Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: bought a printer on Ebay

Try to resolve it through eBay, because if you can't you'll have to sue. Assuming it was under $7500, bring the suit in small claims court.

Re: bought a printer on Ebay

Potentially, there are four lines of recourse, but as a practical matter maybe non will work satisfactorily:

(1) Most obvious is a claim against the seller for breach of contract. Expensive, time consuming, and it isn't at all certain you can prove any damages against the seller's defenses.

(2) Is this damage in transit, at least in part? Maybe you can file a claim against the carrier.

(3) If you used a payment service such as PayPay, they might have some satisfaction guarantee program that would cover some or all of your claim. (I don't know).

(4) The eBay dispute-resolution service may have enough influence over the seller, or the threat of negative feedback alone might be useful. That is the 21st Century equivalent of reporting a merchant to the Better Business Bureau, a threat I remember my mother making from time to time when I was a kid.

Re: bought a printer on Ebay

Situations like this are why eBay recommends that its customers use an escrow service.

If the transaction was recent you can report it to eBay's dispute resolution program. Otherwise, you may have to sue the seller. You may have to do so in the seller's local court, even if it is in another state or country. I would need to know more about the transaction before I could make any specific suggestions.