Advice On Ebay Purchase

I bought a lot of stamps off ebay and the seller was gouging me on the shipping costs. An extra $25 US, for a total of $95 shipping cost. I called him on it before paying and he said he would refund me the extra if there was any. I get the items and shipping was $70. Well a month goes by and no refund so I email him and he responds promptly and says he is on vacation and thought he had refunded me. He said he'd check next week when he got home.

Wanting to protect myself I thought I'd open up a case through ebay. They didn't have one that matched my issue so I opened an "item not as described" and stated exactly what I said above. He said he would refund it next week and just protecting myself etc... I emailed the seller and apologized saying I was just protecting myself.

I get an email from ebay today saying ship the item back for full refund, case closed...... That's not the problem.... Where do I go from here??

Was this shipped through the GSP program by chance?

No it wasn't.

I really don't know myself as I haven't encounter this type of situation. You might want to contact ebay directly and ask.

There is an ebay link to use regarding excessive shipping costs that allows someone to report a listing. However, after a listing has closed, I don't know if you can report except by phoning ebay. See:
http://www.ebay.com/gds/Report-exce...94527/g.html

my advice would be to contact the seller one last time and calmly propose that he refund you $35 (half the shipping of $70) and you will refrain from posting any feedback at all. Else, don't threaten but tell him that if not refunded within 5 days, you will be forced to leave him a negative feedback.

this way, he makes his own bed one way or the other. often times sellers are not bad guys, just busy and don't care after shipping. if you give him a clear carrot and a stick, then he will probably take the carrot (give you $35 and avoid a bad post). Its also reasonable to share the pain and chalk up your lesson by eating some of the shipping. were the stamps good though?

Alberta Stamper
If I thought the postage cost was too high I would query it with the seller first. If he won't reduce it I wouldn't bid. Easier than getting in an argument later...
Regards
DavidR

Shipping needs to be resolved fully before payment is made. You made the payment, you agreed to the cost.

My philosophy as a bidder is to look at the total amount with the shipping included. If the shipping pushes the price beyond what you are comfortable with, simply don't bid. You can ask a seller about shipping charges before the auction close. After the auction close is kind of like crying over spilled milk. That being said there are many sellers that do not get my bids in the first place because they charge too much for shipping. I have one seller that I buy from every month that is way too high on shipping, but he has great stuff and I figure it into the deal.
As a seller I can tell you that I listen to all questions before and after the close of the auction and if my shipping is out of line I would discount it, but the seller does not have to do this. If a bidder never asks and then complains I would block them from future bidding and just refund all of their money.

Thank you for all the comments. It was a buy it now auction and even though the shipping was high I still would have paid it and not backed out of the auction. The shipping price listed was a generic international quote. When I punched in the cost to my area it came back as Approx. $65 US. This is why I asked him about the shipping cost.. He promised he would refund the difference.. Therefore I expected one. If he would have said "sorry that's the price" I would have accepted it and paid. He should have had accurate shipping listed from the beginning.

Either way he said he would. He then had 3 opportunities to refund it and he didn't. To me he was dodging it. In the end he ended up refunding it after some rude emails. It was about the principle by that point. he thought he had already refunded it but made excuses that it would take him a week to find out. It's a 2 second check on PayPal. I told him he hadn't. When he refunded it He told me to enjoy the double refund and a few days later he asked for it back because he was sure he refunded it twice. I pointed out that he hadn't. He finally left me alone. Odd behavior for someone with 25,000 transactions.