Thank you for checking this out. THIS is a story for all times. It is very emotional and dramatic. I sold a trading card to another user for $274.99 + $3.00 to ship the card to Canada. The user paid IMMEDIATELY! I shipped the card IMMEDIATELY! About 2 weeks later the buyer emails me to say he has not recieved his card and wants to know if I had tracking #s on it going to Canada. I had no tracking #s. To send a trading card to Canada with some type of signature confirmation or registered mail for a trading card is $10.41 & $23.00 and change. No collector in his right mind is going to pay that kind of money to ship a piece of cardboard to Canada. You can review the completed listings of this card and see that few users charge that kind of money to ship a card to Canada. The card was a 05-06 Sidney Crosby Upper Deck Young Guns RC. See for yourself. USPS does not offer delivery confirmation to Canada at any kind of an affordable rate. If you want confirmation that your Canadian customer got his card you have to go with signature and registered mail as stated above. HERE IS THE KICKER!!! I had to write back to the buyer to let him know I did not have delivery confirmation on this item. And all I had was the receipt that SHOWED I MAILED IT! Unbeknownst to me, I just gave that guy leverage based upon what he KNEW was not available for U.S. citizens using USPS to ship to Canada in the first place. So I am thinking to myself that I am screwed! I am just really screwed. My suspicions were confirmed the next day. He sends me an email that states he has filed a DISPUTE, NOT a claim, but a dispute with Paypal against me. And assures me that a dispute is not as severe as a claim. And he is right. It isn't. He is also demanding that I just go ahead and refund him as if to say "just get it over with". He has been doing this for awhile and has a great deal of confidence in his winning percentages. His cockiness ALMOST comes to life in his emails. But I know I am SURELY going to lose this fight because why? I don't have delivery confirmation is why. You see, when you go to Paypal as a seller to dispute your case. Paypal is going to ask you. "Do you have delivery confirmation on the item?" And I am going to say NO as much as it kills me to take this kind of hit in the wallet. But you have to be honest because they are going to ask to see it via email or fax with a case id # attached to the fax. A postal receipt only proves that you shipped the item. Even if the customs form # is on the reciept. It DOESN'T prove the item was not received or lost in transit. In a nutshell, Paypal kindly told me I didn't have a leg to stand on. I was facing my very first Paypal loss. I have been undefeated all this time. NOW what do I do?

