Lesson Learned

I had previously posted about a transaction I had on ebay with someone who charged me shipping, even though he'd advertised his item had "Free Shipping."

Well, I tried emailing back & forth, but he was a moron (or was he?). He was not going to do anything to resolve the shipping, and so I waited the 10 days to open a case for resolution through ebay & PayPal.

Turns out even though they checked & looked through everything, they don't actually handle fixing things like that. If the item had been faulty (it's not) they could have reversed the charges for the whole thing, but they can't just refund the shipping charge.

Maybe the seller knew this the whole time, and he purposefully sets up his auctions that way? I don't know. He certainly didn't seem at all concerned that I was going to take it to the Resolution Center when I told him that was my next step. Maybe he's done this before, and that's just how he operates. I don't know.

So the lesson would be, next time cancel any auctions, no matter for what, if the invoice doesn't match up to the item description.

Email the seller first and get it in writing that shipping or whatever is different will be changed (although again, if they say one thing and do another, there isn't a whole lot the buyer can do once they click that "pay" button on the invoice). If they change it on the invoice before you pay, you would be okay.

I still came out ahead. I had a one-day coupon that actually covered the cost of the shipping and then some, but it was really the principle of the thing.

I still need to leave feedback. I will wait until he does mine first though. I am pretty sure when I leave negative comments, he's going to want to reciprocate. He still doesn't seem to get that the item description and reading the notes on the invoice are the seller's responsibility (or does he?).

Like I said, lesson learned.