eBay ethics: Caveat Emptor! Gotcha Sucker!

You would have gotten a better deal at your local Home Depot. (and a lot
cheaper too!)


"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...
Wanting a few opinions on this.

I order some Lilly of the Valley pips (one order of 5 white, one order of
3 pink) from a high-volume
Ebay seller using buy-it-now and immedately paying via Paypal. Soon
afterwards, I get a boilerplate
e-mail with the subject that the item "has been shipped", but in the body
of the message it points
out that the seller ships on only Mondays and Tuesdays. So that would
have allowed for a few more
days before shipping. But 14 days after the "item has shipped" notice it
still hadn't arrived, so I
e-mailed the seller and asked if he could double-check on if the order had
actually shipped yet (and
yes, I was polite and non-confrontational about it). He told me that he
would ship it again.

Then, the very next day (15 days after the "item has shipped" notice) the
order finally arrives--
and is postmarked 12 days after the "item has shipped" e-mail. As quickly
as possible, I e-mail the
seller to say that the item has arrived, and to not ship the replacement
order if possible, and
asked how I should handle the second package if it has already been sent.
I get no reply from the
seller.

Now, yesterday, I get a package from the seller in the mail. Postmarked 6
days AFTER I told him to
not re-send the order. AND, it turns out, it contained only the pink
pips, so if the first order
really had been missing, I still would have been missing half of the
order.

Now, if the first order really had been lost in the mail, it would have
been a great gesture from
the seller to re-send the order at his own expense. But it hadn't been
lost-- it just hadn't been
sent, despite his e-mail saying otherwise. And not only was he not able
to track that, he didn't
bother to NOT resend (half of) the order even though he had multiple days
notice that I had finally
received the first order.

So (and here's where the question comes in) I've decided that I'm just
going to keep the damned pips
from the re-sent order and not offer to ship them back to him or pay him
($10.00 plus $3.99 shipping
for 3 pips, even though it cost only $1.29 to send them) for the extras,
as in my opinion almost all
of the problem has been caused on his end.

Any opinions of wherether I do that with clean hands?