My horrible experience with ebay. Review on Ebay

Hi ,

I am talking about my experience over here, I don know if others had a good experience with ebay or not. This is about the item # 6429488764 –a Brand New Sony Ericsson K700 I phone.....if you happen to visit ebay just look for this item . The auction for this item ended on 5th Sept 05 and I was one of the winners.....as I was bidding on ebay for the first time, I did not really know that according to the ebay policy, non member/ ex member can not sell or buy any item on ebay, it was only after I paid for the item I discovered that the seller of this item -alias : chunaina was an ex member and I was surprised that ebay people did not even take notice of this and listed this item on their site(he was already an ex member when he listed this product).This was the first mistake ebay made, next before making the payment ,I confirmed with ebay that whether the payment mode of Direct deposit in his account is safe or not to which they replied ‘It is’ . I made the payment of rs 8,453/- for this item thru cheque on 9th sept 05 and after that I never heard from the seller as he was a fraud, one more thing I want to state over here that I sold off my existing phone to make the payment as I thought I will get the new phone within 3-4 days. Now when it was clear to me that I have been defrauded, I filed for claim under std. purchase programme which covers authentic buyers which can only happen after one month after the auction ends, which was on 6th Oct 05 , now when you escalate it to claims, it takes them 14 days to revert to you asking for the proof of payment , this again did not take 14 days but more than that….. 16 days , after I recd a mail asking for the proof of payment I sent a fax to ebay Mumbai a copy of the cheque . Exactly on 27th oct 05 I recd a confirmation that the claim has been in my favor, after which several communication followed to know the status of my refund ……I had to make several STD calls to Mumbai(from delhi) for this. Finally I recd my DD of rs 8453 on 8TH Dec 05……..so the point is just see the run around I had for my money. I parted with my money on 9th Sept 05 and I got the refund on 08th Dec 05…..exactly three months without any phone and money blocked. The problem with ebay is that there is no way to contact them over the phone, it is only thru email that u depend on for communication and none of the ebay people are on the same page about what is happening on your complaint, there were instances when I did not get any reply for my query ……the entire experience was horrible…….I would like to suggest ebay that transactions may go wrong on ebay but they should look to this that the genuine buyers/ sellers do not have to suffer……the person who recd the payment enjoyed with my money with me suffering here for making a prompt payment……