Hello people,
Some of you may know me as the guy who wrote the Sharp 831/Sony MZR90 review
page (URL: http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~youn/r908331.html).
Well, I've recently had a bad eBay experience with a dishonest seller, and
naturally, I feel obliged to alert others.
EBAY user ID: "BECKHAMDEE" ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
"Real" name: Wing-Yip Yim
--Works out of Brooklyn, New York--
The subject was selling a BLUE Sony MZ-R50 (vintage and pretty rare) on
eBay, which was listed as being in "used, very good condition, very
infrequently used."
Well, having spent the better part of a year searching for a blue R50, I bid
on the item and ended up winning, paying over $250 for the item (in
retrospect, that was probably a bit much).
Of course I took the time to email him to verify that the unit was in good
condition, and that there was nothing wrong with it, to which he replied
that it was in "used but very good condition", as listed.
When I received the unit, it had:
--a large dent on the top face;
--there were 3 screws missing and the clamshell lid was VERY loose on the
top-left corner;
--the laser was misaligned, as it has trouble reading discs correctly (the
laser tries to read the same part of the disc over and over, getting "lost"
and stalling during playback).
While the unit did playback fine if I turned it UPSIDE-DOWN, I tried editing
a few discs, and it ended up corrupting two of my discs (gave a DISC ERR
message), thus I ended up having to delete the discs and rerecord them from
scratch.
To make the rest of this long story short, the seller initially offered a
full refund. However AFTER I sent the unit back to him, he changed his mind
and refused to return my money, claiming that I must have damaged the unit
MYSELF, claiming it was working perfectly and didn't have any loose screws
when he sent it to me.
The seller has since sent back the item to me, keeping the money, and
refuses to reply to emails.
Of course I have left him the appropriate negative feedback mark, as that is
all I can realistically do, but as he has about 6 or 7 other positive
feedbacks (apallingly!) which "dilute" the negative mark, it doesn't really
do that much.
Plus he still has the money, and no negative feedback will help get that
back. If this isn't your classic example of dumping off a busted item to a
sucker and running with the money, I don't know what is.
The subject continues to do business on eBay (selling things other than just
MD equipment), and I would advise anyone to deal with him with caution.
While he seemed very polite initially thru emails, it seems obvious to me
that he pulled a quick one--and unfortunately, got away with it.
Anyway, this sort of stuff happens, so please be careful. I am posting this
to the forums that I feel appropriate; if you feel this is an inappropriate
posting, my apologies. Cheers to everyone, happy Cinco de Mayo.
--Brian Youn
The University of Texas at Austin
Electrical and Computer Engineering, 4th year
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