Business Ethics opinions needed Please

[cyseymour]

Some folks here make some decent points in support of the seller, but I have to side with the buyer as well. If you put a card up for sale on your website, and the person pays, you owe it to them to send them the card.

Once they have paid, they are the rightful owner of the card. It is wrong to do an involuntary return simply because the card came back from the grading company with a favorable grade.

It was disclosed on the site that the card was away for grading. If it had been returned as a PSA 1, and only been worth, say, $250, would the seller have cut the price? It's hard to imagine. You can't have it both ways - you sell a card, someone pays for it, they own it.

Imagine if you were hungry and went to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread for $4. As soon as you pay for it, you are about to open the bag when the owner comes running up to you, and forces you to pay $7 because the price of wheat went up. You pay the $7 because you are hungry and need the bread, but isn't that exploitation?

I wouldn't want to deal with a business that puts one price on the website, and then as soon as you buy the product, they say that in order for them to send it to you, you must pay 75% more. Imagine if all the bb card dealers were like that - I don't think we'd have a lot of happy collectors out there.

Or imagine if you bought an item from an auction house and sent them a check for $1000, that being the final sale price of the item, and then once the auction house received the check they told you that you must send them another $750 to complete the transaction? Who would want to participate in an auction like that?

[Sean1125]

I'm not going to speak to ethical or unethical but rather give what I would have done as the seller in the situation...

If the card was listed raw and not in their possession at the time that is their mistake not the buyers. I would have let him know the situation. The buyer needs to understand that the cards value will change when it is graded but that still doesn't excuse the mistake of the seller. I would give him first crack on the card when it came back and give a reasonable discount... So if he was originally going to pay $400, and graded it came back and is valued at $700 I would offer it to them for probably $500-$550 (depending on grading fees and incurred cost).

[Peter_Spaeth]

Who on earth would price a card before he knew what grade it was going to receive??

[danmckee]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Who on earth would price a card before he knew what grade it was going to receive??

Yea I agree now that I read it again, he probably shouldn't have said that.

[Wite3]

Bait and switch...

If the buyer has a printed receipt from his original purchase, he may be able to force a refund of the difference through their credit card company.

Joshua

[novakjr]

Yeah. I don't see a whole lot of ethical or unethical argument. This situation seems to fall more into the gray area. I don't think either necessarily did anything wrong, aside from the seller accidentally not removing the card while it was away for grading. Once graded or shipped away, the card(while still the same at it's core) becomes something different. The card(unless trimmed or altered) was not going to comeback ungraed. Therefore the original "ungraded card" which was offered for sale, no longer exists as soon as it hits the mail..

The flipside of the argument, that it's still the same card, is perfectly understandable though..

Now, I ran into a situation on a website few years back(I won't name names, because I have since decided to give the seller another chance, and he's been good to me). Anyways, in my situation, the seller clearly had no idea what the item actually was(in this case a baseball related coin/token). I placed an order for it, and was listed on the website for $15.00. I received an email a few days later that he could not find the item, so it must've been sold...A few weeks later the item is re-listed on his site for $750(with absolutely no changes/grading/whatsoever). Obviously, when I purchased it, he must've taken a closer look and decided to look a little more into it before letting it go. I was pissed, and I can understand that maybe an employee/spouse or whoever may have listed the item without him having seen it first. Clearly, there was deception in the explanation I was given though, and that's what pissed me off the most. In this situation there was some ethics involved, since the item had never changed or evolved. But I knew I was practically stealing the thing in the first place at the price listed, and suspected that I would never see it going into it.

[teetwoohsix]

I guess what's hard for me to figure out is what type of card would jump to almost double the original asking price going from raw to a 2.5?

And, if the seller took the time to put in the listing "out for grading" why didn't he just remove the price?

The buyer was willing to pay the $400.00 regardless of whether it came back as an "A" or a "5". This is why I agree with the statement that "it's still the same card" (only now it's entombed in plastic with a TPG's opinion).

Fun discussion either way

Sincerely, Clayton