That is why I gave up on FeeBay and PayPal 10 years or so ago. One negative because some guy was too stupid to read that the item had "One missing coupler." !!! He demanded a refund AND he wanted to keep the caboose !!! I told him he could do one of the two not both. He decided he would send it back for a refund. I mean really...how hard is it to put a MT coupler on a caboose ???!!! I packed my bags and left FeeBay. Paypal still has $1.75 of mine. I refused to close the account..on principle...LOL
Interesting story! I think some folks thrive on being angry and they're going to find a way to get there. I didn't know that a high rating can get clobbered so easily. That stinks. As a Seller, I wrestle with Insurance and Signature Confirmation. I usually underwrite the cost of these when a sale gets over $50, but not always and sometimes I just use my gut to decide regardless of the dollar amount.
Holy smokes, that's crazy. We show eBay posts from uninformed Sellers here, but I'd never thought about the case of an illiterate and uninformed Buyer. You can't win with that hand.
EBay rating s are a bad joke, anyway. I tend to read the bad ratings and try to read "between the lines" to decide if I want to avoid the seller. Usually, I do not avoid sellers just because they don't have 100% rating. On the other hand, I recently had an experience with a "100%" seller who mis-listed an HO item as N scale. When I told him, his attitude was that he measured it and "called it N scale," and I could return it at my expense if I did not like it. When I looked into it and showed him that others were posting the same item as HO scale, and that the personnel door would measure 12' high in N scale feet, he simply ignored the information. I eventually sent it back for the refund, but needed to pay the return postage to cover his mistake. So, why didn't I post a negative review? I thought about it, but he would have simply posted a negative review for me in retaliation, because he obviously was willing to do/say whatever it took to deny his error. So, I let it slide, and that means there is at least one "100%" seller out there that really isn't 100%.
In the text of my auctions, I mention "shipping and handling". This allows me to add a few dollars to cover insurance if a single item is more than the fifty dollars that the Post Office Department provides with Priority Mail. If I do not think that the item will be bid up over seventy five dollars, I will simply put the cost of shipping and handling at seven dollars thirty (the cost of a small flat rate box that easily will hold most N scale diesels) to eight dollars. With Priority Mail, you get fifty dollars worth of insurance, which is usually more than enough to cover a used N scale diesel locomotive or several pieces of used rolling stock. I do combine shipping and handling and I do note that in the text of my auctions. In fact, this is the usual opportunity to mention "shipping and handling". Further, I let the readers know that I will not argue over that charge. Anyone who does not like it need not bid. You get to see the auctions, but you do not get to see what happens between buyer and seller, unless the buyer puts it up there in his feedback. Further, now that sellers can not warn each other away from a bad buyer, you can not see that, either. Back in the day, I managed to avoid a few bad buyers this way. While the auction was in progress, some would-be buyers used to send me a message that complained about the shipping and handling charge. Having been in a business where you deal with the public for quite some time, it was easy to tell that the buyer was going to be trouble if I dealt with him. Every time that I looked up the feedback from these whiners, there was more than one negative from a seller. It was mostly non-paying after several nasty messages, but there were a few who had won the auction and sent the seller a message that all that he was going to pay for it was ______ and if the seller wanted to sell the thing, he had better send an invoice adjusted to what the buyer was willing to pay.. Needless to state, I went straight for the block on those buyers. Back then, even though you had blocked someone from bidding, he could still send you messages. A couple of them sent messages whining about my blocking them. I did get one that I had to report, as it contained threats. I reported it mostly for the record, as this guy was going to come all the way from South Dakota to a major east coast city to "teach me a lesson". Right, he was going to knock on every door in a major east coast city until he found me so that he could teach me a lesson, even though he did not know my real name, my address or even what I looked like. In my recent ventures there, I have received only one message like that. Since buyers do no wrong on FeePay, I could not see anything about him. I simply went with my instincts and experience and blocked him. Most of what you get form uninformed buyers is bidding ridiculous amounts for something or people who failed to read and comprehend the text. I am guilty of the latter, on one occasion. I bought some nineteenth century Athearn or MDC (I forget which, but the former is a copy of the latter, anyhow) passenger cars from a guy. The cars were in pieces, but, I had thought that all of the parts were there. I got the cars, they had all of the parts except for the truss rods. I sent him a courteous and businesslike message that asked about the truss rods. He sent back a rather nasty message that I should read the text of the auction. I re-read it and noticed that he did mention that the cars were missing the truss rods. Allright, no big deal, I can fashion truss rods out of wire. He could have been more businesslike in his message, but, allright. I did not leave him feedback.
