Earlier in Feb., on the 8th, I bid on and won an auction on e-bay. Contacted the seller and made payment arrangements.  My payment was sent the following day, and the ball shipped out the day after that.  Seemed to be a great deal.

  The ball gets here a few days later and isn't in as good a condition as had been said. It is an older ball and the fingers were cracking, one of them was pretty rough shape.  If that had been all, I could live with that, but the ball was listed on e-bay as a 15lb ball and turned out to actually be a 16lb ball. I do not need, nor want, a 16lb ball.

  I contacted the seller, who has 100% feedback, and he was apologetic, telling me that it was actually a friends ball and the friend had told him it was a 15lb ball and he had just taken his friends word for it. He also offered me a refund. So far so good. I sent another e-mail asking if he was going to refund the shipping also. I got no replies for several days.

  After several days, I sent another e-mail to the effect that, if the seller wasn't going to answer my e-mails, or refund the money (which hadn't been done), it was going to leave me no choice but to request a refund from paypal and then leave negative feedback on e-bay.  This was not meant as a threat, but was the truth if he refused to contact me and let me know what was happening. This is where things started to derail.

  The following day, I recieved an abusive (cursing at me) type e-mail from the seller, telling me that he had been sick and hadn't been online. He also said that he had offered me a refund, but didn't feel that it was fair for him to pay for shipping it back to him and that he would ONLY refund my money AFTER he recieved the ball back.  He also offered me a partial refund and offered to let me keep the ball.  I opted for the latter as the ball had been cheap and after I paid for shipping it back to him ( out of my own pocket), the net result would have been about the same. I have a friend who can use the ball.

  That was two days ago. I have recieved no further e-mails and there have been NO refunds made to paypal.  I really don't want to ruin the guys perfect feedback, if I don't have to.  Strange thing is, he is also a user here and I have seen quite a few deals done with him (by others) who were well satisfied with the deals.  This appears to be an isolated incident, but I can't figure out why he won't at least tell me what is going on or why?

  The money isn't really the big deal anymore, like I said, the ball was cheap enough. The thing now is that I have been MORE than fair and offered this person the chance to take care of the situation "off the record" so to speak, and all I ended up getting was cursed at and disrespected.  All I wanted was what I though was right, what I would've done myself if it had been me.

 What do you guys think?
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Norm Duke was right

Good transactions list in my profile

My Bowl.com member page



Edited on 2/26/2009 3:41 PM

Edited on 2/26/2009 3:43 PM

Give him one more chance to make it right and then go to EBAy and demand a refund. Always buy thru paypal using a credit card. This way you have somebody in your corner.
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Moon
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So many questions, so little time but I'm having fun.

Am I the only one who thinks that if you are selling something online, that you have an obligation of being accessible to the people you are selling to?  If you knew there was in an issue with the ball, I would have hoped you would check your email a little more frequently to make sure who you sold to was satisfied.  If there was going to be a couple day gap on the next time you checked your email, I would have hoped you would have let him know that as well.  Maybe I'm just a stickler for customer service.

I, as the buyer, had no intentions of "outing" the seller, and even took great care not to give any info that might have done so.  This post was only meant to see what others might do in my position.

  I already had an idea this seller was allright, that was why their lack of communication confused me. he says he did not know he would be sick, and likewise, I had no way to know that was the problem.  usually a seller will contact you in case of a problem within 24 hours. He hadn't and I was becoming concerned. he says he doesn't know me from Adam, well, I am not any more familiar with him either.

  I also thought the offer of a partial refund was fair, that is why I had offered to accept it.  The money has been refunded as of today.

  To anyone who cares, I understand your trepidations when dealing with others online.  They are strangers to you, and there are plenty of crooks out there in this world.  Rest assured, I am not one of them, nor do I feel thebigfour is either, I just wanted what was right.  I had, in all fairness, bid on an item that I wanted based on the information in the auction.  When it did not meet that description, it no longer met the criteria of something I would've bid on in the first place, and I felt a refund was correct.

 I think there was a misunderstanding about the shipping though.  What I had meant to convey was that if he would refund the original shipping cost ($20), I was going to use that to reship the ball back to him.  I think he thought that I wanted an additional $20 as well as my original $30, but that was not the case. I intended to send the ball back out of my pocket after the refund was made.

  I will now consider the matter closed.
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Norm Duke was right

Good transactions list in my profile

My Bowl.com member page