Be Excellent To Each Other

Doesn't eBay have guidelines about this situation? It must happen all the time and leaving it up to constant individual negotiations between buyers and sellers is just asking for trouble.

Good idea, I was just basing it on my experience of buying things online. If I send something back faulty, they usually cover all the costs, but if I don't want it then I have to pay the postage to return it. Seems fair.

I've had a quick look as I've only found out about it this morning but I can't see anything official yet.

The moneysavingexpert forum seems to think that I don't need to refund them.

It can be tricky and if it was faulty then you would probably have to pay his return postage however the 'wrong size' (as long as you gave the size accurately in your description) is not one you have to worry about.

FYI I had something similar with Amazon and a marketplace sale - I bought a t-shirt , it didnt fit and i returned it - i got my original postage (and the item) amount back but i had to cover the return

If you made it clear that the t-shirt was say medium on your sale then its down to the buyer to check what he is buying especially with clothes. If you specified the size then the item can't be classed as not as described

I think you have been very good, I would have sold this with no return attached to it. I would call Ebay they are usually quick to answer and helpful.

Think the guy is being unreasonable unless you got the size wrong in the sale or didn't show it. Even then what sort of dick would buy clothes without checking the size first?

This is absolutely the course of action I would expect.

This is what I was thinking. The guy seems adamant that I owe him the postage but I'll see how it goes. Incidentally, PayPal won't let you increase the amount of a refund past the total price+postage.

My advice is never to sell on eBay. It's a principle I've stuck to for about ten years now.

I don't think I've even used ebay since
2004.

Which has been aided by how crap it's become.

I will buy stuff if I can't get it elsewhere (or it's prohibitively expensive elsewhere), but I will never sell now - it's way too skewed towards the buyer.

It is swayed to the buyer but what's the alternative? I've got stuff to get rid of that is worth too much to take to a charity shop so where else can I sell them that has eBay's reach?

I've never had an eBay account because the very idea of buying from, or selling to, randoms on the internet seem like something only a crazy person would sign up for voluntarily.

I bought a tweed jacket. It was the wrong size. It cost £12 in total so I will throw it away. Or offer it as a cottage quiz prize. I suppose if you spend hours arguing over 4 quid is it worth it?

Gumtree? Amazon?

Amazon confuses me. Is Gumtree any good? I've seen adverts for it but it's clearly not as big or as popular as ebay.

I buy from eBay, but would not sell. MrsA does that through Facebook groups. I tend to only buy low end bike tat mind you

I'd rather do without the cash for the hassle it can cause and charity shop the whole lot. I must have given away so much stuff that has real value. I appreciate not everyone can afford to be that choosy, though.

I sold all my Xbox 360 stuff on Amazon Marketplace though. They take a higher cut, but because they already have everything in their catalogue it makes listing it super easy.

Just for the record, I gave him a refund for only the shirt plus one lot of postage. Ebay agreed this was fine and the case was closed.

I'm here again.

I've sold an ipod that's got to go to Italy but apparently, royal mail won't let you send lithium batteries through the post.

I'm going to have to go somewhere else and lie about what's inside. I mean, what's the chances of being found out? Slim I would have thought.

I had a comedy issue with this kind of thing once. I'd packaged up a phone and was in the post office with it. The women asked if I'd left the battery in and, assuming they'd prefer I left it disconnected, I lied and said I'd taken it out before packaging it all up. It turns out this was the wrong assumption so I had to take my parcel round the corner and stand there for ten minutes then come back in again pretending I'd repacked it with the battery connected. That'll teach me to not read regulations and then lie about it. By which I mean it'll teach me to lie more efficiently in future.

Also iPods must be getting shipped through the post all the time; it seems bonkers that they'd be unpostable.

how odd, i sent a rechargeable sports watch. They just stuck a sticker on it, saying it had a battery in it.

Well, she gave me a leaflet on what I can and can't post and it says I can post an electrical item with the battery connected? Strange..

I'll try somewhere else.

She is being a numpty.. how else can the royal mail be competitive!

Is this a typo? Or have you just managed to completely confuse me?

Also this list specifically says you can post batteries as long as they're connected which yours would be in the case of an iPod:

http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help- ... ited-Goods

You need to package the device in a specific way but it's totally allowed.

http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help- ... s-overseas

It seems to suggest above that they are OK to send as long as well packaged. That's specifically for international post.

By the way, get some proof of postage to Italy. Italy has I think, the highest level of mail fraud in Europe, to the point where it is the one European country that many websites refuse to ship to because of the amount of packages claimed as not received. It may have changed in the last four or five years, but I am pretty certain that it used to be a very problematic issue for sellers.

I've just been to another post office and they took it with no problems at all.

Good advice on the postage though Mimi. I've sent it tracked and signed.

Yeah, I think she might be getting a bit confused: she probably knows that there are some restrictions on Lithium batteries, but can't remember or fathom the small details and so it was easiest for her to say you couldn't ship it.

