I had a recent discussion with a fellow member of the group, Ty Kroll, and we exchanged some unpleasantness about what happens when an item arrives, as eBay describes it, "not as described" and what transpires afterward. Naturally eBay's rules must be adhered to but what happens when a person does everything right ?
In my circumstance I bought a set from a seller in Europe so transAtlantic shipping was involved. As I recall, he had 40-some or 50-some feedbacks, mostly from selling. The listing did not note anything about returns as I recall.
Prior to the end of auction I had written a few questions and asked for better pictures and he seemed honest and straightforward. When the package did arrive it did not reflect any abuse from shipping, tears or obvious damage on the outside. The problem arose because the pieces were placed in the board-box-case (what I refer to as a clam type) and allowed to roll around without any effort at any padding or packing to keep them from rolling into one another, et cetera. Opening the box there were three pieces majorly broken and three others with damages.
I tried communicating with him only to be ignored so I filed a claim with eBay for an "Item received but not as described". I filled out the appropriate information and so forth and then had to wait for the eBay finding which was in my favor but to be reimbursed the set had to be returned to the seller with tracking information.
According to the tracking information it was held in Customs there for almost 2 months which it was not but per the mail system that is all that they could show. The bottom line is that the seller refused delivery/ acceptance of the returned item and so my only recourse was to wait for the mail system to finally work its due diligence and return the package to me which cost me a few cents shy of $65 to mail. It got back just a few days shy of the eBay deadline of appealing a claim which had been now denied because I could not prove that it had been delivered or that delivery attempt had been made. Once back, the tracking information showed, to eBay's satisfaction, that it had been shipped and that it had been returned and it was only then that they allowed the claim and returned my money via PayPal. Unfortunately, the return postage was on me.
The long and short of this is that their system did work but not nearly as smoothly as it implies. For starters, once the initial claim is made any further communication with eBay must be done via a phone call (toll free). Also, any communication between a buyer and seller must be done thru the eBay messaging sytem or it does not count, cannot be considered in any decisions......if a similar situation should occur to any fellow member, do not bother communicating with a seller privately which is to say via direct email communication !
Additionally, no matter how polite a seller is initially, once a sale has been made it has become my experience that they become just as uncooperative as they had been helpful initially. This is a nice way of saying that once money has been received they don't want anything further to do with a buyer.
I mentioned Ty and I having several exchanges and the biggest reason was that he bought a set that was described as in perfect condition and it arrived with serious damages.....the net result is still up in the air but in his situation the seller is in the US, so this is not an isolated incident. I'm sure that Ty will fill us in when things get resolved one way or another.
My hope is that this warning, so to speak, will help someone by warning them about the problems encountered with sellers and the resolution process. Both of us followed all of the rules and went further than what is expected and this is what can still happen.
Checking a seller's feedback is one safeguard but don't just let it go at a number or percentage....check their selling number and what kinds of things they had sold....selling and shipping aircraft parts does not mean that they know how to handle delicate items.
Clay Neubert
