eBay

tazziee789 · ‎09-10-2004

Anyone ever file for a small claim action against another ebayer?? What is the process and cost behind it. I lost almost $300 in a bad cheque sale....long story. I have posted this story earlier, but ebay deleted it because it was "not permitted".

Any help would be appreciated....thanks.

sunward-hobbies · ‎09-10-2004

What province are you in and where is the buyer?

Has the buyer refused to honour the cheque?

If not in the same province, you may want to consider giving it to a collection agency and let them deal with it.

aa-surplus · ‎09-11-2004

I'm a collection agency so were was the deadbeat located?
Regards,

Mark

tazziee789 · ‎09-12-2004

i am in vamcouver, BC and the buyer is from guelph, ONT.

what is the process and the cost??

sunward-hobbies · ‎09-14-2004

First you would have a problem if you don't have anyone to represent you in court.

IIRC, it costs 50.00CAD to file the claim. You prepare it. Then you have to serve. If you use registered mail, you have to wait 40 days. I am not sure what a server charges.

If disputed, the defence ( the bidder ) costs them 25 or 35CAD. Then you can request mediation ( I forget the correct term. ) You spend most of the day and hope the defendant agrees to pay.

If not, you pay 100.00 and set a trial date.

Either way, it is up to you to collect.

In other words, last resort. I still say a collection agency would be your best bet. Or see if anyone responding would be interested. ( I might )

cosaucapp · ‎09-14-2004

Have you contacted eBay directly about this? maybe they have some ideas.

At the very least try and get that persons account suspended so that they can not do this again.

josephine · ‎09-14-2004

Hi, I'm in a similar boat as the OP. I sold a cell phone w/ contract back in January and the buyer scammed me. I contact my local police and they suggested to go to small claims court. I have never done this before so I'm wondering if it would be easier to do the collection agency thing as you mentioned. The buyer is located in Saskatchewan and I am in Ontario.

The thing is, the buyer used 2 different names, so this is why I've been hesitant to file for anything as I wouldn't know if it would be going to the right person. I have their correct mailing address and telephone number (they made a call to the cell phone and I have the invoice showing this).

tazziee789 · ‎09-16-2004

I have all his personal info, including his phone #. Collection agency sounds good, but can they really do anything expect to "scare" him???

Anyone running a collection agency, and what is the cost behind it???

Any lawyers here?? What about having a lawyer write a letter (with letter) and threaten this guy with a lawsuit?? Will it work??? I hate to have this guy get away with it, you know he is scaming someone else as we
speak.

Oh yeah, EBAY was ABSOLUTELY NO HELP, they are USELESS, as long as they get there fees....it even took me forever to just have him kick off.

sunward-hobbies · ‎09-18-2004

josephine:
if you had 2 different names, don't bother with small claims. Sounds like fraud. Police would be the better route.

rosane:
Don't have any ideas about costs. Just call a few in the phone book and see who would be best and the costs involved. As far as scaring the bidder, sometimes it works and sometimes you are dealing with a professional fulltime deadbeat.

As for lawyers, they charge to send a letter. So avoid.

shoplineca · ‎09-18-2004

A lawyer preparing your file, sending demand attending trial for 1/2 day and all other prep work before trial will cost you between $1500 and $2000. So unless you are suing for over $5,000, dont use a lawyer.

You will file your small claims in your province, establishing that as being the point the contract was entered into. There would be a 2% chance that your customer would travel to attend the trial or any mediation/settlement hearing ordered by the court so you will very easily obtain a default judgement against the person.

That jusgement will be for the principal, interest and costs (court filing costs not legal fees).

The judgement can be used to attach to the person's source of employment income (if you can determine where he works) or bank account or certain assets to retire their obligation to you.

Generally a collection agency who does not normally do collections for you will charge a rate between 40% and 50% if they collect and for whatever they collect.

Please keep in mind that a collection agency will only expend enough energy and money towards collecting if they feel that they will be successful.

For a $300 debt and a chance to earn $150, a collection agency is not going to go to any great lengths to collect besides making a couple of phone calls and sending a few demand letters. It's just not worth it to them.

Hope that this helps.

Malcolm

tazziee789 · ‎09-21-2004

its the principle of it all, i don't really card about the $$$....i will be willing to even pay (a little) to not allow this scum get away with it. he is just lucky he doesn't live near my place.

any takers out there???

josephine · ‎11-23-2004

reliable-quality : Actually I called up the local police, as well as the police in the province in which he lives. It was them who suggested small claims court.

I called my local small claims court and they said to include both names on it. I did a reverse lookup (I have their real address and phone number) and one of the last names seem to match at least.

So I'm wondering, should I pay to have the documents served or send it by registered mail as the small claims court person on the phone suggested? Also if I win the case, how do I go about collecting the funds?

