My eBay Claim

Had to post this because I never thought it would happen... Here's the story.

In June I was looking for a new cpu for my Dell Dimension 2400. I found that I needed a certain cpu to match my motherboard. I was watching the auctions on eBay and found exactly what I was looking for and bid on it and won. Sweet! $84 got me basically a lot faster.

I paid immediately and waited and waited for it to arrive. After 3 weeks and a couple emails to the seller it arrived. I was ready to install it right away. I took the package out of the box and opened it up. I examined the writing on the chip (after finding my reading glasses of course, that shit is small!) and wow, wouldn't you know, it's not even close. Oh, it was a Pentium 4 alright but it was a 533 mhz bus instead of 400 and was a 2.7 ghz processor instead of 2.4. Ok, I'm confused, the auction was for a 2.4, 400 and that's the maximum my motherboard could handle. He must have sent me the wrong one...

So, I email him.... wait.... wait.... wait... email him again... wait... finally a response. He doesn't have the chip that he auctioned, that was a typo! A typo!?!?! What the fuck... He says he'll sell me a motherboard for it cheap... oh yeah, I can see where this is going. Scamming mother f'er...
I say no thanks, I want a refund. He agrees and I ship it back.

I email him that I've sent it, did he get it? And I wait... and wait... and wait... 2 more weeks go by, I go to PayPal and find the seller's email address (I had been communicating through eBay previously). I email that address directly, nothing... once more, finally get a response from him (from a different address) saying not to email his father any more! Oh crap, not only am I getting scammed it's by some f'ing punk. He says that he got the chip but that almost all the pins are bent and that he's not refunding me a penny!!!

Ok, I've been patient up till now. 3 months have gone by and I finally hit the roof. I tell him that oh yeah, he'll be giving me a god damn refund... I try threats, I try emailing his father, nothing. I get an offer from him finally for half. I tell him to shove it up his ass, I want the whole thing. He says then I better file a claim.

Ok, you little punk, I'll do just that. I got to Pay Pal because eBay suggests trying that first. Oops, has to be within 30 days to do that. Crap.

I go back to eBay and file a claim with them, thinking I'm pretty much out $84. After 3 weeks I get an email saying they'd been assigned my case and could I send my payment information from Pay Pal. I fax it in and today I got an email saying that I won the case and am getting $52.50 back! Ok, it's not the $84 that I paid but it's better than nothing and I can finally put this behind me.

And the computer? Still sitting with the old cpu and I keep vacillating between buying a "new" processor or just replacing the whole computer...