Posted By:
warshawlawI thought he was awfully quick on the trigger to threaten me the way he did; I did not know that his doing so ran contrary to eBay policies. I will check it out and if that is what eBay says, I think a Safe Harbor report is merited. I guess we'll also engage in the usual mutual negative feedbacks over this.
I do appreciate the support that I am getting from the folks on this board. Often in collecting life when I am confronted with commercially unreasonable behavior, I feel like I have to step back a bit and ask whether I am being overly sensitive or whether there is a real issue. I certainly felt that way when I was banned from you-know-who's auction for returning a grossly overgraded lot in strict accordance with His rules, and I definitely felt that way this morning when I logged online, ironically enough, to pay for that auction and a few others. The fact that the folks on this board agree with my reaction is nice. I guess the old saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar really applies to all aspects of life. I just cannot get over the level to which commercial discourse has sunk in this country.
As long as we are on the subject, one more point of buyer-seller etiquette: my feeling is that it is the usual custom and practice on eBay for a seller to contact the buyer first. And I'm not talking about the automatic emails that bid systems like eBay or Paypal generate, since these mailers provide at most a link to the service but never the full info needed for payment. I mean, in this case, the Paypal generated message did not provide an address for check payments or even mention insurance costs, and I was no way going to buy an expensive item "naked" through the mail. It was the seller's email of yesterday evening (the one that came in nine hours before the "letter bomb") that first gave me a price of $6 on a $257 purchase for USPS insurance. In my view it is ridiculous for me as a seller to expect a buyer to contact me first; why would he or she since the details of the closing are not there?
PS: The guy called me this afternoon to confront me with his deep moral outrage over my post (at least I think it was him--the caller said he was in Florida but the payment address I got was in Ohio, so I don't know what was what on that). Nevermind that his e-mail rip this morning went to several other collectors, all of whom saw me portrayed as a renegging bidder, etc. After arguing with me about his rules, which quickly degenerated into silliness, he decided to void my bid and refund my payment (which was made this morning via Paypal). Whatever. Tell me, why is it that in many years of collecting and in literally thousands of transactions, I have had only two guys who ever created these kinds of problems and both of them threatened me with legal action when their tactics were made public? I guess I should take heart that I have had only a few such confrontations. . .
PPS: I really do not like that eBay gives out telephone numbers. I don't appreciate the confrontations. Is there a way to block this?
PPPS: I expect him to come on this board and post his thoughts (that was one of the things he said be was going to do). I am not even going to respond if he does. Ain't worth the time.