Bad Ebay Experience With Seller Edw1949-Sell - My Quandary

John, why should the buyer be punished? Clive wanted the stamps AS THEY WERE SHOWN. He did his part, paid in full, waited and got a partial product, and tried more than once to contact the seller. He didn't ask for a full refund, it was ebay's decision without asking him. Now he should pack the stamps and pay for delivery? Your "logical discussion" is very pro-seller. Seller's solidarity maybe?

I will cherry-pick one line from the previous posts:



If I read correctly, a case was opened, the seller did not respond at all, and after a certain time passed, the Ebay/Paypal system automatically sided with the buyer's case and refunded the purchase price.

The seller's complete silence was his consent for the buyer to retain the merchandise. If the seller wants the lot back, they need to proactively contact the buyer AND pay all return costs.

I would not leave any feedback.

An argument could be made that the buyer is not being punished at all. The transaction was a failed one, to be sure. That does not mean the material belongs to him (assuming shipping was refunded as well).

The seller's communication was terrible. I have experienced this myself (with this seller, by the way). So, I have a lot of empathy with Clive, believe me.

I would ask everyone to consider what message this sends, in the larger sense. Because a transaction goes south, does that mean the buyer can dictate the return terms?

John

I'd say that the message is "Dear seller, you can not ignore the buyer once you got his money."

Personally I think that an upside to keeping the misidentified stamp is that it is removed from the pool and will not be listed again as the more expensive variety.

Thanks, everyone for some excellent advice.

I particularly like Don's suggestion of mailing an old fashioned cheque. Unfortunately, as I am in Canada and the seller is in the US it would not be practical in this case.

I appreciate johnsim03's contention that the seller sets the conditions of a sale, and as I have now been refunded in full, the onus should be on me to return the stamps.
In general, I would agree, however, in this case, I believe that it is not so straightforward.

When something is offered for sale, once a buyer has paid for it, it becomes a contract. If the seller misrepresented the item being sold, either deliberately or in error, then I believe that the seller has broken the contract.

By attempting to contact the seller three times over a period of three weeks, I went out of my way to try and resurrect the contract. Given that the seller completely ignored my attempts at resurrecting the contract I believe that the seller has forfeited the right to set the terms of the contract.
It should also be noted that the seller did not voluntarily give the refund, the refund was initiated by ebay.

What I propose doing is to contact the seller to get their email address which I would need for a PayPal payment.
At the same time, I will give him two options:
1. I can return all three stamps at his expense, I don't see why I should be out of pocket for even the few dollars postage given his complete disregard for a paying customer.
2. Or I can send him a payment for the two stamps that I want, less the cost of returning the third stamp to him.

Once the transaction is finalised I intend to leave the negative feedback that I believe he deserves - not for the initial misidentified mistake, but instead for an appalling lack of consideration for his customers.

If however, I do not hear back from him, and I suspect that I won't, then I will doff my hat to rogdcam's little devil and go to bed at night with a clear conscious in the belief that I have gone beyond what is reasonable in trying to ensure an equitable outcome for both parties. In this case, I won't leave any feedback at all

This is not the first time that I have received a "not as described lot". In most cases, it has been a genuine error on the part of the sellers who have immediately issued a refund, and I in turn have had no quibble with returning the item at my expense.

Clive

In this case, it wasn't the seller who refunded the full price, it was ebay. The seller could have avoided this eventuality by simply responding. They chose not to do so, as the OP has verified that they are still active on ebay. It was a conscious decision on the part of the seller. The buyer did absolutely nothing wrong.

Personally, I'd send one more message and offer to return the wrongly identified stamp, along with the money for the ones that you are keeping. Put a specific date on it and let the seller respond. If they do not, that's their problem, not yours.

We're talking about just three stamps John.

Based on purchase price and catalogue value, it would be easy to apportion a value to each stamp, add the postage costs, and send that amount (for the two stamps retained + postage) back to the seller.

I question the title of this thread, OP. You received three stamps for free, at least one of which you needed.

