Cliff notes (If mods want the shit storm in its full glory I can post our entire conversations here).
Two weeks ago I saw he was looking to trade his MWS for a SR-15 Mod 1. I spoke with him on the phone and told him I had one I’d trade but I wouldn’t be able to get the upper for two weeks (its at my other home). He said that was absolutely no problem. I offered to PayPal him a deposit of $500 which would be refunded before we shipped just so he would know I was serious about following through and so he would not waste 2 weeks waiting for me to only have me bail out.
Everything seemed great, so I sent him the deposit through PayPal and the waiting began.
Two weeks later (yesterday), I contact him and let him know I’ve got everything lined up and I’m ready to trade. I send him photos of everything and we’re all good. We decide to ship uppers first, so I boxed up the upper and mailed it off to him and then asked him if he could return my deposit.
That is where the trouble began.
He said he wanted to keep the $500 deposit until he received everything of mine and said he was under the impression this was always the case. I was not cool with this at all. I have excellent feedback here and close to +200 on TOS. He has +16. I did not see why he felt he needed to keep the deposit any longer as it made no sense that I have more then 200 feedback then him and he wanted to also hold a $500 deposit over my head. I asked him why he needed a deposit and he was very vague, saying ‘whats stopping you from mailing me an empty box’.
The answer is obviously nothing. But feedback is there for a reason and there is always going to be a form of trust when you go about conducting business online. He was quick to discredit my feedback as simply ‘numbers on a screen’ yet he was asking me to send him a $2,300 rifle + give him a $500 deposit and have full trust in him, which he did not want to extend to me.
Eventually I made it clear this was not going to happen. The problem is he still has my $500 and my upper receiver is on its way to him. He assured me he would refund my money and return the upper receiver back to sender when it arrives however 12 hours passed and he did not return my PayPal payment. I noticed in this time he had the time to update his original listing and say the ‘deal fell through’ and offer his MWS back up for sale as well as post in another thread.
He stopped responding to my text messages, IMs, and calls. I then filed a dispute with PayPal which he promptly entered bogus information into, telling PayPal that he shipped (providing them with a tracking # of 11111111111111). It was at this point to which he finally sent me an IM telling me as far as he’s concerned PayPal can keep the money and I can go fuck myself.
All he needs to do at this point is log in to his PayPal, open the resolution center, and refund my money but it seems like he wants to make this as big of a shit fest as possible.
Thoughts on how to proceed? I think he’s a good guy, just probably got caught up in it all (he was out drinking last night, I probably should have just waited for him to sober up before speaking with him). I just want my money back NOW and I’ll consider my time wasted as a lesson to more clearly outline things from the get go.
EDIT: Fortunately I was able to get in touch with the post office and have them stop the upper before it reached him but I’m going to be out the $26 it cost to ship it.
