Buyer Abusing the system... Dishonest Buyer.

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We sold a semi valuable collectible after months of research, and realized we should have declined the offer.

Here's the details prior to this transaction: A buyer inquired about additional items that we had not listed, I gave the buyer a ballpark quote without doing any research. As it turned out, my quote was very, very , wrong so, I apologized, and said once we had a better understanding of the items value we would message them. After 3 months we couldn't find another item that had sold period! The buyer consistently messaged us asking if we discovered anything? Eventually, 2 appeared at 250 dollars above my uneducated quote. We contacted the buyer. The buyer told me. " Hell holds a special place for people like You". *Note, this item was a gift from my personal collection for my wife to do all the leg work involved with the listing and closing of the sale of a high profile item. I promised her the proceeds as well.

We blocked the prospective buyer, who turned out to be a seller as well. This person also stated that he presently owned the same item in question, and it was broken, of course, it was the sellers fault he explained. Hours after we blocked the first potential buyer, another P.B. messaged us. This person purchased a few similar items and was constantly asking about my wife's project item. We checked the feedback and this new person purchased items from the blocked P.B. coincidence? This onslaught of messages ended in January of '24. Then a new person suddenly picked up where the previous P.B. left off. This person purchased a few items from us as well, (gaining our trust), and once again started messaging about my wife's item of topic. This person played on our sympathy, involving children, this item is a collectible model, not a toy whatsoever! After another month of messages, attempting to work down the price, we finally caved in and sold the item for fifty dollars less than we had it valued. I perfectly packaged the item for my wife and shipped it out as soon as we were paid. The day the item was delivered, we received pictures of a similar item broken, they claimed it happened prior to shipment??? The item was in mint condition when we shipped it and the shipping box showed no signs of damage. We offered to secure a like item for parts to help them repair it, guessing they accidentally broke it while removing it from the factory packaging. Why not? As it turned out, these things are so rare, repairing the damage would be relatively expensive and difficult to find the spare parts. Nearly a month had passed, with us searching the web, and the buyer decided to open a claim for a return. We had already contacted and spoke with 2 eBay Team members, and were advised to accept the return but do not issue a refund if the item had been opened and or damaged. Then the avalanche of BullS**t hit, the negative feedback, our first, I asked for it to be removed, and then all hell broke lose! I get a message from eBay stating they were going to debit the full refund amount to the disingenuous buyer ??? W.T.F.?? We were told that we were protected as a Top Rated Seller and not to worry, if we were correct that the buyer was abusive. We were so confident that justice would be served, we paid bills and at this point didn't have this ridiculous refund money to spare. How in the hell does a group of con artists get away with this? I've been self employed owning several businesses since 1980 and didn't see this happening, but we were very uneasy about this transaction. We video recorded in HD the return of the item and the destruction the buyer caused. Since I never opened the item prior to the sale I didn't know what the unique serial number was, so, actually, we don't know if this is even our original item, it could be the first P.B's. (prospective buyer) item that he coordinated a swap with his broken item for our mint item? I'll be contacting the damage control team tomorrow once I cool off, and hopefully get rescued from this disaster. Here's the video link if it's ok to do so? No I better not, sorry this case is still open... Anyone have any good stories to help cheer us up?