posted on March 13, 2001 05:07:53 PM
I sell asian antique on ebay, few months ago a bidder won 3 of my auctions, one of them I broke it during packeging, and I refund him the full amount.
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Few weeks ago I re-imported the item that I broke before, and put it on ebay again, and the bidder that won 3 of my auctions in the past argue that this item was the one that is damaged. He said I lied to him because I want to sell it at a higher price.
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I don't know what he is thinking, well, he got not point or proves at all, I will win the arguement for sure, but I want to keep a good seller-buyer relation with him since he was a good buyer (fast pay, good communication..etc), what should I do?
posted on March 13, 2001 05:11:05 PM
If he is worth keeping as a customer I'd offer to sell him it at the price he won the item you broke.
As long as you break even...good customers are hard to come by.
posted on March 13, 2001 05:39:10 PM
Well, hindsight is 20/20, but I'm wondering why you didn't offer the item to him as soon as you had the new one? Is there a chance you could get another?
posted on March 13, 2001 05:50:38 PM
I would have offered the new item to the old winner first before listing it. If I were in his shoes I might suspect the same thing. Just out of curiosity, did the "new" item sell for a higher amount than the "broken" one?
posted on March 13, 2001 07:36:21 PM
I can understand why he didn't offer the newly imported one to his previous bidder...it could have been considered a violation of the new ebay rules regarding contact of customers.
Think of the scenario. Buyer wins auction. Seller breaks item while packing, offers refund which buyer takes.
A month goes by & seller gets in new shipment. Seller emails old customer & says he has some back in stock & will sell to him at the previous high bid. Buyer forwards to Safeharbor & gets either a warning or suspended.
Unfortunately, the way ebay has the rules set up these days, even trying to do a good deed could result in punishment for the seller.
All you have to do is offer the original bidder to relist the item with a BIN price. You're within eBay rules and your bidder is happy. If he attempts to complain to eBay, there's no violation of TOS since you didn't offer to sell outside of eBay.
Quite true. However, the other posts seem to suggest he should have offered to sell the item to the bidder "off" ebay.
In the past, we wouldn't have thought twice about doing that. I would have in a heartbeat for a good customer.
But w/ebay's new contact policy, we're all walking a tightrope as to when a disgruntled customer might take it in a direction we didn't want.
And, the seller would have to spend his time trying to coordinate the exact moment the item went back on relist so this one customer could be there to get it at the BIN price & not someone else.
posted on March 14, 2001 07:55:10 AM
Actually I wasn't suggesting he complete the sale off eBay, only honor the sale he made on eBay. If a Final Value Fee had been refunded he could simply email SafeHarbor and inform them that the sale had finally been completed.
I am still wondering if the item sold for a higher price the second time around...
