Ps5 scam wars an ebay story

P A R A G R A P H S
...You know walls of text are hard to read and visually repulsive, and as a result very few people will strain their eyes to actually read such blocks, right? That's one easy way to improve your writing skills - add break points every now and then so it becomes easier on the eyes and on peoples' patience and interest.
Another easy way is to remember spelling differences - I can't count the number of times I've seen "discreet" and "discrete" mixed up, or "lead" used in past tense (it's "led"), or "it's" (with the apostrophe) being used where "its" should be. Oh, and dates - not everyone uses the illogical American system, that for whatever nonsensical reason puts months before days; if you're gonna use dates where both the month and day is less than 12, just write it out in words to reduce needless ambiguity.

@RichardTheKing Your message is a bit of a wall of text as well tbh
I try to break up my posts so each paragraph is at most half the size of your message.

@The Real Jdbye I agree somewhat, but separating the second point into its own paragraph, especially when there's only two paragraphs, would make it feel...disjointed, separate, a new point instead of directly connected to the first. At least, it felt that way to me.

After reading all that, kudos. I was going to recommend opening a dispute and letting eBay handle it and asking them for a partial refund to cover the difference in cost between the disc and digital versions. It's only fair considering the seller intentionally misled you.
And please tell your wife she's an idiot for making it easy on the scammer by offering to send the console back and only getting a partial refund. No way in hell. If I have to send something back I better damn well get a full refund (minus the return costs and maybe minus shipping to me) or a replacement that actually delivers on what was expected. Sellers always try to weasel themselves out of having to provide a replacement or a full refund by offering a partial refund and that in itself is a scam.

It's just simply not worth going through all this hassle for a ps5

@RichardTheKing
Sorry about my lack of grammar and proper punctuation, it's no excuse but dyslexia runs in my family (it was weird in school taking advanced science and math classes alongside remedial English)

Honestly I (obviously) often have lots to say but don't believe that anyone will take the time or the effort that would be required to deal with my many grammatical errors, so I was sure no one would even read let alone comment so thank you

And lastly I never mentioned a date what I said was "after about 2 months" meaning 2 months have elapsed and has nothing to do with the second month of the year

@wormdood Here I tried to fix it for you and others.

This year when tax returns came in I like many other people wanted a ps5 and decided to get myself one. The problem I faced was shortages it was out of stock everywhere my solution was to wait and catch one on a restock day, first I missed a few restocks then a few times had a system in my cart only for it to be sold out by the time I clicked checkout... after about 2 months of missed opportunitys I was beginning to feel like chuck brown when Lucy moves the football, so broken and defeated I turned to ebay knowing I would get scammed.

With the fact that I would be ripped off in my mind I set a limit out of desperation I would pay up to 700 for the system (disk version), and I had/have zero interest in the digital version (the single storefront experience is why I don't have an iPhone and why a digital only console is incomprehendible imo) and so with 700 max and a hatred for digital consoles me and my wife began looking. After about a month I was frustrated it seems like everyone wanted to make crazy amounts of cash on ebay selling disk edition consoles for 850 - 1100 sometimes even as high as 1200 and digital consoles for 650 - 800 even going up to 900. with prices like these my wife was ecstatic when she found a disk version for 750, she contacted the seller via ebay to ensure that it was indeed a disk edition and tells him she is going to buy it.

Delivery day arrives and my enthusiasm was through the roof, I was waiting for the delivery driver to knock or ring my bell but it never happened despite ups updating to show it was delivered. I began asking my neighbors if they had seen a package and the old man in apartment 1 (I live in apartment 3 btw) said he found a package for me on his porch, puzzled I asked him if he signed my name, he reiterated that the package was on his porch when he came out so no he didn't. I thank him and took the box in the house I opened the brown box pulled out my beautiful new digital edition PS5 put it on my couch and went to get a drink of water. it wasn't until I was standing there waiting for the water to get cold that I realized and when I did I ran back to the box looked at it and my heart sunk.

I called my wife at her job and sobbed "please tell me we didn't just pay 750 for a digi" she checked the listing,

it says digital she checked her email for the receipt it says digital as well, but she still had the messages sent between her and the seller where in the seller insures her that it is indeed a disk based console for 750, so she contacted ebay who said that they don't know what the original listing was, but they can tell that the seller edited the listing 2 minutes before the purchase was made (meaning while he was assuring it was a disk edition he was changing the listing to say digital).

My wife requested a refund as we received a different product than what we paid for. but the seller refused to budge citing that by listing the PlayStation 5 as disc/digital he has made them interchangeable so when he runs out of one he can simply substitute for the other (. . . as if it were just a color variation) and that as per his listing all sales are final. my wife was desperately trying to salvage the situation she proposed to send the console back and accept a partial refund for it, even haggling the refund amount down to $300 while still sending the console back and what's more ebay said that would pay for shipping and let him relist the console at no cost, to this the seller still said that all sales are final. so that was it we were screwed instead of overpaying about 30% and being ok with it I get an interior product and overpay by like 90% end of story ...

