Cereal_Killer
Branched out member
- Location
- Ohio
Just got FUCKED by paypal.
My biggest just-for-fun hobby is building flashlights. Sounds boring yes but I like it. I don't do it as a side business or for extra income or anything, don't usually take commissions but the project was cool and he came to me with his thoughts well organized and a pretty damn good mechanical drawing of what he wanted so I decided to do it.
I design the circuit in the driver then design the PCB for the driver, I hand build the PCB (bare boards manufactured for me at Oshpark then I hand reflow solder them with all components myself), then I hand build the body on my small hobby lathe then I assemble it all then flash the open source firmware. Start to finish hand built pieces of art...
I was commissioned last winter to build a small light for someone on a forum, he was legit at the time and I had no worries, paid 100% up front ($360) on Feb 14th. I delivered the light about 4 weeks later (sooner than quoted) and he was happy.
Till now everything was done, didn't hear a word, he posted photos of it in his EDC pocket dumps (a thing on reddit where you post a photo of everything you EDC for the day).
6 weeks ago I got a email from pp that my account was $360 negative cause he filed a claim. First off if you know pp policy you know custom hand made items arnt usually covered. Failure on their part #1
I started defending myself against the claim (buyer claimed it was broken. HIGHLY unlikely as these things are pretty simple, all descrete circuitry and no moving parts and I take extra care to be perfect, a flashlight has the potential to literally save your life after all) and PayPal decided in his favor telling me I either had to refund the total amount or remake and resend an exact replacement. Well I decided it could be worse; afterall most of the price I charged was for my time, it's maybe $75 in materials so I got to work remaking it as exact as I could.
Paypal insisted I ship it first so (stupid me) I did. He received the light and was supposed to send the "broken one" back in a prepaid box paypal charged me for. That never happened. He now claims, even though it's broken the original item has "significant sentimental value to him because it was originally a gift from his wife" (even though I never once spoke to her in the build process) and he will not send it back.
Had I gotten the "broken" one back I could either resell it (again, I'm extremely positive it's either not broken in the first place or could be fixed very easily) or atleast have it for myself, it was a piece I was pretty proud of after all!
This guy just scammed me for $720 worth of items and won. They did release my $360 they held for the 6 week process but I'm still out of pocket the materials cost on the second one and I have a total of about 30 hours between the two items (20h the first time with the design process, another 10h of machining and asembely this go-round)
Sorry for the broken up post, I'm pretty hot right now.
In closing, I won't be accepting paypal for anything any more. Fuck that.
My biggest just-for-fun hobby is building flashlights. Sounds boring yes but I like it. I don't do it as a side business or for extra income or anything, don't usually take commissions but the project was cool and he came to me with his thoughts well organized and a pretty damn good mechanical drawing of what he wanted so I decided to do it.
I design the circuit in the driver then design the PCB for the driver, I hand build the PCB (bare boards manufactured for me at Oshpark then I hand reflow solder them with all components myself), then I hand build the body on my small hobby lathe then I assemble it all then flash the open source firmware. Start to finish hand built pieces of art...
I was commissioned last winter to build a small light for someone on a forum, he was legit at the time and I had no worries, paid 100% up front ($360) on Feb 14th. I delivered the light about 4 weeks later (sooner than quoted) and he was happy.
Till now everything was done, didn't hear a word, he posted photos of it in his EDC pocket dumps (a thing on reddit where you post a photo of everything you EDC for the day).
6 weeks ago I got a email from pp that my account was $360 negative cause he filed a claim. First off if you know pp policy you know custom hand made items arnt usually covered. Failure on their part #1
I started defending myself against the claim (buyer claimed it was broken. HIGHLY unlikely as these things are pretty simple, all descrete circuitry and no moving parts and I take extra care to be perfect, a flashlight has the potential to literally save your life after all) and PayPal decided in his favor telling me I either had to refund the total amount or remake and resend an exact replacement. Well I decided it could be worse; afterall most of the price I charged was for my time, it's maybe $75 in materials so I got to work remaking it as exact as I could.
Paypal insisted I ship it first so (stupid me) I did. He received the light and was supposed to send the "broken one" back in a prepaid box paypal charged me for. That never happened. He now claims, even though it's broken the original item has "significant sentimental value to him because it was originally a gift from his wife" (even though I never once spoke to her in the build process) and he will not send it back.
Had I gotten the "broken" one back I could either resell it (again, I'm extremely positive it's either not broken in the first place or could be fixed very easily) or atleast have it for myself, it was a piece I was pretty proud of after all!
This guy just scammed me for $720 worth of items and won. They did release my $360 they held for the 6 week process but I'm still out of pocket the materials cost on the second one and I have a total of about 30 hours between the two items (20h the first time with the design process, another 10h of machining and asembely this go-round)
Sorry for the broken up post, I'm pretty hot right now.
In closing, I won't be accepting paypal for anything any more. Fuck that.
