It’s been years about 4 years, if not more, since I purchased anything from Ebay, and I haven’t purchased anything from Ebay for that long because I avoid it like the plague; I hate Ebay. If I could find and revive my old blog you could read that nearly every single purchase I’ve done on Ebay morphed into a nightmare. I had stopped shopping on Ebay because I was tired of the nightmares and hassles of it from receiving a poor quality items, to receiving something totally different from what was in the auction, to just not receiving my item at all. Seems like today, 4 years later it’s no different and Ebay sellers haven’t changed; they are still liars.
I’ve been looking for some upgrades for my Acer 7750g laptop to max it out. I upgraded the BIOS to include the switchable graphics card interface that Acer didn’t include from the stock BIOS and I maxed out the RAM to 16GB. It was then when I took off the chassis cover to swap out the RAM that I noticed there were two hard drive slots but only one had a hard drive in it. So I did a little research and found that the Acer 7750g also actually does supports two hard drives. I was like wow Acer didn’t even advertise that so I did a little more research on what parts I would need to add a second hard drive. Come to find out that the chassis doesn’t make space for a second hard drive and I would have to buy not only a new base cover but I would also have to buy the hard drive brackets.
No biggie, so I looked around on the web and was sad to find that not many places even sold it, in fact the cheapest place I found was in Germany; converted from Euros the cover and brackets were for about $55. I don’t like doing overseas shipments unless it’s the last resort so I looked on Ebay and found the parts in the United States. I got the 2nd hard drive cover here from CDSmicro for $34.99 and the brackets here from JTEC Distributors for $19.99; as you can see both auctions “claim” they are in the United States. The base cover was cool, I’m actually scheduled to get that today so I’m giddy about the mail man coming right now. However, I had also checked my bank account today and found a foreign exchange fee of .70 cents.
So I called PayPal and remained on hold for damn near 15 minutes only for the rep to tell me that she doesn’t see the 70 cents on my account, which no, it doesn’t show on my PayPal account but my bank account shows it as a transaction from PayPal.
So she says she’s going to transfer me to their fraud department; why? I don’t know when it’s not fraud but oh well, I get whisked away to their fraud department anyway only to sit on hold for a damn near another 30 minutes and then only to get handed to an asshole named Mario. I already could tell by the cocky attitude in which he answered the phone that this guy was going to be a douche.
First he claims that the purchase wasn’t made on this card, well gee Mario, how the f*ck else would I have made the purchase? I only have ONE Visa card and it’s the one on my PayPal account. Then he says I need to contact my bank for the refund. Why Mario should I contact my bank when it was somewhere between the Ebay seller and PayPal that this charge was made; the bank didn’t just charge it to my by osmosis.
Now obviously I don’t give a damn about .70 cents but it’s the principal of it and the 70 cents doesn’t belong to them and what if hundreds of people just ignored it, then that’s a free profit for them. I told him I was charged .70 cents foreign exchange fee for an item that was shipped from the United States; he then informs me that JTEC Distributors is actually in Canada, not the United States. So there you have it, the seller lied on their auction.
And the receipt I got from them after my purhcase:
And they still show up in Ebay “U.S. Only” search even though they are not in the United States:
Bottom line Mario says that the seller probably dropships their items meaning they are located in Canada but their shipper is located in the United States, so there was nothing he could do about the 70 cents and told me to contact the seller for a refund; that’s a load of b.s. in my book. But my question is this, how in the world is a seller able to make an additional purchase on your bank account other than what Ebay and PayPal notifies you of? There was no mention of a 70 cents foreign transaction fee on my Ebay receipt nor when I checked out on the auction. It was obvious Mario was a parrot so there was no need to even discuss anything further with him. I told him I just wanted a refund and he told me to contact the seller. I’ve been a PayPal/Ebay “member” for damn near 12 years, have had more nightmares than good things happen between the two when it comes to buying things which have just gotten worse since Ebay bought PayPal, so I already know this is going to go around in circles and is just going to end in me having to put in a transaction dispute with my bank; that’s how it’s always ended when dealing with PayPal in the past, but I emailed the seller anyway:
So lesson learned, Ebay sellers can lie about their location and you get hit with a foreign exchange fee. That neither the seller, Ebay or PayPal will even notify you of the fee at checkout nor on your PayPal account and you’re left to find out about it on your own several days later after you’ve already bought the item when you see a mystery “foreign exchange” charge on your bank account. Luckily I only bought a low priced item, but what if I had bought a high price item? I f*ckin hate PayPal & Ebay.