That is to say it should have been the end of the story but ebay noticed something ... With a product over 500 usd a signature is required upon delivery and the seller didn't have that so they took it upon themselves to file a lost or stolen delivery claim on our behalf. And when that cleared I had 750 refunded to my card and a free digi ps5, so I bought a disk edition from a different ebay seller for 800 and sold the gross digi to my cousin for 400 saving him the aggravation I experienced, so when it was all said and done (thank you ebay) I finally have my ps5 disk edition and am only out 400 usd total for a 100 usd savings on a 500 product so this is a win for me

but I do have one question would eBay have gotten the refund from the seller or from UPS? I mean who was the real scam victim here?

TL;DR:
> OP got scammed 750 USD for a no-disc PS5.
> Seller refuses to do a sane refund.
> eBay saves the day.
> eBay noticed that the shipment is without signature, but eBay requires a signature for items sold for 500 USD and over.
> eBay refunded OP their money 100%.
> OP got the money and a free disc-less PS5.
> OP sold his free PS5 to his cousin for 400 bucks.
> OP bought another PS5 with disc for 800 USD.
> In the end OP spent 400 USD and probably hours of stress for his PS5.
> OP is happy anyway.
> OP now is asking who is out a PS5? Is it the seller? Or is it the UPS?

OP my guess is its the seller fault, not UPS (assuming the shipment is not prepared by eBay).

Edit: mistakenly wrote PS4 instead of PS5 in the TL;DR. Whoops.

@ZeroT21
I couldn't agree more. I miss the days when I could just go to store and physically pick up a console and, it wouldn't sell out while sitting in my physical cart before I hit the checkout.
Fucking covid

@r5xscn
Thank you, I truly appreciate your efforts. you are awesome!

Also I would imagine the seller was just at a loss in this situation but if he can prove he sent a package to my address and there's no proof I received it then wouldn't it make sense that the blame is on the shipping company? ...

Or while he is hypothetically disputing the lost or stolen claim even ebay could be responsible, as there is written proof from our original dispute that proves we did receive a package from him... yet ebay still reported it as missing.

And I really wanted to get people's opinions on that so thanks again (when I attempted to ask people irl they always get too sidetracked by the 750 figure that none of the rest of the story registers and when I ask my question "who got scammed?" they answer me with "750 my n****?" Or "your ass cuz you out 750." Only proving they can't pay attention because they either can't or haven't processed what it means to have sold the digital version that I got for free)

I think it is not just the covid but scalpers haha.

IMO it is the seller's fault. They did not follow the instruction from eBay. If they had sent your PS5 with the signature required, you would be the one at a loss here.

The shipping company has nothing to do with this, the customer (either eBay or the seller) did not request for signature so it is their fault. Of course, this is assuming that the shipping company followed the order A to Z.

My guess is, eBay saw the seller tricked the buyer, found some fault by the seller, decided to refund your money out of the seller's pocket.

Hopefully, this teaches the seller to not to scam people. This is the worst of scalpers, a scammer scalper, lol.

I think eBay just charge back the money from the seller's PayPal account and if there is nothing in the account because they already withdrew/spent the money the account ends up in the negative until they add money to it. Not sure though.
Nothing really stopping the seller from just abandoning the PayPal account and never paying the money back and making a new account and in that case it's PP that would be out money but eh, fuck PayPal.

Nice. Fuck that seller. Glad it all worked out in the end.

I'm surprised eBay didn't side with you outright with little questions asked. As a seller, eBay has ALWAYS sided with the buyer in any of my disputes. Even when I've had video and photo evidence that without a shadow of a doubt proved the buyer flat out lied.

Regarding buying consoles. I'm not sure what I do right and others are doing wrong, but I've gotten a console on every, single drop I've tried to get one on. I've bought several PS5 disc versions, digital versions, and Series X's. I lost track, but probably around 6 of each this far. This is the only thing I have ever done and keep getting wins:

- Be at the site BEFORE the consoles go live
- Already be logged in to the site BEFORE the consoles go live
- Have your payment/shipping info saved to the site BEFORE the consoles go live
- Do NOT give up the second you see Out of Stock, Sold Out, This Item Has Been Removed From Your Cart, etc,... (I have scored on drops up to a half hour after going live and it telling me Out of Stock the entire time, or it being added then removed from my cart several times over.)
- I know there is not always advance notification of drops, so in addition also sign up for priority notifications from Hot Stock for a measly $5.50 a month. It provides faster stock notifications than the Twitter restock watcher accounts & I scored several times because of their priority alerts. A 30-60 second jump on all of the Twitter users is HUGE amount of time when it comes to drops. HUGE. Just be sure you're ALSO following the other steps like staying logged into all of the sites/apps and having payment/shipping info saved. The notifications also come with links so you can click right to the item. (Don't forget to set max price on watched items with Hot Stock or you'll get alerts for scalper prices, also don't forget to cancel the monthly subscription when no longer needed.)

tl;dr but the answer is stay the fuck away from ebay ps5's! scalping scum don't deserve the money anyway. also there really isn't a reason to get a ps5 now there is barely any games worth playing on it what games really is there ratchet and clank and that's about it! and it's still got a few bugs that need squashing. just wait...for the black model

Or you know someone that can help you get a hold of one :3

@Bladexdsl At least he got a PS5. I would have expected to get an empty box filled with rocks or something.

@D34DL1N3R From what I can tell they kind of did.

I'll grab one off store shelves one day at msrp, let the scalpers keep their paperweight collection