Partially ripping a card opening the mail

[TheNightmanCometh]

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.

[tschock]

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.