A gentleman called Lothar Baier who runs
http://texasmicrowave.com scammed me last year for $250 on eBay.
After waiting a month and not receiving my $250 eBay order (for which I never had a tracking number) he sent a "replacement."
This has not arrived by the end of generous multi-months eBay delivery window either, so I have opened the non-delivery complaint with eBay.
eBay has initiated a refund, PayPal sent me the money back and after confirming to eBay that I got the money the complaint got closed.
Now things got weird. Remember, this is now many months after I have bought the item.
I have suddenly received the "second" shipment delivered to the office (while I was working from home and was not immediately aware of it arriving.)
Almost immediately I get a very aggressive eBay message from Lothar who claims he knows I have received the goods and I am a lawless cheater and should pay him for his goods he knows I have. He mentions everything that is wrong with me, including my dishonesty, lack of ethics, fraud and outright criminal intent.
I politely point out that the order was by all means considered lost, even though it was actually found and delivered and I am not the one to be blamed for that.
He increases pressure, calling me a criminal, and threatening legal action claiming he has a team of lawyers here in the UK who have successfully prosecuted many of his eBay scammer customers like me. He "gives me" a deadline to either pay or return the product at my cost with tracked and signed delivery to a German(?) address - even though I bought it from the US.
He was so threatening that I had to contact eBay abuse and threats helpline to ask what to do. eBay assured me that I was right, the item was technically lost and I should have receive the refund. They suggested forwarding the chat log to him.
I have passed my eBay chat log to Lothar who refused to accept it, calimed that he contacted eBay too and was told by eBay I was a scammer, and my eBay account will be taken down (of course it wasn't.)
Seeing that this keeps escalating and we are not making any progress and after giving it a calm think I thought I'd take the high road and since, indeed, I have got his goods maybe I should just pay him back and forget this altogether.
So, feeling defeated, I agreed to pay him $250 - again - (for goods I, arguably, didn't need) and asked him to send me a PayPal invoice.
Immediately got the invoice. Paid it right away.
You'd think we are square? Think again.
In a few days I receive a PayPal email that my original $250 refund from texasmicrowave has been cancelled and money taken back from my account.
After ringing PayPal they said there is nothing they can do - the refund has been made with eCheck that has bounced weeks later because the seller never had any funds in his PayPal in the first place.
I went to PayPal to see if I can request a cancellation or at least put a claim against second PayPal payment to Lothar. It turns out the invoice was made in such a way that transaction cannot be disputed.
Meanwhile, Lothar blames PayPal, promises to sort it out, promises to ring PayPal, promises to put $250 cash in his account, promises to refund again, definitely next week because it's Friday, certainly in two weeks when account funds arrive, etc, etc, etc. After another month or two nothing changes so I decide to appeal to eBay. Unfortunately, now it is half a year since original auction so they have removed it altogether and I have lost the ability to communicate with texasmicrowave via eBay messages.
I keep emailing Lothar every month asking to return one of my $250 payments to him but don't get anywhere. I find it almost funny that after he called me immoral scum for illegally taking his property I now have to ask him to return my money for almost a year with no result.
Recently, after another email asking him to return my $250 he suddenly got aggressive and claimed that he has no idea what this is all about and I am just a general scammer trying to get money out of him out of the blue.
So here we go - a cautionary tale for you.
Leo
P.S. I am thinking that I should go ahead and open an unpaid debt claim in TX, USA. Has anyone done this remotely from the UK? What are my options?