PayPal wipes out bill for fake phone

This is about a smartphone I bought on eBay several months ago. I was moving home and it was a few days before I could back up my existing iPhone 4 and try to restore the data on the new after was thin, with few coming on to the market.

After I contacted Halifax, it said that it felt your usable income had been higher when you took out the mortgage.

It said it had worked out its maximum lending on an interest-only basis which was reached by using 100pc of your basic income and 60pc of your commission.

It now agreed to give you the option to apply for a £756,000 mortgage on an interest-only basis, as opposed to nothing as it had said before and the £1m or so it had been lending you iPhone. Despite trying continuously, it was not recognised by iTunes. I tried to resolve this for a month.

I contacted Apple which suggested deleting and reinstalling iTunes. This did not work. In desperation I contacted my computer guy who, after four hours here, told me it was a very previously. It said there was no discretion to increase the amount any further.

This was subject to the mortgage application being successful. It agreed that if it subsequently released the funds that it would refund a percentage of the early repayment charge paid to close the previous mortgage depending on the total amount you borrowed. On this reckoning the amount would be around £6,266.

The clock for the timing of the porting was started again. Halifax apologised for the delay in confirming its position and referring

You appealed against this decision but your “not as described” claim was still rejected on the grounds that you’d had the phone for several months before you identified the problem.

Unlike eBay, which has a 30-day time frame for redressing such situations, PayPal allows 180 days. I approached PayPal’s agent. After many calls my perseverance paid off.

You now managed to send crucial evidence from a third party that proved your purchase was counterfeit. This was in the form of a letter from Apple. PayPal then refunded you the £410 net cost of the phone within several days.

A PayPal spokesman said: “Buyer Protection gives people 180 days to get in touch with us and report any problems such as faulty or counterfeit goods.

“If a buyer suspects they have received counterfeit goods, we may ask them to have the goods assessed by a qualified third party.”

A spokesman for eBay said: “All reports of counterfeit items are investigated by eBay.” There are a range of actions it can take against such sellers.

It reminds intellectual property rights owners that they can report potential infringements with items or listings through eBay’s VeRO ( Verified Rights Owner) programme. the case to its specialist underwriters and offered you £750 as a gesture of goodwill.

You then went to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) which brought the early repayment charge down to £6,000.

By then you had had to go into temporary accommodation before moving into the new home you have now found.

It was agreed that one set of removal costs amounting to £2,800 would be met by the bank.

This was awarded by the FOS on the grounds that the costs wouldn’t have been incurred had Halifax acted more quickly.