On September 15, 2003, an eBay buyer in the US purchased a set of golf clubs from an eBay seller in the UK for the amount of $120.00. The buyer then paid an additional $78 for shipping and handling fees. Allegedly, the seller never fulfilled the contract and the buyer never received the golf clubs. The seller advised the buyer to use PayPal because of PayPal's security and ease of use.

Three weeks after the buyer paid for his purchase, he had not received his golf clubs and could not reach the seller. The buyer contacted both eBay and PayPal at the 3 week mark. eBay contacted the seller and the seller contacted the buyer. The seller contacted the buyer and informed the buyer that he would indeed receive his gold clubs. Three weeks later, the buyer had still not received his golf clubs. The buyer filed a case with PayPal and received an official ruling on his case on November 8, 2003:

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Complaint Details ------------------------------

Transaction Date: 30 Sep. 2003
Transaction Amount: -$198.00 USD
Case Number: PP-025-291-029
Seller's Name: **************
Seller's Email: **************

Our investigation has determined that the seller is at fault, but we were unable to recover any funds from the seller's account. As stated in the PayPal User Agreement, Buyer Complaint funds recovery cannot be guaranteed.

If this transaction took place on an auction site, we encourage you to contact the auction site and see if they offer insurance coverage.

We appreciate your business, and regret this experience.

To make sure future transactions proceed smoothly, we suggest reading these Security Tips:

Fraud Prevention Tips for Buyers

Yours sincerely,

Protection Services Department

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****seller name and email address edited

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't eBay own PayPal? So, the auction site PayPal has suggested that the seller contact is essentially . . . eBay/PayPal! Looks to me like PayPal sent the buyer a canned response.