterally put a hold on someone's already-paid money pending the outcome of a complaint with Ebay? And since not everyone leaves money sit in their Paypal account, it seems a rather arbitrary kind of thing - for people who have already withdrawn the money, they are subject to no hold.

But even if they can do that, when I sent Ebay my last message, I explained all of that - that the seller claimed he couldn't post my refund because Paypal had a hold on the money. So if that was true, why wouldn't Ebay have told me, yeah, that's true, and then done something about it - instead of almost immediately just issuing me the full refund? If they knew the seller was telling the truth, it would seem that it would make more sense for them to have (a) told me that, and (b) dealt with the money already being held, rather than initiate a brand new refund directly from Ebay, and then release the Seller's entire $40 back to him.

Second of all, on Monday Ebay told me the seller would have three days to post my refund to my Paypal account. Well, if they knew they'd initiated a hold on the money, why would they expect him to be able to post the refund, knowing they had a hold on the money? The only point to placing a hold on the money would be to ensure it was available if a refund was ordered - so if that was what happened, once the seller and I had agreed to a refund of $20, why not just use the money they'd put the hold on, and instruct Paypal to refund me $20 of the money they were holding, instead of trying to make the seller pony up another $20 before they'd release the original payment?

Third, the seller claimed that the hold hadn't been placed on the money till I initiated my complaint, which was on December 8. Well, if he knew two weeks ago they'd put a hold on the money, why did he never mention that before? When I told him the new digitizer works, so you owe me $20, he said he'd post it to my Paypal account - not "I'll post this to your Paypal account when you release the hold on the money."

Fourth, had I closed my claim like he stated, and then he hadn't paid, I would have had no recourse whatsoever, as once you close a claim you agree that the matter has been completely resolved and you will take no further action. So why would Ebay / Paypal have it set up that you have to close your claim to release the funds to complete the transaction? That makes no sense at all. If Paypal was holding the money because of this claim, it only makes sense that they would allow the release of the funds once an agreement had been reached, but before expecting a person to close their claim. You can't close your claim and state everything has been resolved before you've actually received the refund you negotiated.

I'm only going on about all that because my inherently overly-honest nature makes me uncomfortable with basically telling Ebay I thought the guy was a flaming liar, then wondering (when he immediately posted the $20 refund) whether I was mistaken. I wouldn't like to have called someone a liar if I was wrong.

But I can't see any of this making any damned sense at all.

Well, anyway - I don't see any way to figure out what really happened. Once Ebay's $40 refund also posts to my account, I guess I'll contact them and ask them what they want me to do with the "extra" $20 - since, if Ebay footed the bill for the $40, they may want the $20 to come back to them as reimbursement, not go back to the seller. (That's if I can figure out any way to contact them, as I was just looking around on the site, and I can't find any place to just send them an email - everything's automated forms for situations that don't apply here).

While I was impressed with how fast they resolved this issue, this has been a huge pain in the ass and a real clusterf**k, and I'm not sure I ever want to buy anything on Ebay again.

Meanwhile, the phone works perfectly with the new digitizer, as if I'd never broken it, so that's a wonderful thing.

And otherwise, I've got presents to wrap!! Merry Christmas!