It's the same as my net54 id. Feel free to block me.

From Pete's wording, he "ripped the package open". I don't see anywhere that he specified the packaging, so I have to assume this is a bubble mailer?

First off, why the hell is a $900 card being shipped in a bubble mailer? For just a second, ignore what the card was placed in (top loader, card saver, etc). Common sense, alone, should mandate that a card with that value should be shipped in a box, and insured. That's on the seller.

Yes, Pete probably should have been a little more careful opening the package-I've received hundreds of cards in bubble mailers. It's fairly easy to squeeze the sizes, and, the card falling to the bottom, carefully cutting along the top seam to open it. Ripping a mailer open just leaves too much up to chance. But there's no way I can place the blame on Pete for the card being ripped in half. Nobody in their right mind would assume that a card of that value would have no protection at all.

The seller's negligence in packaging the card is directly responsible for the damage to the card. If it somehow arrived undamaged prior to opening, that's a miracle. Regardless, the buyer has a reasonable expectation that the card will arrive, and be extracted from the packaging, in the condition described in the auction.

Sign me up for that list too. Likewise, my eBay username is the same as Net54.

+1. I have never, ever had that experience with an ebay seller--virtually all packing has been appropriately protective and in accordance with the price.

Best of luck on the refund,

Larry

Now I know what to do with all the fishing lures in my tackle box that don't catch fish.

Its not my fault they don't catch fish, its the lure's fault!

I'll take them back to the bait & tackle store and get my money back.

Went deer hunting during archery season a few years ago. Shot and missed a deer. No way could it be my fault! It had to be the bow or arrow's fault! :rolleyes:


I can't believe this thread has gone on this long.

Wait, yes I can.

Well! that makes sense.

Thanks Frank.

Maybe it's a matter of expectation?

Most of the stuff I've bought on Ebay has been packed at least fairly well. The ones that come in plain envelopes are usually stamps instead of cards. (can't recall getting a card in a plain envelope, but it must have happened sometime over the last .....darn, almost 20 years. My Ebay account is around 18 years old. I wonder if it can vote....
Anyway, the stamps are usually obvious. Since most of what's been printed since the 30's is essentially junk, and is usually available for less than face value, lots of dealers and collectors use it on their mail. The envelope with my new stamps is usually the one with 5 or more oldish stamps on it. I'm always careful with those :D (I'm generally careful with all the mail, but more careful with those. Once I have a boxful, they're even saleable)

The funniest ebay mail I ever had was when someone asked where his stuff was and I told him the check hadn't arrived. So he sent a second one. In the pre barcoded window envelope that came with his electric bill. When I explained that the barcode was read by the mail handling machines to send the mail where it needed to go, he said he'd just learned that from his electric company that had called to ask why he'd sent them a check made out to someone else and included an Ebay printout.

Steve B

Just as a heads up - EBAY refused to refund. In a way I'm not really surprised; explaining it to people that don't collect cards is kind of hard. For most of you, you can get how a poorly packaged card is a cardinal sin, but ebay can't really see it that way.

Lesson learned is this: 1) PARTICULARLY for raw cards, assume it isn't packaged correctly and handle with care, and more importantly 2) life is more important than worrying about a ripped card (but boy does it suck).

Thanks to everyone for the feedback and for helping me feel a lot less dumb! I've had the worst pit in my stomach this whole weekend but I am glad most of you made me feel like I wasn't entirely crazy!

Pete

Did you pay for it with a CC? File a dispute with your CC company.

Can you at least out the seller so we can block them?

Pete

To be honest, my earlier post was not directed toward you.

I know what it feels like to get a poorly packaged card. It aggravates me as well, especially since I go overboard when packaging a card that someone has purchased from me. I've had two packages in the last 6 months either get eaten by the postal sorting machine because the seller forgot to write "non-machineable" on the envelope (paid $3 for S&H) or lost because the seller didn't include tracking and that was with a $4 S&H charge.

There is really no excuse for it. Bubble wrap envelope with tracking = $2.64

I'm always amazed (though I shouldn't be) at the lengths some sellers will go to just to save a dollar on shipping. Once the cash is in hand, they quickly forget that its someone else's property that they are mailing out.

It seems to be common practice these days though.

Jantz

Sure, now pass responsibility on to the CC company and get THEM to eat the loss.

Is the concept of personal responsibility completely dead?

Look, I once spilled a beverage on a fairly valuable card myself and I know how depressing it is. But looking high and low for someone else to blame isn't the right thing to do. The right thing is to learn from the mistake, of course, and be thankful for all your blessings. If you can afford an $800 bit of cardboard, your life is likely far better than that of most around the world.

