Bought an item and never received it

Spencer Anderson wrote:Thanks Marc Ya, I don't know. I don't think it was unreasonable to assume the best here. Rich has been a member a year and made one other comment unrelated to the selling post. Seems like a whole lot of time and effort to get $60. If that's the best he can come up with in a year, he's even less intelligent than the picture he chose to profile.

Well, I think it sucks and certainly don't blame you. You trusted a fellow climber on MP and you got burnt. Could have happened to a lot of people on these pages-- myself included. And I also applaud your magnanimity. If I were you I would add a message to the original "for sale" post explaining what happened and warning others to be wary of this guy. Maybe even include a separate post in the "for sale" section. Unless you want to track him down through other means that's about all you can do.

Jim

Killing In The Name Of wrote:Selling the Brooklyn Bridge, send it to Paypal as a gift so you have no recourse, please. I buy off here all the time, I send personal checks. If anything fucks up, small claims courts are my legal recourse to be a total pain in the ass if I think I'm getting rooked. I kinda doubt anyone scamming through Paypal really cares what is posted about them as name changing/new accounting is easy as 1-2-3, witness Ellenor's return from the undead yet again and again. We have a legal system. Knowing how to use it seems helpful. Shop smart, shop s-mart, mmkay.

Small claims court for a pair of underwear? Ya . . . good luck with that. I'd rather eat the 30 dollars.

Jim

jim.dangle wrote: Small claims court for a pair of underwear? Ya . . . good luck with that. I'd rather eat the 30 dollars. Jim

Ya small claims court is basically useless in most states. Getting a judgement is easy... actually getting your money is nearly impossible.

CaptainMo wrote: Ya small claims court is basically useless in most states. Getting a judgement is easy... actually getting your money is nearly impossible.

And have fun effecting service and establishing jurisdiction over someone who lives in a different state and merely (didn't) send the underwear. We do have a legal system obviously, which may be good, bad, or everything in between depending on what's going on. But I don't think it's going to be of much help in interstate underwear sales cases where the buyer evades PayPal protection by mischaracterizing a transaction as a "gift."

Spencer Anderson wrote:expected a little more in dealing with other climbers, expected a little more from the community.

Spend ten minutes on MP and it's pretty clear that "climbers" and the "community" are nothing to put any faith in. Seems like alot of people have the attitude "you're a climber, you must be a good guy" I can't say I can feel the same way.

I've been a member of probably 15+ forums for different hobbies and outdoor sports over the years and I've never seen anywhere near as much selfishness, dooshbaggery, fighting, flaming, and general meanness as I have on climbing forums. Its embarrassing and in my mind, the climbing "community" reflects pretty horribly. Most climbers I've met are pretty awesome but from the sheer volume of BS on these forums, its clear that there are quite a few climbers out there who are anuses and doosh canoes. I have to constantly remind myself that the people on MP are not all climbers. Thankfully.

@ Wyatt: Clearly your perspective on the "community" and mine are different, I can respect that. Also, there seems to be a difference between "climbers" that spend more time posting on forums than outside actually climbing. They’re a community all their own.

@ jim.dangle: good suggestions. I'm not too worried about figuring who this guy is, he's already taken $30, he doesn't need to take more away from me with all that time and effort. I’d rather think about beta and what and where I’m going to climb next.

I guess I'm curious about how people tend to buy things on MP.
Most responses so far seemed to only use the regular payment option. Killis uses checks then goes all Law and Order. How many people have used the paypal gift option to buy things, how many people have been ripped off? I'm assuming that if this isn't a significant amount, I would have seen more posts by now. Or maybe I’m not as big a forum whore and I thought.

@Locker: So I find that interesting... it’s foolish to have faith in a nebulous online climbing community but you pay for things using the gift option all the time... Honestly not trying to be a dick here but I think my assumptions about using the gift option wasn’t so much different than yours.

EDIT
I guess I'm not blow away it happened. Now I'm curious how much it has happened to others using the gift option.

^^
Point is that there's a certain amount of vulnerability that one takes when using the gift option. I'm assuming we (who use the gift option) do it because we trust (right or wrong) that having the same interest bond us enough (assumption I know) that we’re willing to take the risk. If you and I thought the risk of getting ripped of was too high, we'd never use it. That would be foolish. Speaking for myself, I could be wrong.

Just a thought, if a seller seems kinda sketchy and you want to see if they pulled their used gear pics from somewhere else on the internet you can try this:

- Right click on image > Copy image URL
- images . google . com
- Paste image url in search line > Search
- @ top of screen click "search by image"
- Then you can check to see if the image is anywhere else in the interwebs

Wyatt H wrote:I've never seen anywhere near as much selfishness, dooshbaggery, fighting, flaming, and general meanness as I have on climbing forums.

Have you seen TGR?

Wyatt H wrote: Spend ten minutes on MP and it's pretty clear that "climbers" and the "community" are nothing to put any faith in. Seems like alot of people have the attitude "you're a climber, you must be a good guy" I can't say I can feel the same way. I've been a member of probably 15+ forums for different hobbies and outdoor sports over the years and I've never seen anywhere near as much selfishness, dooshbaggery, fighting, flaming, and general meanness as I have on climbing forums. Its embarrassing and in my mind, the climbing "community" reflects pretty horribly. Most climbers I've met are pretty awesome but from the sheer volume of BS on these forums, its clear that there are quite a few climbers out there who are anuses and doosh canoes. I have to constantly remind myself that the people on MP are not all climbers. Thankfully.

No way.. I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED THIS. Thanks for putting it into words Wyatt.

one time on a forum some guy called me a dirty little buttplug and I cried, then I TOOK HIM TO COURT because I was afraid he would find me and try and beat me up when I told him I was not.

use the legal system, its not at all broken, pornboy can back me up.

I'm always selling stuff as I'm always buying stuff. I've probably sold somewhere between 300-500 items on MP. In all that time I've only ever had maybe 5 or so issues with buyers and that has always come from someone sending 7000 emails starting 4 seconds after they have paid for their item wondering where there shit is. Of note was a buyer last month who threatened to come to the springs and kick my ass when he did not have his item 3 days after payment. Der. Putz.
Beyond that I have found it to be an excellent community of folks (climbers or climber stalkers) who are patient and generous - many having paid more than expected to cover the chunk paypal takes off the top.
I don't worry about being ripped off here.