Frustrations With An Ebay Seller

Hi all, I'm going through some Problems with a seller on ebay I'm I just wanted to post about it to vent/get advise.

Let me preface this by saying I know there are things that I did or did not do that would have avoided the situation, but I still feel I am not in the wrong here.

This starts on Saturday, March 27th. I come across this user's listings and notice that their item prices are low but their shipping is high(think silver dollars for $26.50 with shipping $14 and half dollars for $10 and shipping $14). I think this is an opportunity to get a bunch of decent coins for a pretty good price if I can order a lot of them and combine shipping. So I message the seller:




At this point I think I'm good to start firing off offers on their items. The message very clearly implies that they will ship the items for one shipping cost of $14(adjust the shipping to one fee of $14, not however many fees of $14)

So I offer on a bunch of their items and make a deal on a total of 17 of them. after the 17th and final order I get another message on the original one I sent:





So now this is obviously entirely opposite of what they said they would do, and it's a BS excuse on why they can't combine, so I tell them as much. At this point, mind you, I had racked up over $230 in shipping charges from my offers:




Then I get the response:




So not only is it very obvious they just wanted to get margin out of me with the excuse of "insurance cost", but making offers screwed me because if I had paid full price and had shipping combines I would be paying less than if I made offers in the first place!

So I'm done with these guys, I ask,




Now I'm worried at this point because I've made offers that got accepted. In ebay's eyes I have committed to buy these items, so I'm hoping that I can do something to get the sale cancelled and walk away without unpaid item strikes. I'm hoping going along with this will let me get the sales cancelled and I can walk away, because there's no way I trust these guys enough to buy from them outside of ebay.



This is the last communication I've received from them, that was Monday march 29th.

Since then I've been waiting for the unpaid item cases to be opened and they haven't happened yet. I sent another message on Wednesday, March 31st




No response.

Now there's two very important things about these guys. One, they are a physical location, and have had a store for quite a while. Secondly, their ebay account is new. They have 3 feedback total. I tried calling their physical store during hours and had no pickup. At this point I feel I have three options:

First I can do nothing and hope the items sit in my cart for the 30 days they have to open an unpaid item case

Second I can continue to try to get ahold of them and cancel the sale

Third I can just buy the items and leave 17 reviews using each one to illustrate my frustration with them.


I don't like option three because If I Neg bomb them they can just nuke the account and start over, they have almost no investment in the account. Option two is a route I'm willing to take, but I'm worried if it's unsuccessful it closes the door on option one.

So what do you guys think? Did I royally screw up here? Is the seller in the wrong?

I decided not to release the name of the store because the situation is unresolved, if the store refuses to work with me and forces me to pay $238 in shipping charges I will be happy to name it.

Thank you to whoever reads this!