Ebay Seller Deceptive Ad - Pen Leaks Badly - Advice?

[Beechwood]

Equally there are some dodgy buyers.

 

Sold a Conway Stewart to a well known pen seller. Described the pen and showed pics including a burn mark to the cap. He later complained about the burn mark, I showed him the pics and his excuse was that he saw the sale on ebay with only 10 seconds left. I gave him all his money back and told him to keep the pen.

 

Sold a bag of parts, random caps and barrels, six months later the buyer asked for a discount because he had trouble making working pens out of all the parts.

 

Sold a 1930s Onoto, buyer thought that the color would be different in daylight, told him to send the pen back for a return, said he wanted to keep the pen could he just have a partial refund.

 

Advertised a Cross pen at a starting price of 99p, with £3.00 postage and packing. During the sale process a buyer (a now banned FPN member) said that the postage was 50p too much and if she won she would leave negative feedback. I just blocked her from bidding.

 

I advertised a pen as a Sheaffer Vac Fill and bidding was brisk. Realised I had made a mistake, it was a Sheaffer Touchdown and cancelled the sale. One potential buyer was furious and sent the abusive messages saying that he would leave negative feedback if he could. I readvertised the pen with the correct description, the abusive person won, he was as nice as pie.

 

Advertised a Waterman Phileas as having been well used, a current FPNer won the pen, I sent the pen to him the following day, then he asked for the pen to be sent somewhere else, told him too late, said he would cancel the sale if it wasn't sent to his work address and he became abusive again. Two weeks later the 10 year old pen came back in pieces, he had taken the pen apart and found a speck of rust on the tab of the steel nib, gave him his money back and blocked him. He had not even tried to put the pen back together and also had damaged the feed in taking it apart. he never did explain just why he was taking the pen apart.

 

Sold a selection of pens for parts, about 10 in all, odd caps, sections and so on. Sale price was about £10 with 4 bidders. 30 minutes after the sale had finished the winning bidder wanted to cancel because he thought he was buying something else.

 

Sold a 1950s writing set in leather which was to hold writing paper and envelopes, only about £5 and the winning bidder was in Italy. It arrived ok but the buyer was not happy, his mother had taken delivery and put the parcel on the window sill, the hot sun had melted the glue holding the lining to the leather and he wanted me to pay the cost of the repair or else he would leave negative feedback due to poor packaging. I paid him.

 

At one point I had six MB149s, I offered to sell one quite cheaply, It was 10 years old but had never been used. I offered it at around £50 less than a typical market price. Buyer said it was just what he wanted, but he wanted to pay £30 less than the advertised price, told him it was already really cheap, he said his wife had suggested that he offered a lower price, I told him to tell her that the pen was sold, to someone else.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Beechwood

[donnweinberg]

I'll tell you that I recently made a mistake with an Ebay seller from China, and when I realized it, I quickly apologized.

 

I ordered two identical Wing Sung vacumatic-type pens. The total cost with tax (free shipping) was $10.58 USD. I thought that I carefully had read the description and carefully looked at the photos, but I did not notice (my bad) in the description and photos that the nib of each pen was meant to be bent radically backwards, and so I thought the nib was damaged.

 

I sent the seller a very civil message on Ebay about the matter. I waited a week and heard nothing back. Concerned that the seller was ignoring my message, I made a formal Ebay refund request. Only after that formal request was made did the seller message me (kindly) to explain that the nib conformed to the description and photos. I immediately rechecked, and sure enough, the seller was right. I immediately apologized and messaged that I would, of course, keep the pens and reverse my formal refund request. I then did so. All was civil and worked out the way it should. I should have been more careful, and the seller should have replied originally more promptly.

[KingsCountyWriter]

Hi Folks,

I just bought a used pen on eBay that had the description "works very well". After cleaning it, I tried to ink it up with both a converter and a cartridge. Neither would seat in the pen and the ink leaked out all over.

 

The seller offered me less than half the value of the pen + shipping, without return shipping. I refused the offer and told them that I would be opening a case with eBay and also leaving them a bad review.

 

Any advice, other than to buy only from known sellers going forward?

 

Out them by name here? Is there a thread in FPN where complaints and praise is found?

I would definitely out the seller on Reddit. There is no restriction to documenting a bad transaction that I can see. It doesn't happen often, but I don't think there's an issue with it.

[Seney724]

Equally there are some dodgy buyers.

 

 

Absolutely, you are 100% correct. There is no denying this.........

But, the problem with the untoward sellers is, oftentimes, eBay is complicit with their antics; especially so if they are high volume sellers who are making a nice contribution to eBay's bottom line.

Shill bids? eBay looks the other way....even in the light of unequivocal documentation. Negative feedback? Well deserved negative feedback gets expunged as a courtesy to favored sellers. And, on & on...........

Some months ago I complained about eBay's collection of sales tax on non-taxable items. Another FPN member suggested if I didn't like the way eBay operated I shouldn't use it. So, I closed my account, blocked all e-mails with eBay in the sender's address and never look there, even when someone provides a link of interest. I do not miss it one bit.......and I am making much less gastric acid these days!!!

