A Buying Experience.....

Hi,
Over the last year I've bought literally hundreds of US stamps off of ebay. Yesterday, I encountered my very first problem.............

I purchased a MNH E13 Special Delivery stamp from an established ebay seller. The stamp arrived yesterday and as I was mounting it, I realized it was the same as the E16 stamp - which is of a much lower value.

The difference between the two is the perferations, and of course I checked them out. Well, my new stamp was not an E13, but an E16.

Last evening via email, I contacted the dealer and alluded that it was likely an honest mistake. This morning, I received notice that a full refund was deposited in my PayPal account.

My point is, there have been a number of posts about ebay concerns, and I just want to say that from my experience, established ebay stamp sellers are a pretty darn good lot.

Sweet. I'm glad it worked out for you. Do you have to return the stamp to the dealer? I recently went through this with a #14 but luckily the guy/gal was very good about it and refunded my loot and allowed me to keep it. I have it in my binder but it was a lesson learned.

No, the gentleman did not request it back. Of course it is a low value item (to a dealer) and also good for his rep.

Its nice to be in a hobby where folks tend to be pretty decent straight arrows!

Hi mobilman44,

I agree with what you say. There are lots of decent and reliable sellers on ebay. One I buy from in the UAR in particular. An express delivery overprint I ordered didn't turn up. I emailed the dealer and he sent me another of same or better quality. That arrived ok, but a month later the first stamp turned up. I contacted the seller and said I would mail it back to him. He replied to say that was not necessary. So I gave the stamp to a Jordanian friend of mine who also collects Egypt, and who buys from the same dealer. He was over the moon.

Terry

Mobilman, if you sell on ebay like I do theres no sense arguing with a customer..no seller wants a bad mark on their record..if the customer sends my item back I have no problem refunding his money..the ones that get me are the guys from foreign countries(no names) who bid an item way up and then I get a problem from ebay that they never received the item and I have to refund everything !!

Yes, I do sell on ebay, and have been a regular since 2000. I have over 1000 feedbacks, all positive. Of course no seller wants a negitive or even a neutral feedback. But some can get pretty feisty before they do the right thing. I've had grumpy sellers with coins, model trains, and a couple articles of clothing. But I've never had a problem with a stamp seller (or buyer).

I've only had two problem orders on ebay. The first sent the right stamp within 3 days and I returned the wrong stamp to him. The second one sent the right stamp and a dollar bill for my trouble. I returned the wrong stamp and the dollar bill. Mistakes happen and have been corrected really quick with no trouble so far. Happy so far.

Now that I think about it, I have had only one lousy experience with ebay in over a year. Most sellers really go out of their way to make their customers happy. The bad experience I had was buying what was listed as a MNH xf scott us 401. It did not show up for a while, and the seller finally found it and sent it on. It turned out to be a 397.

Agreed.
Never had a long term problem, found them to be uber helpful.
Recently had two items late (> 70 days)
I threatened both vendors with neg feedback, and was refunded immediately.

I subsequently received both items near on 90 days
and paid them back immediately gave pos feedback with advice on slow delivery.

This seems to occur with vendors appearing from UK
but the items sent from Romania.

Thus far I've not had any problems from ebay (or Bidstart). However, I tend to only buy from those with fairly extensive feedback, and on ebay, the majority of my purchases have been philatelic supplies, or fairly low-end items.