My mom used to tell me, whenever I'd lose or break something, that I should think of the people who get hit by tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and so on, who literally lose their entire homes and everything within them. Really puts things in perspective. For that matter, I have a picture of a childhood friend on my computer monitor here... he died when he was just 16 years old. Looking at it lets me remember and honor him, and also reminds me to be thankful for what I have, and worry less about what I don't have, or have lost/broken/ripped.

Just sayin... man up, admit you ripped it, it's a bummer, and move on. Don't excuse your own carelessness by passing responsibility off to someone else (like a CC company,) thus making a victim out of them.

Extremely well written response Mark.

It's not passing the responsibility to the CC company. The CC company would get their money back from PayPal and PayPal would probably get their money back from the seller.

If you can't admit the seller was at fault, then I guess personal responsibility is dead.

What would be the grounds for a PayPal refund?

Examples of transactions covered by Purchase Protection:

• You bought a book, but received a DVD
•You bought an item described as “new,” but received something that was used
•You purchased 3 items, but only received 2
•The item was damaged during shipping
•The item is missing major parts (that the seller didn’t report)
•You purchased an item described as authentic, but received a knockoff instead

That's from the PayPal site.

Personal responsibility dead? You posts have avoided all personal responsibility of the person who actually TORE it.

Maybe it's the envelope mfg fault or maybe the people that sold the car to the seller to drive the package to the post office. As you know, without that car it wouldn't have been shipped.

Wake up. I feel badly for the guy. Terrible situation. But he can't ever get past the fact that he tore it.

I also agree that the seller underperformed by shoddy shipping. But as I said earlier, neither are 100% harmless or 100% at fault. But I can assure you that the cc company, eBay, PayPal or the delivery service are not at fault. They all did their jobs. This failure to accept responsibility is the crap that logjams courts, creates entitled people and causes exorbitant fees. Quit passing the buck.

Mark Medlin

Personal responsibility resides with both the seller and the buyer in any transaction.

When my daughter receives a birthday card in the mail from my parents, I tell her to open it carefully and not just rip it open as she is tempted to do because I know full well that it contains a $20 bill. Now even a bill ripped in half retains its full value, so no harm if it happens but its the idea of opening a package that contains something of value in a careful and responsible way.

Multiple times from Ebay sellers, I've received a stack of cards and each in its own supersaver sleeve but where the supersavers were bound/taped together and in between cardboard to add rigidity. I take extreme care is slicing the tape apart with a blade, knowing full well that I could easily slip the blade right through any one of those supersavers and the card inside. If was to hastily try to hack the supersavers apart and slice a card in the process, I would not blame the seller. I would accept full personal responsibility for having acted in a negligent and careless fashion.

+1 very well said.

Maybe personal responsibility is dead
 

The lack of personal responsibility in our society is but one hallmark of what many consider our ongoing moral decay. It's fascinating to me that a ripped piece of cardboard can be used as a focal point to demonstrate this and that the majority of the board aligns themselves with the buyer who ripped the card. It is obvious to me that there is shared fault for this incident and both the shipper and the buyer should accept their share of the responsibility and move on.

I fully realize that posting again to this effect will not change one person's mind, but responsibility can and should be shared by both parties, whether there is any financial restitution or not. There are many shades of gray between black and white. To not impugn (look it up) the buyer in this instance is wrong in my opinion and I believe there are many reading this who would agree, but, because the issue at hand is a baseball card, they will remain mute. To not impugn the shipper would be fallacious as well.

Whether you think it was the buyer's fault or the seller's fault, the bottom line is that it wouldn't have happened if the seller had packaged it properly.

Damaged during shipping, and damaged because of poor packing, or a lack of packing is a fine line. I would file a PayPal claim and let them sort it out.

I get that the OP should have been more careful opening the package. How exactly this happened is a little confusing. A picture of the card and envelope it was shipped in sure would help. But if a card of this value was simply placed loose in an envelope I feel that is so egregious as to warrant a refund.

Edit: Frank's suggestion of sharing the responsibility and perhaps issuing a 50% refund is probably the reasonable solution, but this seems like a case that would have to be decided by a third party and a ruling made one way or the other. Contacting the seller and offering a split may be a solution, although the time to offer that most likely would have been before filing the ebay claim.

I was impugned once. It happened in a elevator car standing between "Windy" McCall and "Rip" Repulski.

Well the card made it from point A to point B undamaged while being poorly packaged didn't it?

That card was going to be damaged during opening no matter how it was packaged.

Kind of hard to rip a card when it's in a top loader sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard.