[inkstainedruth]

A bad buyer for a pen I was bidding on ended up causing a great deal of chaos for both me and the seller. The listing clearly stated that you were bidding on your choice of color of one of five pens. I'd dealt with the seller before, and had contacted the seller asking if I could end up getting more than one (at the same price per) if I won. I got outbid, and was kind of bummed. A few days later I got this notice from eBay saying "Second chance" -- apparently the buyer thought that his bid was for all five pens, and reneged. So I got to have one at my bid price. Only I wanted more than one (in fact I wanted three of the five colors) only eBay's IT people didn't ever consider this might be a possibility. So every time I tried to add a second pen, it backfired. I spent most of the day messaging the poor seller (who was in Europe) back and forth, going "I can't get this to work!" The seller (who probably was dog tired at that point because of time zone differences) finally, in order for me to order the three pens I wanted (at my price times three) had to PULL the listing, then relist as a "Buy it Now" at my price per pen, in order to get eBay's software to work right, and of course in the meantime getting all these increasingly frantic messages from me going "I can NOT believe that Ebay's IT is THIS screwed up...."

I suppose that if the original buyer hadn't had a hissy fit over "I thought I was getting all five!" I might not have been able to get the ones I wanted at all. Or that the seller would have relisted the remaining pens (in which case I might or might not have one on the re-auction.

There was one good thing that came out of this -- about a year later I bid on (and won, as the only bidder), another pen from the same seller. The listing said that the seller was away for a few days. But I got contacted much earlier than I expected. Possibly because he saw it was me....

I think I've now bought five Parker Vectors, in three separate listings, from that guy over the past six or seven years. Definitely one of the sellers I'd happily buy from again if he had what I wanted.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[KingsCountyWriter]

At the moment, I am in the middle of a dispute with a seller on eBay. They sold me a pen, from the 1970s, and did not depict in images nor describe in words a prominent crack located on the section. They offered me a $25 refund on the sale which was half of the selling price, but shipping was an additional $25 from Japan so my total was slightly over $80 with tax. I declined and decided to mail the pen back. The seller did not, and still up until this point has not uploaded a shipping label. They told me that shipping is only $20 from FedEx, which I haven't seen evidence of. Both FedEx & DHL charge close to $100 to ship to Japan.

 

After a phone call to eBay, they said that they would contact the seller. If the seller refuses to send a label, I will be refunded and can keep the pen. We'll see how that plays out...

[northlodge]

 

 

After a phone call to eBay, they said that they would contact the seller. If the seller refuses to send a label, I will be refunded and can keep the pen. We'll see how that plays out...

 

and there are buyers who are using this situation as a ploy to obtain their purchase for free..... where any possible reason for rejecting the item is used, knowing that the cost of return shipping is prohibitively expensive.

 

Beechwood is correct above in saying that there are just as many rogue buyers as there are sellers, and this ebay policy just plays into their hands.

 

I had a South Korean wanting to return a Parker 51 "not as described" because it had a greenish coloured jewel, when the photo suggested a "greyish" coloured one was fitted. Ebay supported this claim - return shipping costs for a £50 item was £42 (plus vat). So Mr Rogue Korean gets his item for free.

 

To compound matters, the ebay feedback scheme prevents any mention of this type of behaviour being made available for others to read and be aware of.

Edited August 11, 2020 by northlodge

[KingsCountyWriter]

.

Edited August 15, 2020 by KingsCountyWriter

[KingsCountyWriter]

 

and there are buyers who are using this situation as a ploy to obtain their purchase for free..... where any possible reason for rejecting the item is used, knowing that the cost of return shipping is prohibitively expensive.

That was a sick burn. Ouch!!

 

I want a pen without a crack in it and I wouldn’t have bid if I had seen the crack in advance. I think that’s a solid reason to return the item. The seller has chosen not to send a label. That wasn’t my call. They want it shipped in the same method. I explained that USPS would cost much less, but take more time, but they haven’t responded. They seller is fully at fault here, not me.

[Estycollector]

I recently bought an item using Paypal from a seller who never responded. After a couple of weeks I sent the seller an email to which I never got a response. Finally I raised a complaint with PP. After another ten days I got a refund. IMHO, this is how things are supposed to work.

 

I can say I have never had a poor experience with eBay. Any time things have not been right I have contacted the seller and we've worked it out.

[GreenMountain]

After getting a full refund from eBay for the broken pen, and having used the pen as a dip pen, I finally got around to trying to use the pen as an eyedropper. Guess what?!! It's working just fine. All I did was lather up the threaded part that holds the barrel to the section with silicone gel. No leaks. Not going to try carrying it anywhere, but for use around the house it's great.

Now, I hope I'm not accused of trying to get a nice pen for free...I would much rather have a real, working pen for what I paid, but absent that, am happy to have a fun ersatz eyedropper.