About six months ago, I arrived too late to an auction on a JL Audio stealthbox to place a bid. As a result, the winner got the item for an amazingly low price.

I wrote him and asked if I could buy the item for a little bit more than he paid for it, and he said that would be swell. I sent him the money, and (presumably) he sent the seller a new address to ship the order to.

A couple of days pass and the item is allegedly shipped to the auction winner's shipping address, despite the address change given to the seller (that change being, to ship the item to my home). The seller states that he will not ship the stealthbox again (due to its cost, and in his defense, it's a big box) without reimbursement from the auction seller. The auction seller says that he shipped it to the right address, the one provided by the original auction winner, and has fulfilled his part of the bargain.

Despite repeated efforts to contact the seller (at the auction) and the guy I bought it from, I can get no responses.

So this guy that I sent the money to has a stealthbox for more than he paid for it, and apparently has it onhand. I have the guy's name, Andrew Ngo, and his address (ngobo@cox.net), but that's the sum total of personal information I have on him.

My question is, would there be any way whatsoever to try and recoup my losses here? Are there any new paypal provisons (there were none at the time of this transaction) that would obligate them to divulge the address of Mr. Ngo? Is there any kind of pressure I can apply (save threatening emails) to have him fulfill his part of the transaction?

Hmm, doesn't sound good. Since you went outside of Ebay to attempt this transaction, Ebay probably won't do anything for you. Since you were neither the "official" buyer or seller, you aren't protected under any of Ebay's provisions, such as their fraud policies.

I won a wireless card from some dork on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. I paid right away, and so did the other 2 winners (dutch auction) and of course the item never showed up for any of us. Luckily, I paid though paypal and subsequently registered a complaint.

I got fed up and bought a wireless adaptor (that I'm using now finally!!)

However, your situation sounds much worse. Your transaction with the official winner didn't occur in the official Ebay realm, so you basically gave this guy some money. Sorry to hear about it though, hopefully something will work out.

You can use various search engines to find out more about this guy. I managed to find the phone number of the guy who took my money - and this was without requesting info from Ebay.

Good luck

Yea, I've tried looking all over the place for who this guy might be, but I can't narrow him down at all. How about 1-800-US-Search?