The Reason That Ebay Buyer Protection Exists

i went through a similar situation recently, and here is a bit of advice.... offer to eat the shipping costs and here is why, when ebay is reviewing your case, and you are willing to give, they are more willing to rule in your favor, demanding a refund and the shipping could backfire, the shipping he charged went to the post office, you have to send the coins back anyway for a refund, unfortunately in this case the shipping will nearly equal the cost of the coins, that is your education, never assume the pics are actual, 99% of the time they are, but I've seen people bid an 1860-o Half Dime up to $600 because the title and description said dime, the picture clearly showed a Half Dime, which is much less valuable, always look at the pics, and ask questions if you have any. sellers sometimes have NO CLUE what they are selling, and that can be VERY beneficial to an astute buyer. this guy may or may not have intended to rip anyone off, he may not even own a camera, and consider neutral feedback or none at all. learn your lesson and give the guy the benefit of the doubt, if in fact his intention is to swindle people, he will learn his lesson before you forget yours. but learn something from this, and be thankful it was a cheap lesson.

But in your case basebal21, there would have been the opportunity to check on the coins before leaving. This is closer to you looking at some coins, saying you will buy them, the owner offering to wrap them up for you, and then putting low value coins into the box instead of the ones you said you would buy. In that case, I would not care about the $ for gas, I would be coming back with cops.

It's as simple as this... Why should I bear a single cent of loss when I'm the one that was swindled? As far as I'm concerned, the cost of education is the time I've sunk into this. If we were to really be fair on this, I'd be made whole financially plus compensated for the time I've spent dealing with it.

The facts are these- I ordered one item. Said item was not delivered. Another item was delivered instead.. To me, it's the same as if he delivered a deck of playing cards instead of the ugly coins I got. I'm responsible for bearing the cost of sending that deck of cards back? If Amazon sent an incorrect item, would they even think of making the buyer bear the cost? Of course not. I'm not in the business of returning items I didn't order to people and paying for the privilege. If scumbag wants his worthless coins back, he pays for it, not me. It's the only rational, logical result. For the seller to insist on any other result is simply arrogant and bullheaded.

LOL - That would be perfect.

Seriously though, If the auction was a 14 day return policy no questions asked and the coins received were the ones pictured, I would expect to eat shipping costs. In this case, absolutely not. Seller assumes all responsibilities by not supplying what was sold.

If it is possible to have hyperlinks embedded in the feedback I doubt many buyers would follow it. When I am checking feedback I am quickly looking for something to tell me whether or not I should trust a particular seller.

These 80 characters should be enough to warn any future buyer of this seller's jerkishness and d-bagery:

Pics not same as item received. Seller incredulous & uncooperative when caught.

That feedback would be enough of a red flag to cause me to move on to the next seller.

What has the seller done to merit getting any further benefit of the doubt? He intentionally sold coins that were not as advertised and when he was confronted he had the chance to fix his swindle, but he didn't. The purpose of feedback is not to mindlessly give everyone positive feedback but warn other buyers about potential crooks and inform buyers of honest sellers. Any feedback should be 100% negative in my opinion.

That is a very good point. But what if the shipping label matches the exact charge of shipping? On ebay sellers that charge shipping price only actually lose money after that gets hit with the fee. But very interesting take on it

And what happens if the money is already gone from paypal?