Tom Doyle :: TALK

Now that the LuzernTech saga is all over, I want to draw attention to eBay and how I found them to be completely biased towards protecting sellers on their famous auction site.

If you’ve been keeping up with my LuzernTech saga you will know I had serious issues with them and their illegal activities. But one thing that got to me most was what LuzernTech wrote about me on eBay in response to the negative feedback I gave them.

When I gave feedback on eBay about LuzernTech, I didn’t hold back. I went straight for the jugular. “Absolute scammers - delivered broken, refused repair, no postage refund”, was what I said. Yes maybe I went a bit far, but I really wanted people to be aware of what this crowd were up to and in the 200 characters that you are allowed to write, that’s really hard to do. The only way to get this message across was to be strong and to the point.

eBay give the seller the opportunity to respond to the feedback from a buyer, here’s what LuzernTech said: “Customer given a returns number for a replacement wanted a refund”. This was a complete and blatant lie and in my past posts you’ll see the evidence.

Now here’s where eBay protects the seller… We as the consumer/buyer do not have an opportunity to respond to this feedback within the PayPal site. So in effect, the sellers are being completely protected here. The seller can just put in a comment fobbing off the disgruntled buyer as simply someone who likes to complain. They can fill eBay with lies to make themselves look like reasonable businesses just trying to make a living, but unfortunately have some moany customers from time to time.

So as a consumer, we could read these responses to negative comments and think “hey, they’re not actually bad at all, sure your man is complaining about nothing”. Instantly, an intelligent seller can turn a negative comment into a positive one. This does nothing to protect the consumer, it only protects the seller.

I do however agree that feedback should be limited. You could imagine how my respsonses would have went on and on with LuzernTech!

However, there should at least be a way for a consumer to complain about a response from the seller and if untrue, to have it removed.

“You can” I hear you say, well yes you can complain about it, which I did, but the response from eBay are to say least, pityful. In a nutshell, it does not breach their “Feedback Abuse Policy”, so they won’t do anything about it.

I also should note that eBay have recently put a ban on negative feedback on buyers from sellers. However, what is classed as negative? I certainly feel the feedback I received was negative, yet eBay didn’t see it that way.

So it’s clear from my point of view that eBay care little about the consumer and protect the seller entirely in cases like this. I believe the protection should be on the side of the consumer mainly. I know that sellers need to be protected too, but they should at least investigate allegations like this and do something about it so that the bad guys are rooted out.

Related articles

• eBay Picks Buyers Over Small-Time Sellers
• EBay tweaks feedback, but ‘no negatives’ is here to stay

As per my last post, I’ve been trying to get a full refund from LuzernTech for the damaged product they sent me.

I got an email back today:

Hi,
apologies ,we do not have repair service and we have received the item
from the supplier as ready to send.
Anfortunately because of insufficient stock we do not have the item for
the replacement ,
regarding to this circumstancess we have issued the refund .
Please accept our apology ,our terms & conditions stated as we do not
refund the postage cost and original freight cost.

Let’s ignore for a second the terrible response in terms of grammar and spelling from a supposedly “one of Europe’s leading eSolution providers in the area of consumer electronic asset recovery and disposition” - straight from the homepage of their website www.luzernsolutions.com.

I’m going to go straight to the “we have received the item from the supplier as ready to send”. On their eBay store however, they say:

“Important point to note
The items have been tested and are 100% functional. However, they may have minor cosmetic blemishes e.g. small marks or scratches normally associated with brief usage.”

So who exactly tests these items then?? If they are taking them and just sending them on, how can they say that the products are 100% functional??

The next point to note is this:

“we do not have repair service”

Funny they should say that when on their website they have the following statement:

“If a defect does occur during the period of the warranty, you should immediately notify the parties listed below. At the sellers option, the product will be repaired or replaced.”

So that’s a lie too then yeah?

Anyway, I just hope their potential customers and clients recognise what a shoddy operation they run.

A few weeks I decided to purchase a DVD recorder, you know, one of the cool ones that allow you to pause live TV, allows you to record to an internal HDD aswell DVDRs etc.

After much searching of the shops I decided I’d go with a Philips DVDR3597H (scroll to bottom), which seemed to have everything I required. In the shops they were ranging from €250 to €290 a pop. When I went into one well known electronics store, they were displaying a 20% off sign, when I asked them could I buy one, they only had the display model left. I don’t know why, but they wouldn’t give me anymore off the ragged looking display model, so I didn’t buy it then and there.

A friend of mine who frequently uses eBay recommend an eBay store by a crowd who call themselves Luzern Tech. I went onto eBay to have a look at them and the product I wanted was on auction for only £10 GBP.

I thought “great! this is my lucky day”. Well how wrong was I…
I won the auction for £71 GBP. Delighted, I paid the £71 + £8.50 delivery charge. In total it worked out at around €102. Happy days!!

When I received the product about 10 days later, I set it up and had it all functioning perfectly. Now, the box that arrives with the product has a lovely page stating that all products are fully tested before leaving the warehouse - worringly they had a longer explaination on how to return your product.

Anyway, when I tried to use the most basic and fundemental part of a DVD player, my world collapsed around me. I inserted my favourite Pearl Harbour DVD (;)) and bang, the disc tray kept opening and closing. It simply wouldn’t play any DVD.

More disappointed at the fact that I’d have to untangle all the wires again to put it back in the box, I decided to email Luzern Tech to find out the process from the horses mouth. 2 days later I still hadn’t heard back from Luzern Tech. Looking at their negative comments on eBay, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

One of the negative feedbacks that stuck out to me most was one where a guy won an auction for a few pounds and when he didn’t receive the product questioned Luzern Tech as to why. They said they were out of stock, which is against eBay’s rules as far as I know!

Anyway, I kept faith and just thought I’d been a little unlucky since they did have a fairly high rating of 97% on eBay.

When I finally got a reply from Luzern Tech, I realised something was wrong. They sent me a RMA number and asked me to deliver it back to them. At no stage did anyone ask me what was wrong with the player.

So I went off packaged it up and delivered it back to Luzern Tech’s warehouse in Blanchardstown, Dublin. When I got there, I found an office block with a logo the very same to Luzern Tech’s except it was called Luzern Solutions.

When I rang the bell, another shocker came to me… The guy at the end of the intercom said “You have a delivery? Is it a return? You are in the wrong place if it is”. The first thing that struck me was “Is it a return”, obviously well used to people coming to the wrong door to drop off a broken product. The second thing was, “you are in the wrong place”. Granted the main entrance was only at the other side of the building, it just seemed very shady to me.

Anyway, I dropped it off and didn’t hear a word from them until I went chasing them again. A few days later, I got what looked like an automated response from them stating that I would be getting a refund.

Again, no-one asked me at all what was wrong with the player. It was as if they already knew it would be returned anyway and were just happy to give me my money back.

So today I got my refund, except I was only refunded for the price of the player and not for delivery. I guess the motto of this story, be very careful when dealing with this crowd. If you buy something, make sure it’s at a decent price or you’re likely to get a dud.

My belief is that I bought something for well below what it should have sold for, so in order to fulfil the order, the just sent me out a broken player knowing I would send it back and they could give me my refund.

Oh and this is all from a company that say they are reputable - take a look at their website - www.luzernsolutions.com

They even have the nerve to state:

“PROOF! …..

We know we’re good!!  We have the highest feedback rating on eBay of any high-volume refurbished product reseller. We also maintain customer feedback ratings with the very same systems, staff, and procedures. “

That’s a blatant lie as many users of eBay will be aware of.

I’m now just fighting to get all my monies refunded, but do you think I’ve heard from them? You got it… no