Back in February I had purchased a fairly valuable, ungraded trading card that was being shipped from Japan with the expectation that the card was in good condition. The card's listing described it as lightly played, and the images showed it as having very little wear too. However, upon receiving the card there was a noticeable dent in the face of the card that the seller's images did not clearly depict, and upon checking the photos more closely it became clear to me that damage was present there, but the photos were carefully taken to obscure it.
Messaging the seller resulted in them "checking with the shipping manager" and after pointing out where the damage could just barely be seen in their photographs they apologized for the oversight (something which I took as an admission that the condition was not what it should have been) and then tried to offer me a partial refund. However, I preferred to return the item outright and receive a full refund instead, so I returned the card with a trackable shipping number.
A day after recieving the returned card the seller opened a case with customer service. In their open case the seller simply stated;
"I shipped an item with a certificate of authenticity but there was no certificate of authenticity and it was not in a clear bag. I am concerned that it may have been switched. Best regards.""I shipped an item with a certificate of authenticity but there was no certificate of authenticity and it was not in a clear bag. I am concerned that it may have been switched. Best regards."
Apparently, despite the original listing having no mention or image of any kind of certificate of authenticity, the card written in Japanese that was attached to the generic "thank you for buying" page was a certificate of some sort, despite the fact that it didn't have any kind of photograph of the card it was supposedly authenticating. Obviously I can't read Japanese and thus assumed that both pieces of paper were rubbish and disposed of them, but now since I didn't include the both of those in the return the seller seems to be "worried" that I somehow switched the card I returned, even though it should be easy to visually tell it's the same card just by comparing it to their own photographs in the listing.
Doing a cursory google search shows that the "certificate of authenticity" is just a Mercari authentication label that apparently only costs $5 and is done by submitting photographs of the item you authenticate, so it's not like this has any great bearing on the value of the return. Given everything I can't help but feel that the seller is trying to pull a fast one at this point, as the value of the return is fairly high (less then 1k, but not by much).
My question is, is there anything I need to do in this situation?
I've been an ebay member since 2010 and have perfect feedback (unlike this seller), and almost never return anything I buy ever (I think this might be the first?). Given everything that has happened, should I expect to receive my money back in this situation? Or will I need to supply ebay with proof that I reasonably did everything that was expected of me in this situation?
