Post his name or phone number in your reply or follow up on the feedback forum....

"I tried to call you David on 445 6768, to try to sort this out."

eBay will give you a warniing that you breached feedback policy and then delete all feedback for the entire transaction from both participants.

mbassoc2003 wrote:Post his name or phone number in your reply or follow up on the feedback forum....

"I tried to call you David on 445 6768, to try to sort this out."

eBay will give you a warniing that you breached feedback policy and then delete all feedback for the entire transaction from both participants.

Gotta love loop-holes   .

.... Been lucky, only one bad deal back in 98 and after a call to the house ( the kid/guys mom answered ) I got the items right away

mbassoc2003 wrote:Post his name or phone number in your reply or follow up on the feedback forum....

"I tried to call you David on 445 6768, to try to sort this out."

eBay will give you a warniing that you breached feedback policy and then delete all feedback for the entire transaction from both participants.

I thought that eBay would only address this as an issue if he were to complain about it.  If he doesn't mind, then they wouldn't do anything . . . right?

tfm wrote:Everybody I know of has taken their lumps on eBay.  Here's mine:

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What you are looking at is a scan of a smudge on the title page of an ST1 that never arrived.  This was sold in September 2003.  The Italian buyer asked for regular airmail and paid with PayPal (I was new to eBay and PayPal at the time and so didn't know any better).  After two weeks it still hadn't arrived and so I replaced it with my other copy, sending it UPS.  Ever since then I've been looking for it.  I have full scans of every flaw, and so I'll know it if and when I see it again.  Law enforcement won't do anything until it's found.  So I wait and watch for the asswipe to try to sell it.  I figure it was bogarted en route.  Unless it was destroyed, it'll turn up eventually.  I've had a few of my close collecting friends keeping an eye out for me.  Maybe with a little luck I'll see it again.

Let me first say, that story is absolutely feckin horrible.  To be honest though...I would find it....lets say hard to believe, that someone from the postal service stole it. What are the chances that a postal carrier would even know what the heck they were looking at if they were stealing it, so it would not be likely that some mailman ran off with it. That being said, I would have to think tha one of two other things happened.  

The first possiblity is obvious, you were just incredibly unlucky and the postal service lost it/destroyed it and just never owned up to doing so.  

The second possiblity, which IMHO, I am inclined to say is the most likely of the 2 scenarios is that the buyer flat out stole it from you.  I can see this coming about 1 of two ways. One way this could have been accomplished is that the buyer was essentially just a liar and a thief and when the item arrived, he/she saw that there was no tracking, sent you an email complaining that it hadn't arrived yet. They would have done this with the full expectation of getting his/her money back and the item too. The fact that you sent out a second one(I mean seriously who the heck else has 2 ST1's laying around to ship out to some buyer:wink:).  just probably ended up being a bonus.  The other possibilty of how this could have happened is something I experienced myself just less than 4 months ago. Fortunately I was shipping stuff to Alan<Killjoy32> so it all worked out in the end.  Our story was that I had shipped him a large box full of material from a private deal that we had worked out at the begining of December. I paid $102 shipping and insurance for USPS Airmail which according to the post office is 4 to 10 day delivery time. Well 2 weeks passed and still no stuff. Alan wrote with concerns about it and we both agreed to hold off any action because we both figured that maybe due tothe holiday season it might have been delayed. Another week passes and still no stuff. Now boith of us are getting kind of antsy because it most defintely should have arrived by now. So we both start nosing around our respective post offices trying to find out what we can about the now seemingly lost package. Alan is able to find out after some searching around that the parcel has arrived in the UK because when I provided him with the number form the customs forms they were able to tell that it came in to the counrty. After a bit more searching around and another  full week and a half the box full of stuff arrives at Alan's place in good nick, however looking at the parcel he notes that even though it was paid for and clearly marked as Airmail, it was instead shipped surface mail.   The moral to the story is that it is also entirely possible that even though you paid for Airmail, it was acutally shipped surface mail and when it didn't arrive in a timely fashion, the buyer contacted you about it stating that he honestly did not receive it.  However, several weeks after the fact, the first one you send did in fact show up, but he/she never told you about it nor compensated you for it. Either way you in effect had an ST1 stolen from you.

