How to keep new people from getting into type 1

[Dnine]

I thought long and hard about posting this and did a lot of research and double checking to make sure that I had my facts right before because I don't take this lightly.  Everybody here knows how expensive type 1 is to get into and how important new players are to the format.  I am new to type 1 and recently started to acquire as many type one cards as possible.  

Like many of my fellow magic players, cash is tight.  So I turned to one of the best way to find type one cards and that's Ebay.  In the past 3 months I've managed to acquire a pearl, mana drain, Library, and needed the needed dual lands.  To do so I've had to sell most of my MTGO collection to pay for it.  

The transaction of interest, and the point of all this really. Was when I was the winning bidder for an unlimited Time walk.  The Item number was 5919047690 if anyone was interested.  Now I know that buying on ebay is risky and fraud is always an option.  And when this seller failed to ship the card after 30 days and multiple emails, I was almost ready to take my losses and learn from them.  It wasn't until I came across a post here on the mana drain about a tournament sponsored by T&T collectibles.  T&T collectibles was the account that my pay-pal made payment too.  I did some more digging and found other posts on this site that made reference to T&T located their email and Phone contact information.  

When you make a payment with pay-pal, pay-pal sends you a copy of the sellers contact information.  The phone number listed on this site matches the one sent by pay-pal.  Also this is the same email address that the seller contacted me from when I was working out shipment arrangements.  There is little doubt that They are the same.  The phone number could have been placed my anyone, but someone would have had to hack into his email account and respond to my messages, not likely.

Some of you may be wondering why I posted this.  This is not the end of the world for me and I will not be quitting magic or Type one.  This isn't meant to be a flame against T&T or the people that go there, more of a presentation of facts for you to make your own decisions on.  This is more of a plea to the Type one community to take care of your own.  What hurts the most was that this wasn't some outside scam but a scam from within our own community.  I'd expect better from my fellow type one players.  

And one last note to bring you up to date.  After reporting to ebay that I hadn't received my item yet, Mr. Fryer proceeded to ship me a poorly poxied black lotus just so he would have proof of shipment.  Couldn't even go through the effort of proxing the right card.  I’m still pursuing with pay-pal and e-bay to get my money back and I hope I do, better yet, what I really wanted was the time walk card that was promised to me.

[JACO]

Judging by the auction on eBay, the card itself that you bid on looks like a fake to begin with. Part of the process of successfully buying/selling on eBay is to deal with reputable sources. The seller 'tfbeanies' had 3 or 4 negatives in his feedback before you even bid on the item. For future reference, you should avoid sellers like that, as it's not worth potentially saving 5% on something if you have higher odds of getting ripped off.

That being said, that seller is an asshole. The problem is that scavengers from outside the community exploit people like you, and so they have nothing emotionally invested in the game or scene. You can only hope for Karmic Justice...

...OR you can do the following (click on each of the following for links):
1. Make repeated calls to their business to annoy them
2. File a fraud complaint through eBay
3. File a fraud complaint through the US Postal Service, as this is a form of mail fraud (non-delivery of items advertised)
4. File a fraud complaint through the Federal Trade Comission (FTC)

I would recommend doing all of the above, as that's usually what I do to people who attempt to fuck with me. Sometimes the threat of doing all of those things is enough to get them to comply.

Good luck.

EDIT: His email address is  TFbeanies@Aol.com, so feel free to sign that up for lots of spam and newsletters too. Also, the address of T&T Collectibles is 312 tyler street, pittsfield MA 01011. You might want to contact Kowal about this, as he has stated in a previous post that 'the owner is a good guy.' Maybe he could help iron the situation out.

[Kowal]

Heh, that sounds like Terry to me.  If you've got problems with him, PM me the details and I'll send them his way the next time I see him.

[jazzykat]

I think you can also do a chargeback on your credit card depending on how your paypal is setup. I think American Express is supposed to be famous for protecting customers so you can look into that as well.

I have no idea i the card in the picture is fake but I had a problem with a highly reputable seller because he let his brother use his account! The card I received was obviously fake as it had glue on the top edge  

Good Luck and if it is TNT then I think the commnunity should be able to get to the bottom of this one way or the other.

[Dnine]

Thanks guys, Paypal is working on trying to get my money back, they recovered about $20 so far.  The name on the account was Terry Fryer, so Kowal was right if that is the Terry he was referring to.  The other email address he used was fry4the2@aol.com as well as the TFBEANIES@aol.com one.  I'll pm you as well cuase I'd like to know more about him.  I'd really like to believe that he doesn't own a card shop, that would be so wrong.  

Thanks for the tips Jaco, I have done the ebay one already and will look into the USPS and FTC ones today.  As for his rating, I knew it was a risk, but the 3 negs were all from sellers and the buyer feedback was good so I took a risk.  I've gotten smarter since then and have been able to purcase cards from friends and the local store.

[BWM]

Judging by the auction on eBay, the card itself that you bid on looks like a fake to begin with. Part of the process of successfully buying/selling on eBay is to deal with reputable sources. The seller 'tfbeanies' had 3 or 4 negatives in his feedback before you even bid on the item. For future reference, you should avoid sellers like that, as it's not worth potentially saving 5% on something if you have higher odds of getting ripped off.

And in addition to this, the ebay-account hadn't received feedback for over 2 years before your feedback...