Hi Jgedwa,

I too had a problem with an eBay seller who misrepresented a camera I had won. He listed it as new in the box, and it arrived obviously used in a ziplock bag with no manual. He had lifted some photos from another auction selling the same camera and so I was fooled into believing what he was selling.

At the time of my transaction (about four years ago) I don't think there was Square Deal offered. To make a long story short, I kept the camera (actually it worked fine and I still use it) since he wasn't going to take it back. I left him negative feedback and all he did was retaliate by giving me bogus negative feedback. Ebay eventually took my negative feedback off of my record, I've heard that's rare, but they checked out our e-mails to each other and eBay could clearly see he was committing fraud, and they shut him down. That's really all eBay could "legally" do at the time, I guess. All he did was switch to another user name. His old user name had such glowing positive feedback. I later figured out he had been having his friends send him the fake feedback for bogus transaction.

I personally would say it's not worth the hassle. You have to be the judge, though, if fighting for two bikes is worth it. If you have the documented proof that the seller reneged on the deal report him to eBay, but be aware of negative feedback. You'll have to take it up with eBay about removing it, and I'm sure it's on a case by case basis like mine was.

You seem like a good, honest man. If it were me, I'd let it go. Karma may catch up to him one day.

All the best,
Jack

P.S. I am now set up with PayPal and in my auctions I state that I rufuse to sell to anyone with excessive negative feedback. This has cut way down the riff raff and all of my transactions have gone smoothly. I've found that people with lots of negative feedback will sometimes not come through with the deal -- and they'll have a million excuses under the sun like with the classic: "Oh, I've been sick." Or, "My computer went down and I couldn't check my e-mails." Blah, blah, blah...