eBay tools - Anyone have experience with this user?

Quick question for the group... Im hoping someone has dealt with this user and can assure me it will be alright.

I just payed for a pneumatic squeezer from eBay and having been burned once in the past by PayPal I'm quick to thinking I may be getting screwed again. I've been an active member on eBay for 9 years and during that time I have bought and sold many items but I generally never use PayPal. The last time I did I accepted payment on an item and shipped it out.. 2 days after shipping the item the buyer pulled their money back out of PayPal, got the item I shipped and PayPal decided I owed them for this mess ($400 USD). Needless to say I am underwhelmed by their ability to protect the seller.

Flash forward to now. Im the buyer of an item and the seller only uses PayPal. Which seems to be a trend these days. I payed the user from my account and am now waiting to get the item in the mail. The seller provided me with a USPS tracking number but as is the case with self printed labels, you can print them out and have a number before you ship something. I was told it would ship yesterday when I received the number Tuesday morning. As of this morning I am still not seeing the tracking number showing up on the USPS website.

Now it is the USPS so I have to take it with a grain of salt. It could be just getting into the system there and may show up soon. However I am now getting this sinking feeling that I may have made a mistake in trusting this to happen. The user account on eBay is now no longer active. This user account I bought from had 50 positive feedbacks and was active since 2002. It seems to me a waste to delete an account for $225 dollars but I guess it is possible. Also, Im not getting much communication other than it was going to be sent out on Wednesday. The users PayPal account also shows positive transactions...

Has anyone else had this kind of experience buying air tools on eBay? I say only air tools as this person seems to have been selling a lot of different tools at one point. Im hoping this is my own insecurity on this and Im not trying to slander anyone, I just wanted to see if anyone could help put my mind at ease. I pulled the username from this as I decided I should keep that out till I know this to be a scam.

Thanks,
Josh

USPS tracking vs. UPS

Josh... I have noticed that USPS number tracking is different from UPS...

The Post Office doesn't seem to do real-time tracking, but will report when it is delivered.

Perhaps you need to wait a few days.....

gil in Tucson

USPS "tracking" is notoriously bad. I've had stuff not show up on the web until 2 days after the package was delivered.
Andy

Thanks for the quick response. I was thinking that may be the case, Im just a bit gunshy. Ultimately the transaction happened over the weekend so it is not something I should expect to see for a few days. I think when I saw the users profile disappear from eBay the day after I bought the item I started to panic.

Ill give it a few days. Thanks guys!

-Josh

To set your mind at ease, I'll contribute to the masses who say postal tracking is just an afterthought to the usps. No offence to the usps. But I've NEVER seen tracking information available while the package was in-route.

Alls good

I just got a note back from the seller and it appears it went out late yesterday, so it most likely isn't on the truck till today. I think I'm just a bit paranoid!!

Thanks again,
Josh

Just a couple hints for others using Ebay:

A track record of 50 transactions isn't much.

Check to see what the transactions were--sales or purchases?. With 50 transactions since 2002, it doesn't sound like the guy sells regularly and probably many of those transactions were purchases, not sales. It's easy to build up an apparently good track record as a purchaser simply by paying promptly thru Paypal, which says nothing about how reliable one will be when selling. Read what the folks say in their feedback for the seller, especially for sellers with only a small number of transactions.

Some sellers you see quite often. Toolsez has been around a long time, seems to have nice stuff. With over 6,000 transactions & 99% positive feedback, it has to be hard to build that kind of record by simply buying stuff. I have never bought from him--always outbid--but I know someone who has and he was happy. I bought from Stein but only found out after the sale because he used some other name on Ebay. Anyway, I was very satisfied with his service. I wish he would post his Ebay name.

If you don't have confidence about the seller, treat your purchases like gambling and bid only an amount you can afford to lose.

Overall, I have saved a lot of $ thru Ebay and have been burned so far only by a couple bad product descriptions--one was an outright lie, but shipping was more expensive than what I paid. The second incident was partly my fault because I did not adequately know the product.

Ebay is great, but a some of the sellers are crooks, so go in with your eyes wide open.

Thanks for the hints RScott... I appreciate it.

I agree 50 feedback definitely isnt a lot. I dont have above 50 myself and I've been buying and selling on there for 9 years though. I just dont make it my normal business. Most people in the feedback range such as Toolsez are professionally selling on eBay. It's pretty much impossible to get to those numbers of feedback without spending every waking minute on there. I've purchased from Toolsez and was very happy with the transaction as well. If a user is looking for a sure thing that is the way to go. Always look for lots of feedback, and specifically current feedback.

This user has virtually all sales and only one purchases. This is why I trusted them. Also they have been selling tools online for a while. I drilled down through more users profiles that had done business with the user and it all came back around ok. At one point there were 5 items on there by this user 2 weeks ago. I just couldn't see how someone would build a profile for 5 years and then cancel it to scam $225 bucks. Seems like an awfully small chunk of change for all that effort.

It's always a **** shoot but as you mentioned you have to go in eyes open. If you want to get the good deals you have to put yourself out there a bit and assume a level of risk youre comfortable with.

Cheers,
Josh

Alls well...

My fears were laid to rest today as the postman dropped off a heavy box containing my squeezer and the 30 piece die set it came with.. .good thing it did too. I forgot to check if the shank was 3/16 or 1/4, it's 1/4. now I just have to figure out how to set it up!

Cheers,
Josh