Defective JVC HR-D750U

[KekkyLekky]

Well, my new Hi-Fi stereo VCR, a JVC HR-D750U, came in the mail today, and it was advertised as working good and having the best picture quality the eBay seller had ever seen. But, such was not the case when I tested it. The machine tried to play a tape, but it would stop after about a second of trying. The machine failed to load the tape into the cassette when "eject" was pushed, meaning that the tape is "stuck".
I took off the top cover to look inside, and there is a circuit board covering much of the moving parts of the mechanism, so I didn't wish to mess with the board out of fear of my inexperience. However, I did notice that the machine was spinning the reels of the cassette in an odd way when loaded into the machine, and I suspect that that spinning of the reels (if there is something wrong with that mechanism) is messing up either the threading of the tape or the amount of tape taken out of the cassette.
This is quite a disappointment, seeing how this is a pretty high-end circa late 1980s VCR that was described on its eBay listing as working okay and having the best picture quality the seller had ever seen.
What should I do? Attempt to repair it (note that I am inexperienced), or return it to the seller?