Club Homepage Forums Classified Ads Buy & Sell - Everything But Airplanes EBAY scam???

"You'll simply take a hit on your Feedback rating.".... which you will have the opportunity to respond to, if it's negative! If he's scamming you, he probably won't post a feedback anyway, as long as you don't!

How much money are we talking about? Are you willing to get negative eBay feeback over this?

If you said in your ad that the unit worked, and if the guy received it and it didn't work, I can understand why he would be disappointed.

He might think YOU are scamming HIM.

My suggestion, just to avoid hard feelings all the way around: tell him to send it back to you and give him his damned money back. Then, either have it fixed (with yellow tag and guarrantee) and resell it.

Or, throw it away, or sell it as a non-working fixer-upper.

It ain't worth getting a bad eBay reputation over a few hundred bucks. The guy might be a crook, but maybe he's right. Maybe it never did work for him...

You should ask him what his story is. What does his feedback look like? I've sold hundreds of used motorcycle parts as-is and 99.9% of the buyers are just looking for a fair deal. I did give out a couple refunds when I thought that I might have let some bad parts go by accident. Even if one or two people pulled one over on me, it's worth it to keep my 100% positive feedback rating. It is possible that something happened to it before he got it. One thing about Ebay scammers, they're usually not too bright and their stories unravel after a couple emails.

Here's the "red flags" I'm getting....
1)he claims mine didn't work, and he reinstalled his and it was OK. Why buy a 2nd unit if yours is OK? Especially a Cessna RT359A? Most people look for a replacement when theirs dies, and you can pick a Cessna unit up cheaply, not having to rewire panel.
2)he paid a little on the high end for this type of transponder from what they normally sell on eBay
3)mine flew the day before I had a King KT76A installed, and it was fine then, and it had the 24 month XPDR check done a little over a year ago and it again was fine
4) perhaps his was bad and now he's looking for a way to get a "free" cavity tube to fix his unit? Then claim mine bad and stick me with a now broken transponder that I can't sell as is, or it's too expensive to fix ( and I know it was good when I sent it out)
5) how do I know his plane didn't ZAP mine and fry it?
6) my auction stated "working when removed" (it was), and the auction also stated "AS-IS"
Well, that about sums it up.
We'll see if he emails me again.
-Brian
ps- I'm not trying to F#@K anyone, I did my part, it was a good unit.

Good luck on getting resolution. I've bought some pretty decent avoinics on eBay. I also got scammed on some used electronics items that were obviously fished out of a dumpster.

I know you're a good guy, Brian. You sent me a bracket for free for my C-150 battery box last January and saved me a lot of money that I would have had to pay for a new battery box.

I'd just feel a little guilty selling someone something purportedly that worked, but refusing a refund if it didn't work because the ad stated "as is." I think the best policy is money back if not satisfied, but maybe that's just me.

I'm going to have to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't open it up and steal the cavity, and then ask you for a refund. That would be really, really petty.

I looked on eBay to see how much used Cessna RT359A transponders are going for. I don't see any for sale. I can't imagine they're worth more than a few hundred bucks. I see that Narco sells a brand-new digital slide-in replacement for the Cessna RT359A for $1,500.

The guy rolled the dice and bought a used one and hoped it would work. It didn't, so now he wants his money back. That's petty on his part. He ought to take it to an avionics shop and have it fixed.

Yes, you could hold him to the "as is" thing, but why not just take it back? If it does still work when you get it back, nothing lost. You can try to resell it to someone else. You can even get it yellow tagged this time, so that there is no question of its servicability. If it doesn't work, maybe it just crapped out in transit, and you really did sell the guy something that didn't work -- not intentionally of course. If the guy did use the parts inside to repair his existing transponder -- well like I said, that would be really petty.

By the way, I recently bought a used Northstar M1 LORAN for $40, as a spare, just in case my existing one craps out, because they are no longer manufactured, and I wanted a back up. So, just because the guy has one that works and wants another back up does not necessarily mean he's a crook.

Was it shipped insured? It may have been damaged in transit! I was re-imbursed by UPS for a satelite receiver that was sold as "working", but was DOA! I suspected a scam, but I got my money back anyway!

Perhaps what we really have here is an insurance claim (you can work together on that!)

I'm with Brian on this one based on the information presented. There is no perfect solution and somebody is going to take a loss. There are thousands of eBay scammers out there and Brian isn't one of them. No way to know about the other guy. The auction specifying "Working when removed, sold as-is" says it all as far as I'm concerned. It's an unfortunate situation.

It may have truly been DOA; He may have bought it to switch the cavity tube; He may have discovered HIS unit worked after all and is now trying to return Brian's; He may have accidentally fried Brian's unit;...who knows? The only thing we know for sure is Brian didn't do anything wrong.

I never buy stuff on eBay that says "as is."

I only buy things that are yellow tagged or guaranteed money back.

I made one exception one time when buying a piece of equipment that I didn't care if it worked, I only wanted it for spare parts. As it turned out, it worked great.

The buyer of Brian's transponder should accept the item "as is." The tricky part is if you say in the ad it worked the last time it was used, but the seller must accept it "as is," seems to me there's wiggle room for the buyer to ask for his money back if it does not work on reciept of the item, if he's got the nerve. I personally wouldn't ask for a refund. I would accept it, and either have it fixed or throw it away and learn my lesson never to buy an as-is item.

But, as a seller on eBay (my wife runs a small business), I would rather refund a dissatisfied customer than hassle with it.

But, that's just me.

One final thought before we put this topic to bed....
That KT76A I got off ebay to replace the Cessna unit was bench checked immediately when I got it in the mail, and the avionics guy said, "it works"...so I left the seller good feedback...
Unfortunately, when the thing goes more than an hour it blows the fuse, as the power supply is no good. Now it's red tagged and I had to buy a Garmin GTX320A and adapter to slide in to replace the King, now that the plane was rewired. So now I have a $600 red tagged box to look at to caution me about buying used avionics on ebay.
Most avionics shops have shelves full of used avionics removed from customer airplanes, a much better deal and less of a risk than ebay.At least you'll know the history of the unit, and they can tell you if it's worth fixing if it ever breaks. My shop had no trouble telling me which units, indicators,and other units were better than others, which of the "identical" units were "different" compared to earlier manufactured ones, what mods to look for, and so on.
That's when I decided to leave ebay alone as it's not worth the risk. I emailed the seller who sold me the KT76 and told him it died, but I never got a response.
I think of all that flood damaged hurricane avionics out there that got dried and sold.....
Caveat Emptor!
-Brian

What about refunding half the dollars and letting him keep the transponder? That way you both come out even. If it's really bad the buyer gets a simple lesson in caveat emptor. And you don't lose everything. Like any compromise, neither of you are happy but both should be satisfied.

It reminds me of the time my dad ordered up a new bow pulpit for his sailboat. It was built by a local shop specializing in stainless tubing. When it arrived, it didn't fit. There was just enough fuzziness between my dad's specifications and their production that it was hard to pin down where the mistake was made. The builder couldn't reuse the tubing, and my dad couldn't mount it on the boat, so they agreed to split the cost and my dad kept the piece. The next one fit perfectly, so all worked out in the end.