Ebay Venting...

Wow!! I have never had that problem only once did I have a seller who apparantly forgot where the local post office was and I had to file a complaint I have always gotten what I paid for. Hope your issues get resolved so sorry to hear of these issues.

I too have a lot of challengers with ebay, but the lure of so many coins to choose from is almost impossible to resist. The biggest problem is that photos do not always tell the whole story. Many sellers simply don't post good pictures- they are often low-res, grainy, full of shadows or reflections, or just too small to provide insight into the coin's grade and condition. Coins often look worse in hand than they do in ebay pictures. Additionally, even if the photos are decent, there are things about a coin that simply do not show up in a photo. I have bought 2 coins that looked amazing in the photos, only to find they both had a lot of spots or marks. When I looked back at the picture, the spots could not be seen except very vaguely and only slightly off-color. I guess in some photos the angle or lighting makes the spots disappear into the background, though I am not sure how this is possible. Perhaps some sellers are photoshopping coins.

Another issue is that slabbed coins can be difficult to photograph so it's hard to see the details. I realize some sellers feel like, "Well if it's MS-63 it's MS-63. So no returns allowed." But the reality is that there is very wide variation within a grade so not every coin in the desired grade will appeal to the collector. You may not know this until you have the coin in hand. Just light night, I was looking at a PCGS-slabbed Indian cent graded AU58- but the coin is a VF 35! The hair curls were not separated from the ribbon, at least based on what could be seen in the photo. So it's just as important to see details in slabbed coins as in raw coins.

The final issue that I find very challenging is that sellers not only lack grading skills, but problems not always obvious in a picture are often not revealed. There is one seller who has mostly coins found with a metal detector. Every coin they sell has some degree of corrosion, yet almost every lot uses the term "no problem coin" in the title! Very misleading. Just my little ebay vent added to yours! :-)

Like baseball said, don't do this to the seller. He did refund you and admitted he made a mistake. I personally either would leave positive that said something like thanks, or would leave none. This is one of the few opportunities when I would be fine receiving no feedback.

Trent the frustrations definitely understandable. Some people are slow to pull things when they sell offline or elsewhere.

The one thing ebay doesn't do a good job of doing is informing the buyer of what their feedback really means. Anything but a 4 or 5 star positive is basically treated like a negative when it comes to the top rated discount.

I also never really understood why you can even leave a 1 or 2 star rating for a positive feedback.

I've thankfully only had to return two items since I joined, both were handled professionally and quickly (knock on wood). I did have a customer pay for an item, then balk at the shipping costs. He was in China to be fair, and insurance was expensive, item wasn't numismatic in nature, but still I clearly listed the shipping costs to him first. Item was $150 and the shipping was $27. he refused to pay, I was able to get my ebay fees credited back after some complaining. I never left him feedback as much as I wanted to leave a negative, I thought better of it, since I did agree to cancel the auction in the end.

Otherwise my ebay experience has been okay except the hiking of fees over the years.