I had a quick look on the Internet about Italy, and yes, it does look like a lot of sellers still elect not to send goods there. There are a few other countries listed, but this appears to be the only major European country that people are very wary about. I remember having a lot of problem with the post to and from Italy - I had an Italian friend who posted me things a couple of times and they never arrived (which was a shame as they were beautiful hand made toys) but both from the postal workers prospective and from people claiming unreceived goods there does seem to be a bit of a problem.

I like to think that there's a room of hard mafia types somewhere, still with my box of hand-sewn doughnuts.

and indigestion.

The last time I sold something on Ebay (and it will be the last time) was about five months ago. I sold my Blackberry Q10 when I upgraded to the Passport.

Anywho, I listed it on Ebay for about a tenner less than the going rate hoping for a quick sale. I got one too, within a few hours. When I compared the Paypal address to the address given by Ebay they did not match. So I ran the address on Paypal and it did not exist. So instead of messaging the buyer through Ebay I decided I would use the Paypal email, just to make sure I went "off grid" to ensure this wasn't a scammer. After repeated emails to the buyer warning him that I would not ship the phone until he had his confirmed address sorted he finally sorted it, with a completely different address.

I sent the phone, as promised, by RMSD. It was delivered the following morning and signed for by "Mohammed".

Everything went quiet (I didn't receive any feedback) so I assumed that was the end of the matter. Then all of a sudden one day I log into Paypal and it says "Payment on hold -£127". So my Paypal account was £127 in the red. Thinking nothing of it I went about my day and ordered some paper from Ebay. All of a sudden £6.99 plus the £127 are taken from my bank account.

So I phoned Paypal and apparently the buyer had claimed that even though he had communicated with me the payment was not authorised. So I sent Ebay all of the emails that I had sent to and fro with him and they put the money back, but I decided from that moment on it was just too risky.

I'm not exactly the richest person on the planet and had I been having a bad month or something that £-127 they took from my bank would have put me overdrawn (something I can claim to never EVER having being throughout my entire life) and in all sorts of trouble. I don't have an overdraft and nor do I want one (it's an Aspie thing) so instead of going overdrawn I don't, but I would get slapped with a hefty fine by the bank.

It's just too risky. Not only that but it's absolutely fucking rife with fakes. I've even had fake fucking vaping coils sent to me FFS.

Well, some nice eBayer has bought the Jag. Now we've just got to see if they send the deposit.

And I think I've sold my Vespa too. Then the fun job of finding something else to buy.

Has anyone else noticed this weird kind of, well, listing spam I guess it is, on Amazon lately?

Most items sell 1 of a thing, but lately virtually every item I see has variants added selling 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. of the same item, except those listings selling 2 cost way more than twice as much as the guy selling 1. The price per item actually increases with quantity.

What the shit is this about? Some kind of opportunistic listing where they assume people mindlessly wanting to buy two will buy the over-inflated listing, instead of two of the 1-quantity listing?

Here's an example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00026LJQG

I presume you don't even need to hold the stock. You just buy two of the item from the Amazon seller selling one, then 'ship' it to the actual buyer, pocketing the difference?

The nice lady is coming to collect the Jag in an hour. Chances of it actually being sold via eBay have now risen to 15%.

A friend of mine has just sold a Metal Gear solid expansion pack for the PS1 and a Solid Snake figure for £670.

Mind blowing.

Yeah, imagine willingly parting with some gaming tat!

I kno, rite?

I've sold a fair bit of stuff recently but I have a rule that says I don't sell anything gaming related. That has left me with some life sized wrestler cut outs that I can't sell as they were used to promote the Smackdown games.

Fixed for the truth.

Huh, now it's risen to 100%.

They didn't even test drive it

Hurrah!

Drinks are.on Grim...!

Every car I've sold via eBay has basically gone like that. Just turn up, hand the money over, and go away.

My kind of buyers.

I had the same when I sold my Bravo - I even offered to take them out for a drive first to show them it worked, but they just handed over cash and drove off.

Now I think about it, this happened to me when I sold our old KA. That was only worth £300 quid though so I don't think either of us were that bothered.

I think mine was £3300.
I also had someone want to buy my Vespa without even seeing it - he was happy to pay the money into my bank account and arrange for it to be collected (and no it wasn't a scam).

The best one was the guy who bought the BMW 7 Series off me (the one I bought off Trooper.)

He got a mate to drive him over to my house from Berlin, had a quick look around the car, paid me the money and then drove off - all the way back to Berlin, to break the car for parts.

There's a lot of that happening. And it's worth it.

Yeah my mate had a M3 with a blown diff that went exactly the same way. No nonsense German buyer pulled up at his house with a tow truck, car went off to be broken for parts. Got a very good price for it too.

Didn't check properly the dimensions of a cupboard I bought for 99p. The man is going to deliver it. For a tenner in his van.