They are indeed, they are as flawed as is the Uber and Lyft rating system, although at least the drivers get to rate the passengers, as well. If you have a high volume seller, he is not going to have perfect feedback; it just does not happen. The one ding that I got came early on, so it knocked down my rating a little less than ten points. Despite that, people still did read between the lines. The seller does get to write a VERY SHORT reply to any feedback, so I suspect that buyers read my reply and decided to take a chance. Further, you do get to see the auction that the complainer won. Buyers could see that he was complaining about something sold "AS-IS" and that there were plenty of warnings that the item had inherent flaws that could manifest themselves at any time. What is unfortunate about return policies is that unless you post one of FeePay's templated policies, it will read "Seller does not accept returns". As is usual with anything templated, it fails to address most of the situations. In a world obsessed with quantity over quality, though, the templates are going to remain with us, as templates and automated responses create instant numbers and statistics. In the text of my auctions, I will state that all returns are at buyer's expense and the the buyer must contact me for an authorisation before he returns something. At that point, he lets me know why he wants to return it. If it is my fault that he does not like it, such as an inaccurate description, I will inform him that he should post it and when I receive the item, assuming that it is still in salable condition (absent damage's being the reason for return, of course), I will refund the purchase price and the postage through a PayUp, Pal credit. The operative item here, is that if you advertise that the customer pays the return postage, you are covered. You can then, at your discretion, agree to pay the return postage. Sellers have not been able to leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers for years. You can leave a VERY SHORT response to any feedback. Unfortunately, FeePay is very quick to delete any seller response while it will leave up obvious false statements in the buyer's negative feedback comments.
I did the same and received the same when selling some expensive camera equipment years ago. Several buyers were making curiously urgent shipping demands before bidding. I began to wonder if was actually the same person. When I refused the requests, they stepped up with angry rhetoric and I blocked them. That began a fiery attack asking why they were blocked. I replied with a list of five other Sellers offering the same item as mine and suggested they take their business to them. One persistent fellow then cussed me out and finally disappeared.
Like a friend once told me, "you should probably get that looked at by a doctor". https://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Bu...7d34:g:zV4AAOSw4DJYjBRg&LH_ItemCondition=3000
I'm feeling about the same. Not sure what to say. Any ideas what the blobs on the roof are supposed to be?
I'm thinking that perhaps the local building custom was to place rocks on the roof joists on the straw roof to hold it in place during high winds? I've never seen this on other thatched roof houses though, and man, those are BIG rocks.
Some of those 'rocks on roof' Russell posted would scare the heck out of me being inside under that much added weight...hmmmm
THAT'S IT! I looked at them with familiarity, but couldn't place where I'd seen them. Thank you Jeff. And just in time for Halloween too.
I'm not sure where to ask this question, but this shouldn't take us too far afield. For Sellers who ship to Canada from the U.S. or for Canadian Buyers, is there a preferred method for shipment that doesn't cost a fortune? I'm going through my N Scale and have a small batch of CP and CN freight cars that I might want to try and sell as one lot. They're not fancy cars. Looking at various Internet sites that estimate shipping, the shipping expense is probably more that the worth of the cars. I feel badly for Canadian modelers.
