Should I leave negative feedback? What would you do?

[maltapso]

I bought a low priced but rare and HTF item from a US seller, the shipping was 3 times the cost of the item, but I really wanted it, had been looking for one for a while and it'is difficult to find sellers who ship internarionally anyway. Can't get this thing here.

Anyway, 3 weeks later a box arrived, 3 times the weight it should have been, so I was confused. The seller had sent the wrong item, so I took a few pictures of what I got, contacted the seller and started a return with ebay. I subsequently found the item I had received  on the sellers feedback profile, he had got things mixed up, I concluded that the item I bought probably got sent to that other buyer, but wasn't sure.

I didn't hear anything for about 3 days, then the seller replied to my message in a casual tone and asked me what he had sent me. I had already detailed what had happened and included pictures. I was expecting a refund,  which would have been disappointing, I really wanted my item, but instead he said he would look into it and get back to me. A few more days and I got a message saying he had located my item and  he had sent it and that he was very sorry and would make it right. I thanked him and asked for a tracking number and an expected delivery date. I was surprised, happy but a tad suspicious.

He wrote back and said he would look for the tracking number and get back to me and would I please cancel the return with ebay because they keep sending him reminders.

My response was that I would cancel the return when my item arrived and that the tracking number would be very helpful and thanked him.... again. I was very polite and reasonable, even though I was suspicious by this stage.

His next response was to tell me that he was SO VERY sorry and that he feels really bad and would I please forgive him, but he hasn't sent the item, it's still with the person he wrongly sent it to and that he would send me a different item or send a refund.

I replied saying a refund would be acceptable. At that point I escalated the return to a claim through ebay and got an almost instant refund. I no longer trusted this guy, he was either in a huge mess or deliberately stalling. He kept calling me the wrong name and seemed to be forgetting what was going on or what had happened and he had lied about having and sending the correct item.

I went to buy a similar item which I had been watching, waiting to find out if I was in fact going to get the original item I purchased. But I found that it had already sold earlier that day. I was furious, now I've missed out of two rare opportunities to get something I really want.  It's difficult to find these things being sold by a seller willing to ship to Australia, and at a reasonable cost. Theres not one for sale anywhere on ebay now apart from one which wont ship to Australia, I cant even contact this seller to beg, he doesn't accept international messages I guess.

I checked my messages again, my seller had replied again, saying that I should check my paypal because he thought he had sent me a refund 'yesterday'.... he hadn't, I had just got my refund through ebay.

 I sent a final message to him saying he didn't refund me and that I got a refund through ebay and that I was very disappointed at being lied to and messed around for so long, I mentioned that I had missed getting the item a second time because of  his lie about sending the correct item.

I haven't heard back again.

I don't like leaving negative feedback. I'm angry and disappointed about what happened, but  I kind of feel sorry for this guy, he made a huge mess of everything and maybe he does feel bad about it. He's done this once before, one neg for the same thing, but mostly lots of glowing recommendations.

Any thoughts? Please share what you would do?

[maltapso]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

.....Why don't you buy the one that won't send to Australia, but get it sent to a forwarding address in the US? If you do that it'll cost you extra postage but possibly not a lot more. You'll need to change your primary ebay address to that of the forwarding service before you can buy and you'll have to do it from ebay.com, but lots of people buy from overseas and use forwarding services. I haven't but I'm sure if you ask here someone will give you the name of one....

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Thank you for this suggestion, I will look into it.

[brerrabbit585]

I'd imagine most forwarding services would be cheaper than the GSP through Pitney Bowes so you shouldn't be any worse off as far as postage goes.

[maltapso]

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@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

wow, what a mess.

What would I do? Well, considering the rarity of the item I would not leave feedback yet. You do have 60 days to leave feedback, so there is time to see if this rare item is returned to this seller by the other buyer.

I would suggest that if the rare item is returned to him that he relist it as a Buy-It-Now with an unrealistically high asking price and Best Offer feature.  This way you can see when the item is relisted by having that seller as a ‘saved seller’ and email notification of newly listed items.  Then, you make an offer at the same amount of the original listing which the seller accepts.  Then, you just complete that transaction and hopefully you get this rare item.

Be careful with the messaging to the seller as eBay bots try to intercept messages that might be trying to organise off-eBay transactions.

