Hot Toys DX Bespin Luke Skywalker

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So, for the second time in less than 6 months, I'm having trouble with an international purchase through eBay.
I recently purchased an unopened HT Luke Skywalker Exclusive set from an established eBay seller in Hong Kong. It took them a week to provide shipping/tracking info, and I've been watching it every day since. This morning the tracking indicated that the parcel was near, and when I got home just now there was a small padded envelope in my mailbox from Hong Hong. I hadn't ordered anything else from there, so I immediately felt my gut drop, and checking the tracking number confirmed it matched the tracking info I was provided for the Skywalker Exclusive set. Inside the small padded envelope was a Mickey Mouse bookmark and a note that read:

"Dear customer,
Thanks for purchase. This is the free gift for all my clients. Your item may be coming to you or has been arrived. We will try my best to serve you. If the item arrived, would you please leave me positive feedback and 5 star DSRs."

So, have I been scammed? Seems obvious, but the seller has been on ebay for 5+ years, 99.7% feedback, 5,000+ ratings. It seems odd that he would put tracking for a "free gift" but not for the figures. I've already opened a case, I'm not taking any chances, after buying a counterfeit HT Origins Wolverine a few months ago (thankfully, that ended ok). Thoughts?
 
I quite regularly drop a hundred or more to China and Hong Kong without incident, but via eBay never for a figure yet. My advice is just be polite in your case and communications, don't make accusations of the seller being a scammer and just see how they respond and how everything is settled. There are any number of ways a deal can go awry, including via human error.
 
So, for the second time in less than 6 months, I'm having trouble with an international purchase through eBay.
I recently purchased an unopened HT Luke Skywalker Exclusive set from an established eBay seller in Hong Kong. It took them a week to provide shipping/tracking info, and I've been watching it every day since. This morning the tracking indicated that the parcel was near, and when I got home just now there was a small padded envelope in my mailbox from Hong Hong. I hadn't ordered anything else from there, so I immediately felt my gut drop, and checking the tracking number confirmed it matched the tracking info I was provided for the Skywalker Exclusive set. Inside the small padded envelope was a Mickey Mouse bookmark and a note that read:

"Dear customer,
Thanks for purchase. This is the free gift for all my clients. Your item may be coming to you or has been arrived. We will try my best to serve you. If the item arrived, would you please leave me positive feedback and 5 star DSRs."

So, have I been scammed? Seems obvious, but the seller has been on ebay for 5+ years, 99.7% feedback, 5,000+ ratings. It seems odd that he would put tracking for a "free gift" but not for the figures. I've already opened a case, I'm not taking any chances, after buying a counterfeit HT Origins Wolverine a few months ago (thankfully, that ended ok). Thoughts?

Well things can happen, but an item landing with tracking...I would be worried. I have bought lots of Ebay from China / Honk Kong / etc. and I have had very few problems, but the ones I have had...were like this instance with you, very obvious.
 
Uh oh. that doesnt feel right... please update us if your item eventually arrives. Cause if it was indeed a scam.. buyers should be aware of this type of modus operandi
 
Quick update: the seller responded that it was a mistake, the delivered package was a free gift he sends to all his clients (really, a Mickey Mouse bookmark?). Then he provided a second tracking number, supposedly for the HT Luke Bespin set, which he just shipped yesterday, after I opened the case (and mind you, I paid for the set on 5-29-14). It'll take at least 7-10 days to see if this time I do, in fact, get the figures.
 
Why didn't the seller send his crappy 'free gift' with the figure? This sounds like a scammer. Good luck, keep the case open.

I hate these thieves that pull this crap.
 
Name the seller. Even if you do get your figure that's not legit.

I've ordered tonnes of stuff from HK without incident, but only from a small number of well established sellers.
 
The one time I bought an item from an 'established' Chinese eBay seller.. I got the item.

No gifts, or surprises.. just what I paid for - plus good communication & a fairly quick turn around time.

That should be a standard thing.. but what do you do when some folk treat the online market like the wild west.
 
It's a very old eBay scam that is hard to win your case.

Hope the figure has even shipped this time.

Well, I don't know about the "hard to win" part; the seller has already admitted the initial shipment was a "free gift" in his case reply, and the new tracking info shows he shipped the second parcel after I opened the case, so if this one ends up bogus I have to believe there's enough evidence in my favor for eBay/PayPal to reverse the payment. It's just aggravating that in all likelihood I'll have wasted a month and had my $$ tied up for nothing.
 
The feedback and protection systems,though imperfect are set up to weed bad sellers out. The seller may win one or two cases on such a scam, but a pattern will be easily visible and they'll be shut down sooner rather than later. It's hard to believe that anyone with high feedback would be doing this, so my first instinct would be a hacked/stolen account if it's fraud. A careless mistake (which is rectified after the second package) if not.

You can rip people off for a few hundred, even a few thousand short term with this kind of scam. Selling legitimately you can make millions. And that's why there are so many sellers now from Hong Kong and China. They used to watch people from the US buy their goods wholesale and resell them on eBay, now they're doing much of that selling themselves. Reference: an acquaintance was making 3-6 million per year selling all kinds of miscellaneous imports strictly on eBay - I have no idea what he's doing now as we had a falling out many years ago.
 
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Clearly it's time to ban the internet until it can be properly regulated to prevent this kind thing from happening.

Oops. Wrong thread.

I've never been ripped off doing business with foreign sellers on ebay. Just one guy from Chicago who sold crappy homemade Predator shoulder lasers and lottery envelopes. I should never have bought a Kotobukiya Vader from a guy like that, but I got my money back and last I checked, he was selling women's shoes like Al Bundy. There's a certain justice to the universe...
 
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Re bought this fig again recently, sold it about 6 months ago and after getting vader in i regretted it, only have the battle damage luke displayed at minute as i've borrowed clean lukes body as a place holder for something else.

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I get packages constantly from China, but 90% come from the same sellers over and over toyshomeb2 and the others like this that sell parts by the tons on a daily basis, these guys will fix anything and have always bent over backward to be good to me, the couple problems I have had with Chinese sellers I have Ebay start looking at what's going on ASAP and I take pics of what I receive; you'll get ebay reps that say it's not necessary, but don't listen, I find its best to CYA as soon as you think a deal is sliding, if things work out, it took a couple seconds to snap pics. If you think an eBay rep is worthless ask for another, a supervisor or call back, like any business, not all CS reps are created equal. Good luck.
 
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