laconic1

Here is the situation. Early last month I bought a cell phone off of ebay to replace a damaged phone. Interestingly enough it was the salesperson at Verizon that recommended going the ebay route for a replacement phone. I bought it off a seemingly reputable vendor who had only 10 negative feedbacks amongst over 1400 positive feedbacks in the past year. I looked at most of the negative feedback before I bought, and a lot of them seemed to be from whiny customers, only 1 or 2 seemed like actual problems. I felt fairly confident that even though this was my first ebay purchase it would go smoothly.

When I got the phone it was a different story. Took it to Verizon for programming and it didn't work. I emailed the seller who advised me to return it and he would exchange it. A week after shipping the package Priority Mail and no response from the seller, I get to the point where I need a working phone right now, and bite the bullet and buy a new one from Verizon. I email the seller that night requesting a refund minus the shipping fees I had originally paid. After yet another week with no response left negative feedback for the seller, citing their failure to reply to emails, and the defective product. A few days later the seller hits me with negative feedback stating outright that I never emailed him, and insinuating that the problem was that I was a new ebayer who doesn't know what I'm doing or how ebay works. I emailed him again to try to get it corrected and now another week and a half later I still have not heard from the seller. I am running up against the 45 day limit Paypal has for disputing purchases in a few days, and am wondering if anybody has disputed a purchase and if it was worthwhile. On a side note the seller has received 20 negative feedbacks in the last month from other ebayers, many with very high positive feedback scores, most citing the same concerns as me, defective products, and does not reply to emails.
Any advice on how to handle this would be greatly appreciated.