Worst Experience Collecting

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Posted By: Adam

I have only had one bad experience. It was on eBay and it involved a seller who wanted payment only by money order (it was for a high priced Mickey Mantle card). I bought a post office money order and, after waiting a solid month for the card, I contacted him since I still had not received the item. He claimed he never received my money order and thus he never sent me the card.

So I went to the post office and filled out a "missing money order" form, paid some money for the post office to process the form, and then in a few weeks the post office sent me a photocopy of the back of the money order with the guys signature on it. Then I filed a complaint against him in small claims court in California (it can all be done by mail and since I am lawyer, it was pretty easy for me to put everything together). I attached to the complaint a copy of the document from the post office that had his signature on the back of the money order. It was really a case that would be impossible to lose and thankfully the guy realized that and ended up sending me the card in exchange for dropping the small claims case (I should add that I was able to determine, through public records, that the guy rented a house in California so I ended up suing the guy's landlord as well just to show him I meant business . . . I think the argument was something along the lines of "but for Person A renting his house to Person B, Person B would not have been able to commit this fraud and thus Person A is properly a second defendant").

It took a good few months to resolve the problem, but it ended up getting resolved (though it cost me maybe $100 or so in court filing fees).