eBay and Stolen Credit Card
WISCONSIN
ok here's the background information.
i won a lcd monitor on ebay on december 15th. i paid $229.50 by check and it was cashed on the 19th. i received my lcd the next day or so. skip ahead to february 26th, 2007. i receive a letter in the mail from tigerdirect.com saying that "we have received notification from the credit card issuing bank stating that the charge placed by tiger direct in the amount of $303.70 has been authorized with a stolen credit card. this is a federal crime. in order to resolve this issue we are requesting payment of $303.70 or return of the the lcd screen."
what i'm guessing happened is that the ebay seller was auctioning off the lcd without actually having it. once i bought it he ordered it on tiger direct with the stolen card and had them ship it to me.
my question is, do i need to pay tiger direct or return the lcd screen? i don't see why i have to.
i spoke with a tiger direct rep on the phone tonight and they were very familiar with the screenname of the guy who i bought the lcd from on ebay. the guy said that he has been around for a while causing problems. if they knew he was doing this how do they let him keep doing it. they should have let ebay know and then the issue is settled.
why did it take 2 months to inform me of this? to me this is garbage.
any advice you could provide would be appreciated.
thanks for your time
matt
Re: eBay and Stolen Credit Card
Unfortunately, the monitor isn't yours and it wasn't the eBay seller's. Save for in very unusual circumstances, you don't get title to stolen property by giving money to somebody who doesn't own it.
You can decline to incur further losses. You should be able to convince Tiger to pay the return shipping, for example. If you don't have packaging materials, you can also ask that they send you appropriate packaging for the return of the monitor. The monitor can't be (lawfully) resold as new, so you can offer to purchase it from them at a discount.
It apparently took two months for the person whose credit card was stolen to be billed, report the problem to the credit card company, and get a chargeback after the credit card company investigated the situation. That's not particularly surprising.
Re: eBay and Stolen Credit Card