The message I would send would be something like:

”I understand that this transaction has gone pearshaped,  When you get the HTF item back from the other member please relist it on eBay in a Buy-It-Now listing with an unrealistically high asking price AND include the Best-Offer feature.  Then, when you relist that item I will offer the original listing price which you can accept and we can complete the eBay transaction for the HTF item".

No guarantee this will work, but if it does then you will end up with the item. If it doesn't, you are no worse off than you are now.

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Thanks for your reply and great idea, it might actually work if the item was genuinely rare and valuable. But it's only rare and HTF here in Australia, valuable to me, not so much to the seller or person who ended up with it. Not really even worth the cost of shipping back to the seller. I'm sure another one will come up eventually if I keep looking.

It was a retired Pirate t-shirt for Build a Bears, part of a set that I'm trying to complete. Sold for $5. USD Shipping handling GST etc added over $20. I got the bear and pants from another seller and here was the shirt I needed to complete the set, at a grear price, cheap enough to justify the inflated GSP charges. For anyone else who doesn't collect these things, its just an old t-shirt for a doll or bear, probably found in a thrift shop over there for 50c. 

I'll probably wait until another one comes up for sale or something similar, I do enjoy the search, so its not all bad 🙂

[maltapso]

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@davewil1964 wrote:

I probably wouldn't leave feedback at all. It's not mandatory.

As an experienced member of 15+ years, and a seller yourself, you would be aware of the pitfalls of selling on eBay.

           Yes, mistakes are made, I've made a few myself over the years and I immediately apologise and refund if the mistake was mine. I currently still sell, on another account.  If he had done this right away, I would have left positive feedback without a thought. But it was the stalling, the manipulation and the lying after making the mistake which is bothering me the most. Perhaps there is a reason he behaves this way at times, something not entirely his fault, but its still not right for a seller to conduct business this way.... I don't.

Edit" You now have the (incorrect) item and your money back. Have you negotiated with the seller to return said item?

        Nope, he told me to throw it away and I expect the person who got my item threw it away too. These are both old things, valuable only to certain people who collect stuff. I got an old beta video tape of Tina Turner, it sold for $5 and probably would have shipped in the US for less. If I shipped it back to the US it would cost someone $24.  None of this is really about monetary value. I don't think the buyer of the video tape would be as disappointed as I was at getting the wrong item, but I might be wrong. I would happily return it if asked to, if a shipping label was sent. I doubt the seller has attempted to get my item back from whoever got it... I wish he did, I really wanted it.

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[maltapso]

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

Personally I would leave neutral with - Seller sent wrong item, eBay refunded. Disappointing.

A neutral DOES affect the seller's account even though it's called neutral.

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Thanks for your reply, I think I'm going to go with something like this, neutral with the bare facts of what happened. Maybe: Seller sent wrong item. Unprofessional, dishonest response. Disappointing.

Another member here suggested not menitoning the refund from ebay because it gives the seller grounds for having the feedback removed. I didn't know that.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@maltapso wrote:

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@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

wow, what a mess.

What would I do? Well, considering the rarity of the item I would not leave feedback yet. You do have 60 days to leave feedback, so there is time to see if this rare item is returned to this seller by the other buyer.

I would suggest that if the rare item is returned to him that he relist it as a Buy-It-Now with an unrealistically high asking price and Best Offer feature.  This way you can see when the item is relisted by having that seller as a ‘saved seller’ and email notification of newly listed items.  Then, you make an offer at the same amount of the original listing which the seller accepts.  Then, you just complete that transaction and hopefully you get this rare item.

Be careful with the messaging to the seller as eBay bots try to intercept messages that might be trying to organise off-eBay transactions.

The message I would send would be something like:

”I understand that this transaction has gone pearshaped,  When you get the HTF item back from the other member please relist it on eBay in a Buy-It-Now listing with an unrealistically high asking price AND include the Best-Offer feature.  Then, when you relist that item I will offer the original listing price which you can accept and we can complete the eBay transaction for the HTF item".

No guarantee this will work, but if it does then you will end up with the item. If it doesn't, you are no worse off than you are now.

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Thanks for your reply and great idea, it might actually work if the item was genuinely rare and valuable. But it's only rare and HTF here in Australia, valuable to me, not so much to the seller or person who ended up with it. Not really even worth the cost of shipping back to the seller. I'm sure another one will come up eventually if I keep looking.

