Ebay Not As Described Prob...please Advise

SuperDave,
IMHO I think you were too harsh. Given the amount of money gormang paid for the item, I think I'd be rather distressed and keen to ensure that I had every option of getting my money back.

I am also of the opinion that seller didn't have a particularly good ebay rating.

It may well have been an honest mistake that clad coins were somehow substituted for proofs, but I'd rather use the paypal dispute option earlier rather than later. It remains private and has the potential to resolve the problem.

And why give someone a 'well deserved' negative feedback for using a legitimate method of achieving what was to be expected in the first place? While someone like gormang or myself might finish up on your blocked bidder list, we (you and I) would both have negative feedbacks which does no-one any good.

Just an opinion.
Kind Regards
Yass

I have to agree with Dave. To open a Paypal dispute without giving the seller even 24 hours to respond is seriously jumping the gun in my opinion. Some are awful quick to point fingers at the seller with absolutely no knowledge of what really happened.

We've sent the wrong coins before by accident. I've also taken pictures of Silver Eagles and mixed up the COA's when I put them back in the boxes. All these buyers just sent me an email and we straightened it out.

I agree with gormang and Yass....Superdave was way too harsh!

I stated what I did from the viewpoint of a seller. Even though the Paypal dispute system is more about communication than accusation, as a seller it would have greatly offended me to have a buyer file such a complaint without allowing me the chance to make it right on my own. Even if, through the Paypal dispute, I had made the buyer whole, apologized for the mistake and ultimately received a Positive Feedback for my role, I'd still have that Paypal dispute on my record.

I freely admit in this case that the seller is likely a greasy one, and odds are that the dispute is warranted. That's not relevant, though. What is relevant is that the buyer did the equivalent of buying something from Home Depot, discovering the wrong item in the box, and filing a Better Business Bureau complaint before ever returning the item to the store for a refund.

Gormang, I will not feed you the bull by saying that I didn't intend to offend with my comments. Of course I did, and I will not apologise for what I said. You have publicly disparaged the reputation of an ebay seller, and filed a complaint against him, without ever giving him the chance to fix the problem. If this were the PCGS forum, you would have earned your way onto a hundred Blocked Bidders' Lists with your actions.

I hold no personal ill will against you, and I fully support your right to hold my words against me in the future. My input to this situation is through, my opinions stop here, and I will extend to you from this moment forward all the same service I attempt to extend to every member of this forum.

Wow! I certainly learned something new today.

I believe Gormang handled the situation well. He came to the forum and asked what it was that he should do in an adverse situation. That is what the forum is all about isn't it? Education.

In my opinion, we have all now learned that buying from ebay is fraught with dangers, both from the honest and dishonest sellers. If you are unaware of the unpublished protocols you stand to be blacklisted by the honest. If you don't know how to handle the dishonest, you lose your money, and perhaps interest in continuing with this hobby.

It was interesting that on the one hand we have Susanlynn9 advising that it is "safer to open the dispute now rather than wait", bobby131313 agreeing with SuperDave that being blacklisted by the honest wouldn't be a harsh call, and lastly Metalman suggesting that you can "also do a charge back on your credit card as well as the pay pal dispute".

I wasn't aware that a Paypal dispute stays on a sellers record. Do they keep that record and use it against you in future disputes, even if the previous disputes were settled amicably? How long do they keep them for? Are those records publicly available?

How long should one wait before contacting the credit card company of a potential mistake? Is there a time limit here?

For the record, gormang, Paypal is only a quasi-banking institution, only loosely governed by financial law. They have a long record of arbitrary actions against both buyers and sellers - freezing accounts (which is death to an ebay seller), making dispute arbitrations which do not agree with the facts presented, and the like. If they find against the seller, in your favor, and he doesn't have the cash in his Paypal account, they will extract the money from his bank account and give it to you.

And he will have no legal recourse, whether he needed that money to pay his rent or not.

Having said that, the system tends to be biased towards the seller, especially now that ebay owns Paypal. Your case is strong, though, especially since the seller doesn't seem to be disputing it (which says volumes about him).

Here's the rough-average going rates on ebay, per year, as near as I can tell:

1999 - $325
2000 - $33
2001 - $150
2002 - $54
2003 - $30
2004 - $30
2005 - $30
1999 Clad: $55

The silver issues add up to $652, so the 1999 set is almost exactly half the total. Half your winning bid is $300, minus the $55 value of the clad set you got is $245, and that is the compensation I would feel is appropriate if I were in your shoes.

From another angle, at the going rate you'd get $382 for what you paid $600 for, so you're out $218.

Either way, $100 simply does not cut it.

Can't a chargeback be done and send the coins back to the seller COD?