Customer threatening with legal action because of negative feedback.

[retrogamestoreau]

I need advice on how to handle this situation because it is very unusual. Here is what happened.

A seller sold an video game to a buyer on eBay which was faulty. The games contain a little lithium cell battery which is used to store save state on the cartridge, this battery was dead so esentially the game was worthless to the buyer. There was no mention of this in the listing.

Obviously the customer was upset and to attempt to fix the situation the seller promised they would send them a replacement battery that they could install themselves to repair the game.

I sell these batteries. So the seller purchased a battery from me and requested I send it to their buyers address which was obviously different to the one listed in their Paypal account. Normally I would not do this because I understand it violates the conditions of Paypals seller protection, but it was a cheap item so I decided to facililate and sent the battery to his customer knowing I would not be protected if they claimed it did not arrive.

That's exactly what happened. The customer that purchased the game never recieved the battery and as a result left negative feedback for the seller and now the seller believes I am responsible for loss of income as a result of this negative feedback and is threatening with legal action. They also opened a missing items case against me. I've responded to that by sending the item to his original address and provided eBay with the tracking details.

Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

[padi*0409]

I think I would be reporting them, here's the link for doing it.

http://ocsnext.ebay.com.au/ocs/cusr?from_ocs=1&query=3133

[jellybirddesigns]

How can the buyer claim they never received the battery if your tracking shows that they have?

[lyndal1838]

The original battery was not sent with tracking which is why the second one has been sent with tracking to the actual buyer, not to the address that he asked for it to be sent to.

[digital*ghost]

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@retrogamestoreau wrote:

This guy keeps persisting. It's becoming very frustrating. 

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What (if anything) do they appear to want?

I'm presuming there's a purpose to threatening legal action - a lot of people seem to use it as a coercive bluff (eg sellers have been known to threaten the buyer with legal action over a neg, the obvious desired outcome to be to get them to change the FB).

If they were serious, they wouldn't be contacting you about it at all, they'd be contacting a lawyer and not compromising their case by continuing to contact you (that's what I would do, anyway, if I genuinely belived I had right of recourse via the legal system, and keep any & all contact strictly via lawyers), so it makes me wonder what their intentions are by messaging you these threats. With that thought in mind, if you have one, I'd probably tell them to only contact you via your lawyer from now on. 

As a seller, they would know that you can't click your fingers and have the buyer suddenly receive the item, nor wave a wand and the FB disappears, so are they making any other kind of demands? (Not that I think they're in any position to, I'm just curious I suppose, about what they seem to be attempting to acheive.

Not a lawyer, by any stretch of the imagination, but I would tend to think that even if by some absurdity this does end up in court, they would be asked to prove A) loss of income (extremely difficult all things considered), and B) that you're somehow directly and solely resonsible for the loss of the package, as well not only the buyer's decision to leave a neg, but the wording of it...which then has to be proven to be causing the loss of income....

I don't like their chances.  

[jillywinkle]

Judge Judy would chuck it out of court, if it got there in the first place

[designers*n*more]

And she'd say to the plaintiff "you're an idiot"

[clearancebazaar1]

Tell him to put his money where his mouth is, you have already recitifed any loss he may have suffered ie the missing battery by sending the replacement, you have done everything a reasonable person would to resolve the situation.  Report the harrassment if it continues, cant see that you are liable for anything further than the replacement battery which you can now prove he has.  The transaction between him and his original customer has nothing to do with you and you are not liable for any negative consequences he may have suffered in that transaction, contract law 101.  You can only ever be laible for the transaction between yourself and him.

[nadjahughes]

Hi there

I would put this down as a hard lesson learned! It is unfortunate that you are suffering when you've done nothing wrong. In future, in these circumstances, insist that you send an email to the 3rd party confirming postage or post direct to the buyer, no exceptions! Your buyer is responsible, not you. I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that he or she is blaming you for their negligence. I would do exactly as you have done and report the events in sequence to Ebay and let them advise you. Hope this helps and good luck with the outcome.

[jillywinkle]

haha..yes she would

[jillywinkle]

Similar thing happened to us recently. Even though we had changed the address in paypal...(cos we moved house) it reverted back to the old address. Had to change the address in paypal several times till it worked..well so the housemate said anyway. And the item was delivered to our old address..and obviously stolen from the front of house. Nothing we can do about it really. My housemate thinks its the delivery persons fault...but, well, it's nbodys fault really. Apart from Paypal having slack update software...I guess...