The listing contained an error, money was refunded in full and no request for return was made. While ebay may have issued you the refund, ebay deducted the cost from the sellers account. The seller had no interest in blocking the refund nor having the material returned. While $60 was a lot for the OP's stamp budget, not so for the seller. You received the stamps free as compensation for the trouble the seller's error caused you.

Now one other choice was to ask for a partial refund based upon the one of the three stamps you were not happy with. That is a choice allowed and you can even specify the amount desired.

The fine print in the ebay rules allowed for the transaction to be handle how it was and if you asked for a partial refund, the rules would allow for that.

Now does Ed have a good communication track record on ebay? Not really. But at least he is not one of the sellers who block all questions from potential buyers due to receiving too many questions to respond to in a timely manner. Even that is a setting choice for sellers offered by ebay.

Parcelpostguy,



I am not too sure what is questionable about the title of the thread. It was a bad experience for me because of extremely poor customer service from this seller.

It was a bad experience because this seller couldn't be bothered to spend a few minutes checking whether a fairly high cat stamp was actually the stamp he said it was.

It was a bad experience because the seller did not care how much of my time he wasted. He couldn't care that it took time for me to create the images I sent him.
It was a bad experience because he couldn't be bothered to respond to me after my first, second, or even third message, thus wasting even more of my time than necessary. It seems that he only cares that his time is valuable everyone else's not so much.

As per my previous post, my intention had been to message him for the fourth time to try and arrange to either pay for the stamps that I want, and/or return one or more of the stamps, but your post has made me realize that my time is far more important than his.

And that I have already wasted far too much time of my time on someone so undeserved, someone who treats others with complete disdain. So, if he wants the stamps or the money he can take the time to contact me and I will happily try to resolve the situation - I am not looking for anything for nothing.


Which was exactly what I did, the three stamps were of approximately equal value, so I requested a refund of a third of the purchase price and offered to return the stamp at my expense.
That the seller couldn't be bothered to respond is what caused ebay to automatically issue a full refund - the seller had the option of refunding the partial amount but did not take it.



That is an understatement his customer treatment is abysmal, one should not treat people this way.

Clive

Have been reading this thread with great interest. The feedback system and how people see it is a science in its self.

Now have a perspective on ebay feedback from 2 different selling categories. Am very happy to say that stamp buyers as a whole are a very well balanced group who generally respect experience in stamping and wrestle with tricky situation from bazar seller behavior.

But as for plant sales the exact opposite is in play. Just about everyone thinks they are the worlds best horticulturist. Have 4 neutral feedbacks in a couple of months for silly reasons. The bigger you get the more neg feedback you attract from the experts. Sadly they really believe they are the best. Example email: 1 seed I got was a bit smaller so it means I get a smaller plant. Reply you got 2 seeds extra and your plants will be the same size no matter how big these seeds are. The buyer was not happy with this reply. This is one of the saner examples am using. But there is still a lot of good buyers.

So THAT is where those giant pumpkins come from!

Don't forget to completely ignore him the first three times. He clearly considers that a reasonable way to proceed.

What kind of clowns we are dealing with here .........Pay for what you keep and return the rest .Then forget this transaction the faster the better .

I remember learning to trade and the old Jewish Master who took it upon himself to teach me to trade the markets and make money . I went to him one day and said that a trade I made the previous day is in dispute over price with another floortrader . He asked me how much money was involued , I said 1/2 cent in the Corn market which is $25.00 . He told me go to the guy right now and give him the trade at his price before the markets opens this morning and Never trade with him again . Do it now and forget about it. When that market opens in a few minutes I want you to have a clear head and think what your doing TODAY .

That is the same with Regency Stamps and David Kols ,where I paid $350.00 for a auction lot and never got it shipped to me , the guy died . So if my goal was to build a huge worldwide Collection and spend my time moving my collection forward ,why spend two years jerking around with lawyers and his wife to get my money back, in those two years I spend thousands of dollars rearching my goal not crying over the lost .....

You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it's me, I'm a little ****** up maybe, but I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to ******' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny? You said I'm funny. How the **** am I funny, what the **** is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what's funny!