Have you ever bought something on E-Bay , used PayPay, and found the item to be junk? You can file a "Significantly Not as Described" dispute. When you escalate from a dispute to a claim, you are told to return the item by a certain set of "track-able" carriers. Who wants to pay more money just to return junk?

Here's my story.

I'm interested in gems. I've bought one or two on E-Bay, using PayPal, with success, but I've bought three or four fake, usually glass or YAG. In the past I've received a refund, after escalating the dispute to a claim with PayPal, and kept or threw away the fake. I was not asked to return the item.

This year PayPal has asked me to return the gems by carries that give tracking numbers. That would have cost me about $20 for a small ring or stone. Naturally, I was upset to have to spend an extra $20 to recover less than $200, especially on top of the disappointment of receiving fake gems.

I was determined to get all my money back without having to spend more.   I'm retired, so if saving money costs me a little time, no problem. To the "user agreement" I went and under "Buyer Protection" I found the following:

"If you lose a "Significantly Not as Described Claim" because the item you sold is counterfeit, you will be required to provide a full refund to the buyer and you will not receive the item back (it will be destroyed)."

This is under "Buyer Protection", a bit confusing, but It worked. I stated that the gem was "counterfeit", which it was, and a day later found a refund posted to my PayPal account.

Checking the dictionary, I find that "counterfeit" means made in imitation of something genuine with the intent to deceive or defraud". That sounds like "fake" to me, but it was the use of the work "counterfeit" that made the difference.

There was no notification from PayPal or E-Bay that I had won my case, nor did anyone ask me to destroy the item or send it to be destroyed. This has worked with both the recent (June 2009) fake gems I bought, once by phone conversation with a PayPal representative and once by quoting the above user agreement sentences in the "comments" section of my claim.

Sometimes using just the right word works!