It was a retired Pirate t-shirt for Build a Bears, part of a set that I'm trying to complete. Sold for $5. USD Shipping handling GST etc added over $20. I got the bear and pants from another seller and here was the shirt I needed to complete the set, at a grear price, cheap enough to justify the inflated GSP charges. For anyone else who doesn't collect these things, its just an old t-shirt for a doll or bear, probably found in a thrift shop over there for 50c. 

I'll probably wait until another one comes up for sale or something similar, I do enjoy the search, so its not all bad 🙂

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well, now I am showing my age.

I thought ‘HTF’ was the item.  I thought it was tech lingo for a computer component, you know, like an HTF interface or an HTF sound or video card.  That’s why I included HTF in my earlier post.  I thought I was being real tech savvy!

When you posted to explain what the item is I realised that HTF means Hard To Find.  Now I feel really silly.

Spoiler

I think 4channel will lap this up at my expense, not knowing collector lingo that is

Note to self: in future, google anything that looks like an acronym.

[tazzieterror]

Seller sounds either very incompetent or deceitful, either of which I'd like to be aware of if I were considering purcashing from them. IMO a negative rating is justified here.

[wide-world-of-stamps]

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@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

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well, now I am showing my age.

I thought ‘HTF’ was the item.  I thought it was tech lingo for a computer component, you know, like an HTF interface or an HTF sound or video card.  That’s why I included HTF in my earlier post.  I thought I was being real tech savvy!

When you posted to explain what the item is I realised that HTF means Hard To Find.  Now I feel really silly.

Spoiler

I think 4channel will lap this up at my expense, not knowing collector lingo that is

Note to self: in future, google anything that looks like an acronym.

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You're not the only one.  I though it was some kind of brand or some modern thingie I hadn't heard of.

That's why I really dislike all this "text speak" as I find it really hard to decipher at times.

When I first started reading these boards I didn't even understand "OP" - all I could think of was "other person" and that didn't make any sense - in my defence I've never used social media or community boards in the past (I'm a bit slow in that way).

[springyzone]

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@maltapso wrote:

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@davewil1964 wrote:

I probably wouldn't leave feedback at all. It's not mandatory.

As an experienced member of 15+ years, and a seller yourself, you would be aware of the pitfalls of selling on eBay.

           Yes, mistakes are made, I've made a few myself over the years and I immediately apologise and refund if the mistake was mine. I currently still sell, on another account.  If he had done this right away, I would have left positive feedback without a thought. But it was the stalling, the manipulation and the lying after making the mistake which is bothering me the most. Perhaps there is a reason he behaves this way at times, something not entirely his fault, but its still not right for a seller to conduct business this way.... I don't.

Edit" You now have the (incorrect) item and your money back. Have you negotiated with the seller to return said item?

        Nope, he told me to throw it away and I expect the person who got my item threw it away too. These are both old things, valuable only to certain people who collect stuff. I got an old beta video tape of Tina Turner, it sold for $5 and probably would have shipped in the US for less. If I shipped it back to the US it would cost someone $24.  None of this is really about monetary value. I don't think the buyer of the video tape would be as disappointed as I was at getting the wrong item, but I might be wrong. I would happily return it if asked to, if a shipping label was sent. I doubt the seller has attempted to get my item back from whoever got it... I wish he did, I really wanted it.

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And there you have your answer.

The whole transaction has rattled you enough to come to the boards to ask what others think.

It really doesn't matter about the seller's previous record, all that matters is how your personal transaction with him went and let's face it, it was a shocker. And just to be clear, we're not talking about the mix up here, but about what came after that.

All the rest-returning items etc, has nothing to do with it really. If he wanted his item back, he would have had to pay for it and probably not worth his while.

Negative feedback has a place, and this is the place for it. Incompetence, lying, stalling, offering a refund but not actually refunding. What this is indicating is that this is a risky seller to be dealing with if anything goes wrong. Other buyers deserve to know.

And it might give the actual seller a wake up call to lift his game.

[countessalmirena]

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@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

I thought ‘HTF’ was the item.  I thought it was tech lingo for a computer component, you know, like an HTF interface or an HTF sound or video card.  That’s why I included HTF in my earlier post.  I thought I was being real tech savvy!

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Mustard on those words, k1ooo!