GOD IS WATCHING ME. I get an email from a fellow ebayer who happened to notice I sold this card to this user. He asked me if I had any trouble with the transaction. (Worms EVERYWHERE. Flags too!) I informed him that the buyer paid immediately. But now he claims he didn't get his card. I looked very carefully at the buyers feedback. And it all came to me. I WAS BEING SCAMMED!!! You talk about ONE MISERABLE FEELING! Your helpless. There is nothing I can do. You are getting ready to lose $277.99 to a scam artist. Well this guy who sent me the email will remain anonymous. He really sparked something in me that day. And I wish I could email him a beer. I went through the buyers feedback AGAIN to see what types of things he was buying. He had a routine of buying up high end cards. Hockey cards was his main thing. NEVER leaving a seller feedback. I only knew he was buying high end cards because of feedback left from sellers. LUCKILY, as a seller, I NEVER leave feedback first. I truly hate to hold feeback hostage. Reasons like this are why I do. Though as a buyer, I DO leave feedback first. I don't carry a set of double standards in that respect because I NEVER bid on ANYTHING I can't pay for in 24 hours. And my feedback speaks for its self. Check it out! Back to the meat & potatoes of the story. The anonymous email I got inspired me to do searches on the items the bad guy shopped for. I went through EVERY SINGLE LISTING to find where he had been buying. After that I would email the seller to find out if the transaction was okay. Did they have any problems? Some sellers had not gotten to the scam stage yet because the listing just ended. But the bad guy AGAIN paid instantly. MANY sellers openly submitted testimonies about the bad guy and knew about his game. The bad guy works on other popular trading card sites doing the same thing. THEN I found out that he buys on one user id & sells on another. THE PLOT THICKENS HERE FOLKS. It truly does. Just hang on. Go get a drink. Have a cigarette. Go pee if you hafta pee. Do what you gotta do. THIS GETS GOOD!!! My inbox is getting full of negative responses about this guy. Some are first time victims like me. Some know who the bad guy is and are MORE THAN HAPPY to give testamonies and help me. This is where a community comes together and REALLY ACTS AS A COMMUNITY!!! I read EVERY SINGLE EMAIL. I am FRUSTRATED at what I am reading and I am getting increasingly angry and disgusted. Then I thought ot my self to call Ebay. Let them know what has happened and that this is not an isolated incident. REMEMBER FOLKS, it COULD HAVE just been rotten luck and the guy was honest. Other users could have emailed me to say everything was fine. And I gotta tell you it would have been a little easier to deal with if that were the case. But it wasn't the case. This guy ISN'T HONEST! So I launch a complaint with Paypal AND eBay with my gathered testamonies. And now the bad guy is under investigation. I am still thinking to myself at this point that I am still screwed out of $277.99. So without batting an eye, I decide to write to this clown. I am starting from zero. So I have nothing to lose. I let him know that charges were up against him. He is under a watchful eye. I told him about the claims I had against him. I told him I had contacted people he had trasactions with in the past. I TOLD HIM THINGS THAT COULD ONLY COME FROM A RALLY. You can't make these testamonies up. They are just too wild. And I force fed him his own ugly truth. I crammed it so far down his throat that it would come out the other end. And I did it without a threat or word of profanity. I kept EVERYONE anonymous. He knew that I knew what time it was. I had nothing to lose. My money was as good as his. AND he has the card. So I did a dance with the devil and made a deal with him. I told him I would close the complaints against him with Paypal and eBay in exchange for his closing the dispute with Payal against me. (OOOPS! I lied! I just can't let the community down. I just can't.) Later that same night I got a response. He IMMEDIATELY closed the case! He writes to me like I am stupid. He says he will eat the loss for his family. And closed the dispute and left me + feedback. And all this time I have been unable to leave feedback as a seller since the middle of May when the new sellers feedback ratings started. He doesn't know this though. So the next day comes around. I am STILL getting emails from disgruntled users. I did share and bask in my glorious victory to them. All were happy. BUT, I still have a duty to help my fellow ebayers who helped me. YOU GOTTA SHARE EBAY LOVE PEOPLE!!! YOU GOTTA DO IT!!! And I did not back out on my buddies who helped me. I just can't. I wouldn't be victorious without them. So I am sharing gathered information with everyone and encouraging them to do the right thing and report this clown. Unfortunately for the clown, one guy he was shafting was a lawyer. OUCH! That one is going to hurt. I volunteered my emails to the lawyer too. So now I have a rally against this guy to get him out of good peoples lives. We are all in this together.

THE CLOWN IS A WOLF IN SHEEPS CLOTHING. READ ON. He emails me that night to tell me how sorry he is (DUH!) and that he really doesn't understand why everone is mad at him. He DEMANDS to know what users are in the rally. Now you KNOW I can't tell him that. So I told him he will find out in due time and just left him hanging there. Let him suffer a little more. I can smell the flop sweat here in Florida. And he lives in Canada.

THE NEXT DAY: I got another email from a user in the rally. He has just struck again. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FOLKS? But this time he came with a BRAND SPANKING NEW USER ID. And chased after the same cards. And was stupid enough to try to dupe another seller who was onto him TWICE! IMAGINE the nerve! Emails are steady still coming in from other rallyers AND the clown. So this guy is just flat stupid. Ron White, a comedian, once said that "you can't fix stupid." And he's right. Even after the clown was quickly discovered in his new user id, he is STILL trying to bargain with me not knowing I know he opened a new user id. He doesn't even have a feedback yet. He is afraid of my leaving him a negative feedback. I told him a negative feedback was the least of his worries. He has to face God and authoritiy figures. A negative feedback from me wouldn't scratch the surface of what other punishment is getting ready to go down. Plus he doesn't know I can't leave feedback. That  to me is sort of an unsettling feeling too. I say "sort of" because -FB is just a drop on the bucket. This guy is just plain stupid. Negative feedback won't teach him a lesson or make him smarter. So I really don't plan on doing it once my feedback issue is fixed by ebay. There is just no good to come of it.

As of the day I am writing this guide, this is the third day of this war. The war is still on. I am still fighting with and supporting my fellow ebayers. I WON'T leave their side. But what I wrote this story for was to let other honest people out there KNOW what kind of crazies are in the world. I hope you learned from my mistakes at my expense. I don't mind calling it what it is because they are my own. And I hope you learned a strategy or two. I also hope you never have to use them. I love eBay. There truly are alot of wonderful people here. Sure you got your bad eggs every now and again. But what Pierre Omidyar once said "People are basically good". So keep that in mind. Enjoy this great marketplace and all its splendor. I do.

Folks! My name is Mike. I truly hope you took something good from my story. If you did, vote yes and let our community know. Thank you, Mike.