+1

There have been a number of requests to know the name of the seller. Why has the original poster not identified the seller? I am starting to feel that the situation is not quite what had been portrayed in the first post.

Jeff

The nail was hit in the head when the OP said that once you pay for a card it's yours. It's the sellers responsibility to ship the item with care. If they do not then any damage to the card, negligence of the buyer or otherwise, is on the seller. There is an unwritten rule that a card should be sent through the mail with care, if it isn't then the seller is in the wrong, no matter how the card got damaged. If the seller had put the card in a top loader, covered it with cardboard, and put it in a bubble mailer, there wouldn't be an issue, but because he wanted to save a few bucks on a $800+ sale he threw it in a package, unprotected. The gall to do something like that astounds me. And personally I don't buy the "Oh, I thought I put it in a top loader" excuse. Someone just paid you $800+ for a card, you better darn well ship it right. I find this whole situation disgusting. And I'm really sorry the OP is out all that money because it's not his fault at all.

There are a lot of assumptions going on in this thread without any real evidence to back them up. One of the biggest ones (IMO) is that the card arrived undamaged. For those that want to put 100% of the blame on the buyer, I have this question. If, when opening the package (and another thing, was it a PWE or an actual 'package', though I may have missed that) the buyer bent the card, should he take all the blame as well? If, when opening the package, he acted in the manner of a hazmat team handling a possible biological weapon, the buyer discovered the card to be in a 'different' state than what was presented at the time of the sale, would that also be the buyer's fault?

I'm not saying that the buyer wasn't responsible for tearing the card, but to say he received the card 'undamaged' in the package is making an assumption without actual knowledge. Whether a PWE or an actual package, if the little information the OP provided is to be taken at face value, then I find it difficult to imagine that the card actually arrived 'undamaged'. While a tear in a card would trump a simple corner ding, how can someone say the buyer is 100% responsible without knowing all the facts?

I also believe somewhere in the thread the OP indicated that the seller usually puts the card in a top loader (or thought he did, or something like that). That would lead me to believe that the seller understood the risk of sending something 'raw' through the mail, implying that in not doing so (intentionally or not), he assumed part of that risk.

As noted by others, both parties have some blame in this, but I'm not in the position to judge the extent of the blame.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of. An $880 card shipped in not so much as a penny sleeve? Even if you didn't know cards, sometimes you get people selling dead people's stuff, if ANYTHING sold for $880 you would think they'd package it securely.

It's going to be a tough row to hoe as you technically did the damage, but fact of the matter is the damage shouldn't have been possible!

Good Luck.

Yup. I keep repeating it: It's pretty hard to rip a card that's in a top loader, sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard inside a bubble mailer.

The new guy gets it when some of the other board members (that have been here for a while) don't.

Welcome to the boards BTW.

Can we get a picture of the ripped card already!?!?

Well like I said it's a tough case, there's blame to each party. Just not sure how ebay or paypal is going to come down on this one.

Thanks for the welcome!

I just hurt my toe going to the mail box. If that shipment wouldn't have been there I wouldn't have hurt myself. I'm gonna sue PayPal, eBay and the post office and give a negative to the seller.

Now you are getting it Mark. Nothing is your fault even if you done it, good luck on the lawsuits.;):D

It's only fair. The world owes me. Do you know how fabulous I am? Now I can't dance with this hurt toe. Lawsuit is growing.

I just pulled up to Starbucks and ordered a large coffee. About 3 blocks away, I hit a pot hole and spilled it all over myself. Come to find out, the lid wasn't on good. Help me out here, Mark. My fault for ordering the coffee to begin with? My fault for hitting the pothole? My cars fault because the shocks are bad and shouldn't have caused such a big jolt? The girl at Starbuck's fault for not putting the lid on good to begin with?

Oh, and next time wear some shoes, Mark. Shoes are meant to protect your toes - kind of like a top loader and cardboard are meant to protect a card.


:rolleyes:

Based upon everyone's opinion in this thread, it is clear to me that the city is at fault for allowing a pothole. Everyone knows that the end user has no accountability to verify the lid is secure. Only trained professionals are allowed to install lids. Takes a high level of skill to perform the task.

If your shoe had a steel toe, hurting yourself wouldn't have been possible. At MINIMUM your shoe should've had a warning label on it, telling you that there was a toe-stubbing risk.

Any accident or mistake anybody ever makes could've been prevented if somebody else would've saved them from their own carelessness. Hence, nobody need ever be responsible for their own mistakes. Isn't that wonderful?!

