Ebay! Please help

[Sevenfifty]

Hi, I’m hoping somebody can help with this. My DH (stupidly) bought a van on ebay. It was delivered on Friday and looked good. Anyway, after a better look at it over the weekend DH suspects it’s been in an accident. We’ve had a mechanic look over it today who confirmed that not only has it been in quite a serious accident, it’s a patched up pile of shite basically. Not only that but the mileage has been clocked as well.

DH now can’t bear to talk about it. He says it’s classed as a private sale and the seller won’t refund. He could take it to court but that would take forever and even then they’re not forced to pay, or could offer a pound a week or whatever.
is there anything we can do?

Like any eBay sale, I think it would depend on how the van was described. Did it say it was in perfect condition and road worthy?

Small claims court, very easy to do

He needs to take a look at the wording of the descriptions and also the terms and conditions of selling cars on ebay. How did he pay for it?

Yes it said it was in good condition and had the fake mileage listed. It was sold by a lease company to a private buyer and mechanic rang the lease company today. The last mileage they had recordered was 60,000 and the mileage now is 27,000. He paid cash.

I bloody hate ebay. My DH uses it a lot and I can never see why!

In the first instance complain to eBay. Starting a small claim is very straightforward. Yes it takes a while (a year in my case) But I did get nearly £6k back.

First thing to do is to complain to Ebay. They are very helpful and may even award you with a full refund. Talking from experience here.

Defiantly start by contacting eBay, in my experience they are usually helpful with things like this.

*definitely

He paid cash. Ebay cannot issue a refund.

I buy all my stuff from eBay - about 1000 articles to date - paying with PayPal ten seconds after sale closes. This is as good as cash. Never sold a single item in my eBay career. Last year I bought some pre-owned hi-fi gear for appx £4500 just to discover a component was faulty. Estimated repair would cost £350. Contacted eBay a few days later. They told me I could return the gear for a full refund but I told them I'd keep the item with a £350 refund for repairs to the faulty component so as to save extra shipping costs and hassle in returning.

Ebay duly refunded me £350 back to my PayPal account. I never even asked the seller - eBay is proud to advertise all purchases are guaranteed! Some days later seller contacted me kind of fuming saying I should have talked to them first.

Why should I? They should have declared the fault in the first instance. After all I did pay over the odds for the item expecting it to be faultless. So I think eBay must have deducted the refund from the sales amount. Must say my experiences with eBay all these years have been absolutely marvelous.

eBay isn’t the problem here…

For future reference I would never buy something on gumtree/ebay for cash if I couldn't see the item first. I would certainly never buy a vehicle like this.

How did he hand over cash but not see the vehicle?

Well it’s fraud - they’ve clocked the meter.

you contact the seller suggest there has been a ‘mistake’ with the mileage and you are aware that it has previously been 60,000 and suggest that he gives you a full refund or you’ll need to get the police involved.