As a guy who has more sell than buy transactions, I really do not like the seller’s attitude here. You should not deduct shipping cost if goods didn't make it into buyer's country. Problems in seller's country and with seller's own customs department ARE THE PROBLEM OF THE SELLER.
As someone who receives payment by gift routinely, I can say that gifting is not an issue for outright scams. You can always take back a gift.
I want payment by gift for three reasons. One is to circumvent pp fees, especially since I don’t expect protection as a seller anyway. Most people I do business with don’t have paypal US verified addresses (I don’t also!). Circumventing pp lowers cost of transaction for everyone.
A second reason is that I have a non-USD account, and deal with people with non USD accounts. PP tries to nickel and dime you whenever it can, eg by charging currency conversion fees twice. Unless someone is paying USD from an existing USD pp balance, the seller is usually charged extra for payments from a non-USD base currency. Paying me in Singapore dollars is useless since I will still get charged currency conversion if your account is in pounds or kronor etc. Not to mention I can’t take that money out of paypal without them charging me yet again for bank transfers. So I really hate paypal and do everything I can to avoid letting them charge me.
The last reason is to cut off trivial disputes and frivolous complaints. You need to write in to claim back a gift. That's not something anyone would do unless he was either a victim of fraud, or planning to file a false claim. Most disputes are not outright scams where nothing was sent or a Cooler Master sent in place of a Filco. Gifting means that a kid using his parents’ pp account won’t be able to dispute without at least letting his parents know what was going on. It discourages the sleazy stunts that people like Pacifist and Stancato09 like to pull when they do goods payment.
Try asking my friend Henz how to take back a gift. He’s done it before on a sleazy gher.
I am also more than puzzled why many of the same people who say ‘don’t send money as a gift’ will happily participate in group buys where they pay hundreds of dollars and wait 1+ year to get their swag via proxy shippers. Paying by goods is useless after 45 days. If you want the safety of paying by goods, you also need to do your own part to meet paypal requirements: direct shipping to your paypal verified address, and to file complaint within 45 days if not satisfied. Since OP waited too long, goods payment wouldn’t have helped him anyway.
I also have my doubts about some things.
The name being tossed around, supposedly Fragli1ty’s real name, is Dxxx Kxxx-Cxxx. All 3 elements are fully Anglo. The photos that supposedly reflect his actual appearance, which Hoffman has deleted, don’t match such a name. I think some innocent netizen’s photo got used as Fragil1ty’s.
Fragil1ty has been around for quite a bit. He didn’t look good here, but I don’t think he’s going to destroy his reputation over one keyboard. I fully support the mods in editing out the Doxing. I also want to point out at the time of this post, the OP has continued to display the personal details for Fragil1ty.
The behaviour of at least two geekhackers on this thread has really disappointed me. You guys are old timers and you don't know our rules (and general netiquette) on Doxing? In the bigger scheme of things, fake clacks/artisan caps are much more harmful to Geekhack as a whole than one ugly transaction, but people did not post the forger's photos either. I would give Fragil1ty the benefit of the doubt here because he hasn't established a pattern of sleazy behaviour yet. There are geekhackers who routinely do not send stuff within 2-3 months, refuse to answer PMs and are rude and vulgar, and somehow most of you folks still happily do business with them. Somehow, when someone is able to supply rare clacks or Model F keyboards, the normal rules of good sense go flying out of the window.
On a final note I don’t understand why the seller was charged $0.57 for fees. That’s not a gift, but it is way too low for any credit card payment.