The card should've been better protected, but the story we have to work with is that the card did arrive safely and undamaged. So, the poor packaging is no longer relevant - it caused no damage as the card was safely delivered. At this point, we have the OP holding a bubble mailer envelope with an $800 card inside. I would think it would be quite apparent, feeling the envelope, that there was nothing rigid inside.

One poster here suggested gently pushing in the sides of the envelope to let the contents drop to the bottom. I mentioned that I tap such envelopes gently on my countertop to accomplish the same thing. Yet another poster here explained that you then, once the contents are safely at the bottom of the package/envelope, carefully cut the very top of it (like maybe 1/16th of an inch) with a scissors. You don't want to use a letter opener and rip it because something, like a packing slip, could be folded and still near the top, and that could get torn by using the letter opener method.

All of this is simple and obvious, for some of us. Maybe somebody should make a how-to video for opening envelopes carefully, for the rest to carefully study.

Let me ask you a simple yes or no question. Do you think the card would have been ripped if it were in a top loader, between two pieces of cardboard inside a bubble mailer (in other words, packaged properly)?

How about a how-to video for properly preparing packages?

If you're going to continue to make ridiculously stupid comments, put your full name in your posts. It's the rules.

Honestly, its apparent there are those who believe the seller is 100% responsible. There are others who believe the buyer is 100% responsible. And there are those who believe both parties hold partial responsibility.

I don't see an argument that can be made or an example that can be thought up that will change the mind of anyone who holds any of those three stated opinions at this point.

My full name is always in my posts, but I resent the fact that you are implying that my comments are also ridiculous, simply because I disagree.

Likely not. But that has no bearing. Could just as easily say if he hadn't bought it, it would not be ripped. They both are accountable. Period. I assure you that is correct. Maybe he should consult an attorney and ask how the law would view the division of liability.

The people that have insisted PayPal and eBay and other 3rd parties take responsibility is laughable. I am surely hoping those comments came from trolls and not their real views. If those are in fact their views, we are further down the crapper as a society than I believed. Without going back through and counting, I would guess 50% of the people thought a 3rd party should be held accountable. Wow. Then 75% or so feel it is the fault of the seller, even more shocking.

We used to live in a society where the majority of the populace were accountable. From this small thread, it is apparent to me that, that ship has sailed. I would really like to know the ages of the 4 possible demographics at play.

1. All seller fault
2. All buyer fault
3. Shared liability
4. 3rd party fault.

To remove all responsibility from the party who physically tore the item in question is ludicrous in my opinion.

1. The coffee is in your hand so you should know how hot it is, and you should check the lid to be sure it's on securely. I assume you ordered and wanted your coffee to be somewhat hot.

2. You should pay attention to your driving so you could avoid large potholes and this would be more easily accomplished if you weren't drinking your coffee while driving.

So, you ordered the hot coffee, when you took possession of it you assumed all responsibility for it, including the lid (unless someone put poison in it or something bizarre,) and you are responsible for your own driving.

In our society right now, I'll bet it's about 50-50 between people who would accept responsibility for the coffee spilling, and people who, like you, would rattle off a series of others who should've prevented it.

And that is a sad commentary on our country's situation. Harry Truman's "The buck stops here" attitude used to be respected, now it's often ridiculed.

Disagreeing is one thing. Making condescending remarks about 'stumping your toe' or 'making a how to video on how to open a package' is another thing.

Did the OP pay for shipping or was shipping free?

My post was not anymore condescending than the other preposterous ideas that have been posted. We really need to get off the get something for nothing wagon, and begin to hold ourselves with esteem and pride. Be responsible and accountable.

Yes, Mark, it absolutely has bearing. You just admitted that it "likely" wouldn't have happened if it were packaged properly.

If the card would have been damaged during shipping (let's say by a postal machine), does the improper packaging still have no bearing or is it the post offices fault? The improper packaging is what caused the card to rip. Had it been properly packaged it wouldn't have ripped.

May I add spilling your coffee in your lap to your list?

Yes, right after you add this genius comment to the list...

I could've opened that package without ripping the card, so your assertion that the packaging caused the card to be ripped is factually wrong. It was not inevitable that the card would be ripped upon opening the package. Frankly, had the OP been reasonably careful, it would've been highly unlikely. But personal responsibility is a concept foreign to some people so I'll quit trying to explain it.

I have added my full name to my posts, too. That was a valid point.

Your assumptions are showing. Please show me where the OP indicated that the card was or was not damaged in shipping? Obviously he tore the card, but if the card was already damaged (bent, creased, wrinkled, dinged) due to poor shipping, all he did was make matters worse to problem made by poor shipping. Again, had he NOT torn the card, there is no evidence that has been provided either way as to whether or not the card was damaged prior to opening the package.