This hasn't happened to me in years.

I won an auction last night through BIN and immediate payment was required. Today the seller emails me to say that they cannot honor the auction and they are "processing" a refund.

Well it takes about 3 minutes to "process" a paypal refund. I called paypal to make sure, and of course no refund had been initiated by the seller. I filed a claim, so the money is supposedly frozen in this guys account, but I strongly suspect this was either sellers remorse or an outright scam.

I will post more when I hear back from this guy or if it doesn't look like he is going to pay or send the goods.

This is my summer of shady dealers. Still haven't heard back from the seller who wrote that he wouldn't be selling the lot I bought through BIN and no refund, so I filed a claim through paypal.

Today I won two Royo art books for .99c each and the seller sent a claim asking me to withdraw my bids because he didn't get what he wanted for the books.

What the hell?

I didn't even know you could do that through the ebay systme.

I declined.

JohnGaunt wrote:I am continuing the trend of getting hardbacks that are unprotected inside either a bubble-wrap envelope or a Flat-Rate Priority Mail envelope.  At least half of the spine ends and corners take a hit before I open the package.  Softcovers seem to take less damage.  Maybe they bend like the willow . . .

Yeah, your package by the way was in excellent shape when it arrived.

Just had another one from an RPG seller. I asked him twice so far about how the items will be packaged and his last reply was that it wasn't in the auction agreement.

WTF!?! Asking him how is going to package an item so it won't be damaged or bent in shipping isn't in the auction agreement?

I'm just glad ebay finally clarified the obligation of the seller to deliver the item undamaged. Sellers seem to think that by dropping it in the mail they are done with it. But it is the carrier is their agent, and there is no way to prove an item was put into the package undamaged. They just have to accept that making sure it isn't damaged is their responsibility.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:
Jason,

I agree... to a point.
No amount of care in packing can protect your things from uncaring delivery persons.

That's true but it is the risk and responsibility of selling and shipping through the mail.

FormCritic wrote:Tell the Royo guy to ship as ordered.

I did and payed for the items. I understand sellers regret but you have to learn to ask a minimum price you are willing to swallow.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:
Jason,

I agree... to a point.
No amount of care in packing can protect your things from uncaring delivery persons.

Oh I don't know about that.. I have seen some packaging that would almost survive anything.. and then I've seen some packaging that would have a tough time standing up to an attack from a light breeze...


Brette:)

A seller who does not give true combined shipping gets only 1 star across the board on all his ratings.

My definition of true is that if two items fit in one envelope for the same price then that is what it costs.  If adding items raises the weight enough to increase the cost then the added shipping price is exactly the increased shipping cost.

The only exception I make for shipping ripoffs is when the combined shipping terms are clearly stated in the listing and every cost is understood by the buyer up front.

I routinely report excessive shipping charges to Ebay as I encounter them.

As an example:
I recently placed a bid on an item that was farily reasonable in price and shipping was at the top limit for what I would tollerate.

Anyway, then  I  looked at the sellers other things.
Saw a few items that looked good to me, so I wrote the seller (from the listing I had already bid on) and asked about combined shipping for multiple wins during a reasonable time period.
In this case all the items ended within 12 hours of each other.

Seller wrote back saying certainly a combined shipping rate was doable.
I then asked what that meant in terms of amount.
Seller replied... $0.50 off each additional items shipping cost as stated in that items listing.

So, for a total of the 5 items I was interested in it would have cost around $35 to $45 (depending on other bidders) to purchase, and $38 to ship them all together....
They were 5 TSR modules.... and all would fit into any large shipping envelope....It was a US seller too.

I wrote back and asked him to reject my single bid.
Seller refused (cant really blaim him as I had made my bid so I had to wallow in it).
I ended up buying the one module and not bothering with the others.
The other modules I was interested in sold for the minimum bids.
BUT, seller got rich from SH costs....
He got all 1s from me for that too.

Won't make you back any dollars....but you could contact him and let him know that the minimum bids he got were because of his bad shipping terms.