Using a different account I bought some kids name label stickers for school from a seller who sells personalised labels. In his listing he states to send your choice of sticker colour, font type and the NAME of the child using the Paypal CHECKOUT or through the Ebay message system. I used the Paypal checkout message to seller section and typed my requirements including the name of my child which, for example, I typed in this way "GIRLS NAME".
When the stickers arrived they arrived printed with the words ---- GIRLS NAME" ----. I was shocked he had no quality control system in place to check them for errors since he had to handle them to package them up anyway. I wrote a message to him to say I was disappointed there was a printing error and weren't checked before sending. I sent a photo of the stickers attached to the Ebay message (as you can now attach photos to messages). He replies with a rude message saying he takes offence to my claim, there was NO photo attached (there was), and that he prints things as typed, regardless of how strange the name may look.
Upon reviewing my Paypal checkout form, I see the error lies in the HTML coding of messages sent through Paypal on checkout using the message system. Where I had typed "GIRLS NAME" using quotation marks, it has then (upon sending), reverted this to html code, coming up as "" GIRLS NAME "" . Ie, my quotation marks were reverted to html code so that each quotation mark was transformed into """. So technically he has STILL printed them incorrectly as he only printed the "" at the end of my daughters name, not at the front. Regardless, with over 6 thousand feedback you would think he would be more professional in at least realising there was an error. He has only 5 negs and that was in the last 12 months, none in the previous 6 months, and I had ordered from the same seller TWICE before (a year or 2 ago and everything was perfect). I had no reason to think this time would be different.
My question is, where do I stand with an item "not as described" case, if the seller is unwilling to resolve? Would paypal accept some responsibility for their error in the their message coding system? Would a photo of the stickers suffice to show them it has an error? Would I need a third party to verify this is not as described? Would I win a case? What do you suggest I do. I have sent another photo to the seller's paypal address as he said he didn't receive the first photo, and I have written back to say it's partly Paypals fault for their html coding but please can he understand I didn't really do anything wrong as I followed the instructions in his listing to "send the message to seller upon checkout through paypal" and there was nothing that said to not use quotation marks to mark the beginning and ending of my daughters name (it is common practice to use quotation marks in doing this, - and had I used the Ebay message system instead, I doubt this would have happened).