In my seven years on eBay, I have completed over 1600 transactions on a percentage basis of 60%/40% between buying and selling. Of those transactions that I have completed on the buying end,  I have only had 3 items/packages not show up to my house.  All 3 were from sellers who were 100% frausters who ripped off several people on EBay by listing auctions and just not never shipping out the stuff that was paid for. Of those 3, 2 are no longer on Ebay, the 3rd is still registered, but this is because it happened way back in early 1999, long before EBay would actually take any action against fraud sellers at all. Of all the stuff that I have sold, I have not yet had 1 sngle package not arrive to its destination, not one. Now I may have been somewhat fortunate that I haven't had a prcel not arrive to the buyer yet, but I can assure you that I do not hold any special privelage or extra authority over the postal service that makes me more effective shipping items out then anyone else.  That being said, I think you know where I am going with the rest of this, and as much as I hate to say it, I think the odds are very heavily in favor of a buyer essentially stole an ST1 from you.

tfm wrote:Well, you can read all about it.  The whole affair is documented here somewhere.  The person who bought it is an Acaeum member.   After reading the mean-spirited posts from other Acaeum members at the time, I considered several times not joining at all, only doing so after Scott specifically invited me (I had been submitting scans of rare material for a while).  It is not an easy thing to sit still while people with no clue question your integrity, but I was literally stunned into silence.  I saved every scrap of information from the whole affair in hopes that it will come in handy someday.  But yeah, it wasn't easy.  I'd had never been fucked like that before.  I sincerely hope no one else goes through what I did.

Well that wasn't hard to find.  No, I'm not going to spoil the fun of hunting through several years of posts.  Go find it yourself.

In retrospect, the posts don't sound particularly mean-spirited, so much as skeptical.  You must admit, someone having two ST1s is rather hard to believe!*    I find it difficult to believe the individual in question was part of any wrong-doing.  (He was on the site today, maybe he'll chime in.)

* I heard a rumor there's a guy out there with a box of 'em.  Nothing personal, but I hate you.

TheElderEye wrote:I just had to vent, after 6+ years on ebay and a few hundred transactions I finally got some moron leaving me a negative comment.  Never even bothered to complain or ask for a refund.  

He bids on a MERP supplement listed as FAIR with a cover that had come loose, moisture warping damage, spine creases with an unmarked interior and says it was wasn't descibed accurately, and then no email or anything he just leaves a negative.   I get so sick of dealing with people that don't read the details of the auction, bid to much and then get all irritated and act like complete a**es.  

I know I don't have to ask anyone else dealt with an ebay moron?

My first neg was from a newbie that was upset I didn't send an invoice for a sale within 24 hours (Ebay gives you three days). As an added bonus he called me a thief and a liar because of this.  I believe it was the very first buy he had ever made on Ebay and he really had no way how the system worked, he apologized profusely when I explained I had up to three days to send a invoice, but the neg feedback stayed because back then they didn't have the mutual withdrawl program.
    Short of blocking all 0 feedback bidders (which I believe you can do now), there is no way to avoid idiot newbie Ebay buyers...

Mike B.

tfm wrote:The replacement I sent out was in very good condition, with no blemishes.  The creature pages were separated, but present, when I sent it.  

Sounds like that's the one.  
I remember when the first ST1 surfaced in 1996, I stopped bidding to "let" David Papay win it since he was performing a great community service pre-Acaeum with his Price List.  I figured another one would pop up soon, and I waited, and I waited... until about five years later for another one and the price increased about 20 fold.  I know many here like to say to skip items that seem too highly priced because another one will come up, but sometimes the wait is really long and the price becomes much, much higher.  Sometimes he who hesitates is lost... so seize the day fellow collectors.

VermilionFire wrote:If I'm connecting my dots correctly then I think I ended up with tfm's extra ST1.  
For what it's worth, my local post office advised me not to send packages to Italy via surface mail as they received many complaints about missing packages to Italy (there are many Italian-Americans in my neighborhood). Granted that's surface mail, but perhaps airmail to Italy isn't too much better....

I believe eBay only withdraws feedback with personal information if the person complains, otherwise eBay'll never know nor care.

Heh, kind of interesting, kind of coming around full circle. When did you pick that up anyway?

I sold a batch of old Minifigs D&D figures on eBay about a year ago.  One person won 7 seperate auctions, then failed to pay for them.  After about 4 weeks of persuing him for the money, I gave up and posted non-paying bidder alerts so I could reclaim my eBay fees.  He didn't like this, and left me 7 negs accusing me of lying and left.  eBay refused to remove them, they're still there.  According to eBay, my only recourse is to file a 'defamation' claim, for which I need to employ a lawyer to countersign the claim forms!