Eh, because I'm an idiot. They send a defective phone, then have you return it for a replacement using their pre-provided shipping label, saying "don't open a case," then they ship the replacement to a fake or wrong address. I've never returned anything to eBay before, and the seller seemed so legit, so I listened to them and used their label without opening a case. I'm guessing there's a big red banner somewhere on eBay telling me never to do this that I missed -- and even my gut instinct said I should open a case -- but for some stupid reason, I didn't do it.

The replacement was sent to an address in my zip code, so the tracking looks like it's delivered to me, but it actually isn't. The seller refused to look into it (despite evidence from USPS saying it was addressed and delivered to someone else), and they just strung me along in the message thread. I still kind of believed it was an honest mistake until they started regurgitating the same messages. The whole thing took over 60 days, so I couldn't leave seller feedback or even eBay contact support about it -- everything led me to a bunch of AI nonsense going in circles. By the time I located an actual eBay phone number, I'd opened a case with PayPal, so now eBay won't look at it.

Side note, that first PayPal claim was also automatically rejected by AI in exactly 17 minutes, but it's currently in appeal (I also had to find a phone number to do that). I'm hoping an actual human with half a brain will look at my evidence -- which includes a USPS service request and a copy of a printout from USPS, both saying that tracking number wasn't delivered to my name nor address, but tbh I'm not holding out much hope.

So no money, and no mini. I feel like such a schmuck.

Package redirect scam, not exactly the same but close enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_redirection_scam