Silver Sovereign from Isle of Man – recently sold on eBay
We had a display card returned today. It is about the size of a paperback book, about an inch thick, and when full holds 26 £1 coins. It’s moderately heavy to hold (about 4 ounces) and made from heavy duty card. If you had one in your pocket, you would realise.
Yet someone, according to their return request, ordered one from us “by mistake”.
Whether they ordered the wrong one, despite the exhaustive and accurate description and photographs in our eBay listing, or whether they didn’t mean to order anything, despite the extensive process of button pressing required, isn’t clear. Generally we don’t ask, because you rarely get a sensible answer and because eBay always sides with the idiot. No matter what we do, we are going to end up losing money as part of the process.
In this case we have lost the postage to the customer and the return postage (the system is designed to make it easy for the customer and difficult for us, so we have to pay the expenses. We have also lost other costs and my time in sorting it out. It’s cost us around £5 or £6 and we have done nothing wrong.
We have another similar item in the post too. This time the customer decided that the folder doesn’t hold the coins firmly enough. They made thousands of them, they are all made by machines and nobody has ever complained before, so this is either a first, or another debatable excuse to cost us money.
One of the best was a parcel we recently sent out. The customer had it delivered to a set of lockers at a shop near him – and didn’t pick it up. It was returned to us. We had to refund the money and lose the postage costs. The customer then got in touch to say he still wanted the stuff and ask if we would send it again . . .
Sold on eBay – souvenir of the American 5th Army entering Naples in 1943. There are several versions, including a British version with “8th Army” on it. Obverse and Reverse.
Then there was the one last week who complained Postage & Packing was too high and left us neutral feedback. It was a high value collectable banknote. The Royal Mail will only pay out if you use Guaranteed Delivery for such items. It was £80 and you don’t want to lose that. He had the choice of whether to pay or not, and he ordered and paid. Then, in the manner of a slimy creeping thing that has white undersides and lives beneath stones, he crept out of hiding and left poor feedback.
Finally, a prince amongst men. We found we had two neutral feedbacks this morning, for slow service. We had posted the items to Singapore on the day they were ordered and they were delivered on the seventh day after that That’s right, delivered halfway round the world in just seven days. According to eBay the delivery window was 27th March 8ntil 4th April. They were delivered on 27th March and on 30th March he posted negative feedback saying “Sorry but slow delivery.” It is tempting to be abusive.
In his short eBay career he has given 21 feedback in two months – including 8 neutral and one negative, all for “slow” delivery.
People like him should be banned from eBay. Then neutered to stop them breeding more idiots . . .
Pictures are all things we sold on eBay, where people were happy with the transaction and left positive feedback. Just saying . . .