Image by jepoirrier via Flickr
The most popular post on this entire blog is, depressingly, this one: How to scam eBay sellers and get all your items for free!
There was a recent comment on this post from a brand new eBay user who had heard a lot about scams on eBay and has become a little paranoid about being scammed on a transaction.
There’s a shortage of info on the web on scams. I’m a new seller and want to know what to watch for, as well as trying to figure out if I’m being scammed by another seller. He listed an uncirculated 1885 Morgan Silver Dollar but misspelled silver as Sivler. I got the item at a descent price ($30) and was feeling rewarded for what was about a 3 hour browsing session (similar coins are selling up to $150) After waiting a week and seeing that he still had not mailed it I finally got an email to my private email address that said he could not find the item and suspected his grandson of taking it out of his desk drawer. He has a 100% positive feedback score of 700+ and I have no reason to discount his story other than the fact that I was actually excited about my ‘find’ and his reluctance to respond quickly. He said that if he doesn’t find it by Monday he will refund my money. I’m horrible at these types of judgement calls and don’t want to over react. I know it’s a binding contract and all, and don’t want to report negatively on a hunch. I also don’t think it’s right for anyone to do this without it being noted, what’s the point of tracking and giving feedback if we don’t use it when something out of the norm happens? What if he’s done this before? Anyone have any suggestions?
I have my own thoughts on this (which I’ll post in the comments section like everyone else to be sporting) but I wanted to open this up to the community of buyers and sellers who read this site. If you were this buyer, would you leave negative feedback? Do you think the seller is trying to pull something here or do you think he’s telling the truth?
Discover more from The Whine Seller
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
RSS - Posts
![Hands Free Writing with Dictation and Voice-to-Text on May 16, 2026 11 AM (EST) [Zoom Workshop]](https://i0.wp.com/www.hillarydepiano.com/pages/wp-content/uploads/Hands-Free-Writing.png?fit=1080%2C1350&ssl=1)
Here is my take on this:
The sellers’ sins, IMHO,
1) are not emailing you right away. However, you don’t mention what his shipping time period is. If his specified shipping time is a week then this objection lessens. In that case, it just meant that he did email you as soon as he went to ship it, that was just a week later. But if his shipping terms were something like “we ship in 24 hours” and he didn’t email you, then that is a sin.
2) I know someone on here is going to say something like “Oh he realized that he’d spelled the word wrong and didn’t want to sell it for that price and that’s why he’s trying to make up a story to get out of it” but I feel like if you really see the world that way, just sit in your doomsday bunker in your foil hat soiling yourself. With the 100% feedback and under 1,000 feedbacks, this looks to be exactly what he said it is: he’s a casual seller and he’s not as organized as he’d like to be and he lost the item.
If his terms really say he ships in 24 hours and he took a week to email you about the issue, then I would ding him on communication but I don’t think this deserves a negative if you get your refund.
As a seller, I’ve had this happen to me. Not often, but I have lots of items listed and every once in a while something gets put back in the wrong place. It’s really devastating. It sounds like a person with 100% feedback and that many sales is probably telling the truth. Give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s probably been searching for it and can’t believe he can’t find it…You have to assume people are honest otherwise you’ll drive yourself crazy.
Here’s what happened. The seller did not refund me on Monday as he said he would. On Wednesday he had still not refunded me or wrote back so I sent him another letter, asking him to please refund me by Friday or I would have to take action. Keep in mind, this was week 3 since I had paid and I was feeling more than a little aggrivated. To my surprise, he neither responded nor refunded me by Friday, so I had to open a case and gave my first negative feedback. I wrote that seller had not sent item, and would not respond to emails.
As if magically, he responded almost imediately after I posted the Feedback saying that his computer had caught a virus and he was using his sons computer. He refunded me the next day and I felt like giving him a break. I sent him a follow up message telling him that I would revise my negative feedback, he would just need to send me a request. That was over a month ago and he still has shown no Ebay activity. He probably just had a run of bad luck. On a side note, a friend of mine bid on a ‘glod’ coin’ and won it for $20 and has yet to recieve it. That’s been 3 weeks. I guess if it’s too good to be true, there’s another party that thinks it’s too hard to swallow!