Is it fraud when I gave them 100% refund???

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beachbum2377

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hi! i just saw your website and it is very nice and helpful!! I haven't found anything as informative!!! can you help me? i sold an item on ebay to a few customers. I was supposed to get the items from my shore house and then my sisters baby died and i couldn't get down the shore, so what i did was refund my buyers 100% as soon as I found out I couldn't get the items. 2 of them are threatening legal action against me. I did refund them, can i still get into trouble? Im so scared but I am stuck. my sister has been talking about suicide since losing her baby so we are worried about her and I do not want to leave her side and so i refunded my buyers. I even sent them free makeup (which i also sell and have been selling this from my sisters house). please help! can they really make me go to court for this? They keep threatening me saying i am committing fraud! But i refunded them all of their money! It is only 2 of them who are threatening this. They said they want these by Dec 15 and it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to get them, because it is 2 hours away from me and I need to be with my sister right now. but they keep sending me harrassing emails saying I am committing fraud. Can you please help me! i am really a great person! I have these 2 emails from people that are bad, but I just got 20 emails in a row from people who say I have great service with my makeup sales! I am really a good person, so can they really take legal action and accuse me of fraud when they got their refunds in full? PLUS i sent them makeup as a courtesy!
thanks for your help and happy holidays!
 
well, the good news first: This is not fraud. You had no intent to defraud these people, so this is no case of criminal fraud.

What you might have had is a contract with them to sell certain goods. I say might have had, because on ebay things are even a little trickier. There are some situations where a contract is not even formed, but let's assume you formed a contract with them to sell these goods.

You did not deliver, so you breached the contract. Their remedies now are to either request that you deliver and make up for any costs the delay may have caused them (specific performance), or they can ask for damages the non-delivery caused them or they can what in law jargon is called "cover", they can buy the goods somewhere else and if they have to pay more for them they can ask you to make up the difference in price plus any costs they incurred covering.
Usually the law favors damages (either cover or just monetary damages) over specific performance (that is the forcing you to deliver the goods). Specific performance will be ordered by a court only in a few situations, especially when the goods in question were rare items that cannot be found somewhere else. Still, if you simply cannot deliver them because you don't have them anymore or they got destroyed or there is any other cause of impossibility then you just cannot deliver them and they again might be stuck only with damages.
It was good that you returned their payments, so they cannot charge you with unjust enrichment.

Now I don't know what kind of goods this is all about and where this happened etc., so what I write here cannot be any specific advise, I could not give this anyway, but this is a general idea of what the law is. And most times people just huff and puff but when they realize what it means to go to court over such a matter, they become normal again. If these people don't live where you live they would have to go to your county to file a suit and so on, most times it really is not worth the effort.

Here is another very good article about this topic: http://www.lectlaw.com/files/bul08.htm
and here: http://www.fullertonlaw.com/chapt12a.htm (look at the bottom of the article under B. Buyer's remedies)

Like I said, there might even be some other issues about formation of the contract which might be positive for you or other defenses you might bring for the breach, but you have to bother about that when a lawsuit really should be brought, which I doubt.
 
Thank you but..

thank you so much, although the one thing i dont understand is, how am i responsible for damages for their customers when they should not be selling anything that is not in their hands anyway! I just think that if he did not have these products in his hands, he should not have been promising them to anyone , am i right? thanks for your help, you really helped me!
 
you are welcome, well, the problem is, that they relied on your promise.

Legally, a contract is a promise. You promised to send them goods, they promised to pay you for it. They relied on that promise you gave, and then promised others something in reliance on that. That might not be smart, but it is common in our everyday lives.

So the law says: once you gave a promise you have to keep it. If someone relies on that promise to his detriment and you break it, then you are liable for their damage.
 
I don't know the exact details of this case so I don't know if you are "screwed" then, let me phrase it this way:

It sounds as if you breached an existing contract. That would make you the "bad guy" in this case. But to "make you pay" for it, the plaintiff would have to show damages, and it is relatively doubtful that they had substantial damage because luckily you did try to mitigate the damage as much as you could. You even might have some defenses that would let you off the hook totally.

Therefore it is doubtful if those people would find it worth the effort to go to court about this. Of course it all depends on the sums involved here.
 
Thanks

Well i saw that he was reselling on ebay and he was seling them for 2.00 each before he had them; i sold to him for 12 cents, so there was not much damage. he can get these online for the same price from any distributor. thanks for helping me! also, the fact that he wanted me to "meet him" to come pick them up with one of his buddies, i said nothing about that anywhere in my auction, it said "delivery only" but he said "i want to come pick them up w/ my buddy". i am a 27 yr old girl and id ont want these guys coming to "meet me" lol
thankas so much for your help!
 
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