Ebay Fraud Story

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Posted By: warshawlaw

that I'd stay out of this debate, since I've known Bob for a long time and have never had anything but solid dealings with him. But I can't resist sticking my two cents in; here goes, in no particular order:

I am very surprised at the number of dissatisfactory deals Bob has been involved with, esp. with posters on this board. Had I not known him all this time, I would never deal with him based on what I read.

I am not surprised that there is no negative feedback. That system mandates that you take hits for negative feedbacks you leave, which can be especially painful if you sell items infrequently. I am seriously considering using a new account to bid on stuff, just so I can fire away at will on bad sellers.

Packing: Jerry says that Bob mispackaged the cards. I did not see (perhaps I missed it) any reference to packaging damage being the source of the problem. If the packaging did not cause the damage, which I understand to be back damage, it is a red herring and irrelevant. End of story.

Restocking Fee: Charging a restocking fee is wrong unless it states there is a restocking fee in the listing. No excuse there, Bob. If you believed that the buyer damaged the cards on the return and wanted to make him pay for it, be man enough to say so and not hide behind a restocking fee (besides, putting a card back in the safe ain't the same as forklifting a pallet of pipes back into the warehouse.

The crux of this matter appears to be a dispute between the parties over the return. Bob believes that the cards were damaged by the buyer; the buyer believes that Bob misleadingly omitted back damage from the listing in question. Since neither one has come across with scans of the card in question, we have an unanswerable question.

Finally, and don't anyone take this the wrong way (Bob), but being "Kartmann" from South Park ("Screw you guys, I'm going home!") doesn't help anyone, and I hope that no one reacts as immaturely in the future to some honest criticism. We all mess up from time to time; the absolute most irritating thing in the world from a seller and a buyer perspective is not getting what you paid for or booking a sale that comes back, especially where the "hobby" is concerned. What we don't need to do is stop talking.

I'd urge everyone to take this as a cautionary tale and to learn from it--when dealing with high end stuff, take a few extra moments and scan it, then save the scans until you are reasonably sure that the deal is done.