Sold Item On E-Bay-Have Question

[GrnNatlFan]

I have been selling and buying on E-Bay for awhile now and have come across a first. I bought a Linksys wireless router brand new from Best Buy a couple of years back and used it for about two weeks. The wife got "scared" that all of our personal data was going out to hackers (tried to explain to no avail). Anyway, I decided to sell it on E-Bay and listed it. It sold and I shipped it. Now the guy that bought it had 0 feedback on E-Bay and was a member for less than 1 month when he bought it. I get this e-mail from him today:

I tried to install this router today to no avail. After talking to LinkSys Technical Support, we have come to the conclusion that this unit has been “Bricked” and cannot be reset. It is obvious that the unit has been tampered with due to the seal on the bottom being visibly broken. If you have any other WRT54G Ver. 4 or earlier units, I will be happy to exchange ASAP.


I'm kind of suspicious. I never opened this router up and it worked fine for me. Here are my options:

1: Full refund and let him keep the router.

2: Make him send it back and them give him a full refund.

Don't know if he is blowing smoke but I am anticipating negative feedback on this one. What's the opinion here on what to do? Also, does anyone know if my IP address was stored on this router or not? Is there a possible hacking/security problem if this guy knows what he's doing?

 

[tomcatturbo]

Go with Option # 2

Make him send it back and give him a full refund. Make sure you write the transaction in a message so if he stiffs you, or something goes wrong you have it in black and white. Also, make sure he responds to your request to mail it back and get a refund in a message response.

Also, if you can get his phone # and try to speak with him in person. Maybe it was something simple he did wrong or got wrong installing the router. If he's really not happy, and says he can't use it, the right thing to do would be to give him his money back. Routers sometimes can get "locked"

Last but not least, it's better that you get it back, than a negative strike on your ebay acccount in my opinion.

I have a router too, and you have nothing to worry about with the Ip address, etc. You're not going to have to worry, he won't be able to do anything.

 

[rphatdad]

I agree with the above.

Also there is a button that you hit with a paperclip while powered it will set it to factory defaults.

Also after doing this connect the router directly to the PC not the internet yet go to the IP address specified in the manual and make sure it says linksys and not something like linux. There is a hack out there to replace the firmware to load a linux os onto a linksys router.

If it shows linksys your fine and can hook up to the internet. Otherwise leave bad feed back and throw the damn thing away.

PS. I'm a software engineer who does Network admin on the side.

 

[Jbenn911]

Ditto...option #2...Chances of your IP being stored in there are slim to none..Even if the flash rom in the router stored it, yours has probably changed due to power outage, new modem, etc..Unless you have a static IP...

 

[DavzGN]

Hopefully he didn't brick his router, then bought yours and planned to return his bricked router to you.

David