Thank you. I appreciate your response. I see no indication that this seller is sponsored by eBay, nor a TPS+ seller anywhere in their listing via both a general search bringing up all relevant results, as well as on their profile page.
I did not make any false claims, but the seller did fully refund my money after receiving the film back.
About the film being produced before DVDs were around, the majority of the films I have here were also produced prior, and none of them have had this same issue with the film not being formatted to include chapters/scene selections. I've had old silent films transferred to disk before, and am also aware of films being restored with what resources can be found. The quality of this film transferred to DVD-r is not the issue here. Thank you though.
In the feedback I left, I did warn other potential buyers about the disk not having any chapters. I also said that the seller lied to me, but did read my feedback word for word to an eBay representative before leaving it, and they said that it would not violate any of eBay's feedback policies.
I feel like this film arriving with no proper formatting, and I say proper like I say standard, that this is something I haven't seen before in all my years of collecting films. I've purchased DVD-r copies of films here on eBay and elsewhere online, and even had films transferred to DVD-r from other formats in the past, but I've not yet come across another film on disk like this. That's why I first wrote the seller asking if what I received was a bad copy.
I believe that if an item being sold here on eBay doesn't function the same way that most of the same type of said items do, it should clearly stated in the listing. I have seen listings that include information like that, and do believe that many other sellers here go out of their way to clearly state things like this as well. So I believe that the listing I viewed before making my purchase was deceptive. I didn't bring that up within my return process, but an eBay rep who viewed the same item while we spoke, did acknowledge that the listing didn't provide pertinent information about it not working the same way that most films on disk do. The seller lied to me twice saying that information was in the listing, but it was not.
Obviously, because this happened to me, it's something that does occur, but I think it's something that doesn't happen very often at all. I tried doing several searches into how many films on disk aren't indexed, but only found information on how to add chapters to film which is being put onto a DVD-r. If anyone has a response as to how normal it is for films to not be formatted, please let me know, but this is the first time I've run into this issue.
Getting fully refunded was good, but I feel that the seller responding to me with lies, and being aggressively rude and condescending, was completely unnecessary before offering to make a full refund. Is eBay really ok with sellers behaving like that? I still don't understand why eBay would just remove my honest and critical feedback at this sellers request. It doesn't make sense to me why eBay will allow sellers, or buyers, to violate eBay's own terms, and then reward them with having their behavior go unaccountable by removing honest and critical negative feedback left for them.
I think eBay's feedback system is important, so I hope they get better about looking into issues like this more closely. I do wish that when eBay chose to remove the negative feedback I left for this seller, that I would have been able to have someone on eBay's end see the correspondence that had taken place between us, at least before making that final irreversible decision. When I spoke to eBay reps prior to starting my return, then again before leaving feedback, they both understood how difficult this seller was being and helped me to leave accurate feedback for this transaction. It was easy to communicate with them, and they had access to everything about this transaction. They could clearly see the wrong that had occurred, and I don't think that either of them would have removed the feedback I left knowing all the facts that took place, especially knowing that the seller had violated eBay's terms during the whole ordeal.
I do feel that a great majority of eBay users do try to be honest and abide by the rules.
If eBay does automatically remove negative and neutral feedback for TPS+ sellers, I suppose that some of those sellers may know that they can abuse buyers through eBay's system, at least until eBay steps in to stop them from violating policies. I don't believe that it's such a common occurrence though.
That said, why should I, or anyone, ever feel that it's okay for eBay to allow certain sellers and buyers to get away with violating eBay's own policies, and then reward them by allowing them to not be held accountable for their own policy violating actions? I know I said that before, but I believe that by eBay allowing this behavior, it allows a certain amount of abuse and policy violations by sellers to just continue with no repercussions.
Again, and apologies for saying that multiple times, I do feel that eBay's feedback system is important. I utilize it for every purchase I make here, and leave feedback for nearly every single transaction I make. I do my best to be honest with the feedback I leave, and always try to work things out with sellers if for some reason an issue does occur, which it rarely does. I've left neutral or negative feedback less than 0.5% of the time. So another seller having my feedback removed again is really frustrating and disheartening.
To eBay, if someone on your end is reading this, please stop allowing sellers to abuse your feedback system. Your system is built on trust, not deception, so please stop allowing sellers to violate your own policies and then protect them by having honest and critical negative feedback left for them removed. Doing so, and I know my specific case here may seem pretty insignificant, but having the same thing happen to me twice now, has really let me down and caused me to lose some more faith in the system which you set up. Because of this, I've significantly reduced the purchases that I make here.
If I'm missing something here or am mistaken about anything, please let me know, otherwise I feel that I've said all I can about this.
Thank you.
