BB FANS

I've an on-going dispute with a seller off Ebay who has sold me a faulty piece of equipment.

I've raised this with Ebay but so far they haven't replied (Nearly 48hrs ago).

I've exchanged a number of messages via the Ebay message service with the seller who won't except that the unit has never worked.
The unit a satellite receiver failed to boot up correctly leaving the display corrupt. The last time I saw this was with a receiver where a firmware upgrade went wrong.

Now I do have the original firmware for this receiver and the software to load it but it doesn't want to communicate with anything via it's serial port else I would have fixed it and left it at that.

Now that strange thing is that after a few messages the seller introduced the phrase "Patching" which under the circumstances was very suspicious.

Now recovering the money isn't quite a simple as it was paid by cheque. So while I can report the seller to Ebay would I have any other way of getting the money back ? Would trading standards be interested as the value is only £50 ?

The unit was described as new unwanted and that it had only been powered up once.

The last message from the seller included a link to a forum with details of rectifying a display fault and a method for reloading the firmware ,but in the first instance I wouldn't remove any covers to fix the unit even IF the display symptoms were the same. And secondly as I've already pointed out the receiver won't communicate via the serial port ( I have both Null modem and straight cables and neither work).

Any ideas ?

Currently NTL Email system is down for I'm jumping around sites where I'm posting looking for replies so I might not spot a reply that quickly.

stop the cheque straight away by contacting your bank - or has it already gone out? I would contact Trading Standards anyway and Ebay again as selling duff goods is just not on

Hi,

The cheque will already have been cashed as the seller waited about 5 days for it to clear before sending the receiver. Normally I'd have used PayPal but I didn't have enough funds available. With PayPal there is a protection scheme though you do loose something like £12 if I read it correctly.

If I don't get a reply from Ebay tomorrow I'll contact them again and then onto Trading standards.

I have my theory on what happened to the receiver prior to it's sale which I've voiced with Ebay.

Unfortunately I bought the receiver for someone at work which they've already paid me for so I've loaned him my spare receiver while I get a result and hopefully the money back so I can get another receiver.

But on top of everything NTL Email is out so I don't know if Ebay has replied today as it doesn't appear in the Ebay internal message system.

When I have forwarded spoof emails to eBay it has taken a while for them to respond to something so simple, so I would give it more time. If their dispute resolution doesn't work the only power you have is to leave negative feedback (within 90 days) or complain to some other body.

I have my Paypal set up so that it takes funds from my debit card if there is a shortfall so that may be worth doing for the future if it gives more protection when buying.

I've got the reply from Ebay and they are doing their own invertigation and following their advice I've filed a 'Significantly Not As Described' dispute report.
This is the leeser of the action they listed. I want to give the seller plenty of optunity to give the refund before I consider the more serve action surgested by Ebay.

If I'd had the funds available at the time PayPal would now be an easier way to recover the money.

Was it a Nokia 9600 by any chance?

No just one of the re-badged ones normally sold by places like Lidal.
Most of the Nokia ones including the older model still fetch good money. Must have something to do with the Amon firmware that a lot of people use to access pay channels.

All I was after was a standard receiver with one or more CI interfaces and this one looked just the job. I think ,though I can't prove it ,that the seller has attempted to 'Patch' the receiver which has gone wrong.
Once things get rolling along the official paths I hope the seller has the good sense to offer the refund. There are still a few paths open if Ebay can't bring him to his senses.

Ah ok, it's just I have one of those and have reprogrammed it more times than I've had hot dinners.

Great piece of kit in it's day.

I had an 9500 with Amon 3 and OneManIt firmware which transformed the receiver from the terriable Nokia operating system but I don't think without major work the 9500 would cope with todays systems.
Much easier to play with one of the many after market CAMs alone with a CAS2 interface. Shame there's no BB to watch.