The guy is still not NARU'd eventhough I did report to eBay eventually. How did you get your scammer NARU'd?

shoplineca · ‎11-23-2004

josephine
As I pointed out, once you have judgement rendered in your favour by the courts, you will have a piece of paper that you can use to have certain assets and incomes of the person given to you in satisfaction of the debt.

The onus will be upon you to find where he banks and where he works. You can then use your judgement to garnishee a portion of his wages on a regular basis until the debt is repaid or have his bank remove funds from his account up to the full amount of your jusdgement.

The first step is getting judgement and then determining where he banks and works.

As a Business Consultant I have just completed 2 litigation matters. The first one cost the client almost $2 million in legal fees and he received only $200,000 in settlement.

The second one was a personal one where I sued several parties in Small Claims Court for $6,000, settled out of court for $3,900 and my legal costs were about $2,500. I only had to pay $1,000 in legal fees of the $2500 as I had referred a major file to the law firm I used so they wrote off the majority of the legal costs.

Professionaly I have been involved in perhaps five dozen legal cases.

Suing for personal satisfaction is a no win scenario. It will give you more grief than it is worth and cost more money than you budgeted for.

Lawyer's letters dont mean anything to scam artists so why waste the money with idle threats? Use a collection agency and when collection agency number one is finished with the case and has gotten you nothing, move on and give the file to another collection agency.

If you want satisfaction, then collection agency after collection agency going after the bum will be the best satsifaction you could hope for and who knows, maybe one of them will actually come up with some cash for you?

Malcolm

josephine · ‎11-23-2004

hmm .. so this is not the first time I heard small claims court may be not worth it $$ wise. For me, I lost around $200 which is similar to how much the OP lost.

So if collection agency is the way to go, how much does it cost and when you suggest moving onto another if one is not successful, wouldn't I "lose money" in doing so?

shoplineca · ‎11-23-2004

josephine
Since you dont refer a number of accounts per year for collection to a specific collection agency, your rate will be high. Probably around 40-50% of whatever they collect. In other words if they collect $50 from your client, they keep about 1/2. On the other hand, if they dont collect anything, you dont pay anything.

A collection agency will only work a file if they think they can make money. So dont expcet them to put a detective on your case to follow this guy around.

They will simply send a couple of demand letters and parhaps make a phone call or two and after a couple of months, if not sucessful, will tell you they are closing the file.

That would be your signal to turn it over to another collection agency however with each agency that is unsucessful, your customer will be wiserto the fact that they cant and wont do anything beyond calling him once or twice.

I suspect that he is already knowledgeable in this area and you are not the first he has scammed.

Malcolm

josephine · ‎11-24-2004

Thanks for the advice. So how do I go about finding a collection agency? Does it have to be in my local area?

Also, wouldn't ignoring collection agency notices affect your credit rating? That's what I was told. Or is it only when it's from a reputable company?

shoplineca · ‎11-24-2004

josephine
You can star with a National collection company , use a local one where you reside or one where the customer resides. Its your choice and you can find them in the Yellow pages or searching on the web.

If you were a member of the BBB (which is owned by a credit reporting and collection company), you could report that an account was in collection only IF you extended credit to the customer however you did not extend him credit.

If you litigated the claim (in small claims court), that is often reported as well however it would simply show up as a dispute and a $200 claim is going to have very little affect on anyone's credit.

Furthermore and most important to realize josephine, you are putting this person in the same light as how you run your life and assuming that he is all of a sudden going to become a born again Christian and honour his debt with you.

From what I have read in this thread, you are dealing with someone who does this type of thing on a regular basis. There are no threats of suing or anything else that will have an affect on him. At some point he will pi$$ off the wrong person for enough money to make it worth their while to see this guy arrested.

I suspect that he is smart enough to keep his rip offs below $1,000 just to make it to financially inconvenient for any one person to go after him.

Turn it over to collections, dont expect a plug nickel and get on with selling. If you get something out of this, it will be a bonus however what you should get from this is a lesson on how to proceed with similar people and that is worth more than $200.

Malcolm

josephine · ‎11-24-2004

Thanks, maybe I'll have to go with the collection agencies then.

tazziee789 · ‎11-24-2004

Hi Josephine,
For me to get the scammer NARU'd, I reported it to ebay several times, be on top of it -or- it won't happen. In addition, the scammer (most scammer) will not put down their real physical address, therefore, ebay will kick them off if they can confirm. But you will need to do all the leg work at the beginning before reporting it to ebay. Unless it comes to ebay losing $$$, they are extremely slow in responsing.

In my case, I have given up (for now). He has changed his phone # and there is no longer a listing for him (probably used someone elses' name), however, I am sure the address is the same.

Good luck with your case and keep me updated. Let me know if there is anything I can do.

josephine · ‎11-25-2004

I had reported the fraud once already. Nothing was done. Does it really help to report the same thing a dozen times? I don't remember if I reported him for false contact info, perhaps I'll try that.