once told an ebayer i didnt receive a return item back when i really did.

If you've been with ebay since the beginning, 1998 era or so, this will hit home. Ebay started out to be "seller freindly" up until about 2004, then it became extremely "buyer friendly/anti seller" and their policies hurt sellers and gave the store away to buyers. So much so that many of us Powersellers turned on ebay and found ways to screw over ebay just to make a statement of defiance. Their customer service was terrible. Their management was closed ear. Ok, you want to play that game...

One of the screw jobs that ebay used to allow was that any buyer, for any reason whatsoever, could bid, win, buy an item seller was selling...receive the item in their hands all the while money was NOT AVAILABLE TO ME THE SELLER. Then, here's the best part, buyer could act as if they did not receive the item and ask for a full refund, which ebay gladly obliged. This was well before tracking numbers were required on all ebay purchases and well before PayPal was required on all purchases. So, the buyer could literally steal my item...I would send him an item, he would say he didn't receive it, and ebay cheerfully would take the money back out of my account. Great deal for scammers, ya think?

Well, just like thousands on ebay chat boards at the time and now, we got fed up with this policy and took things into our hands. I began to buy things on ebay, tell the seller I didn't receive it, then keep and relist the item back on ebay. And to keep it real, sometimes I fabricated that the item was damaged (when it wasn't) and that the seller needed to give me a drastic refund for my troubles. It worked so well, that I did it on almost all purchases for a year or two's time. Times this by thousands and ebay finally got the message. Sometimes you gotta play dirty to get what you want in this life. Wish you didn't, but the rules are the rules. Tweet