Sometimes I really hate ebay...

[Viper Man]

I won an auction for a Cavanagh stingy brim and after a 17 day wait, it finally arrived today. It was fairly dusty (no big deal) and sort of musty (goes with the territory) but here's the part that makes me angry...

Apparently the seller thought she'd help me out by trimming the "frayed" edge of the ribbon because, you know, an inch of dust and the smell of an old basement is OK but who'd want to buy a hat with a frayed ribbon? :rage: :eusa_doh:

Of course it wasn't visible in the single crappy picture that was listed...

 

[Rick Blaine]

You are not alone....

... 7 1/2s that turn out to be 7 1/4s, crammed in a sack w/ a few packing peanuts, hundreds of small splits in the sweat as it degenerates... eBay giveth & eBay taketh away, eh?
So often I feel like Ralphie in A Christmas Story waiting for that decoder ring!

 

[Viper Man]

lol The decoder ring analogy is perfect! Rick, you can always send those 1/4s my way!

 

[Spellflower]

Reminds me of my friend's ex-roomate. One day my friend came home and discovered the guy had borrowed his treasured cast iron skillet. That would have been fine, except that the guy thought he would do my friend a favor and had spent all afternoon "cleaning" it by scraping the black off of it!

 

[Viper Man]

Reminds me of my friend's ex-roomate. One day my friend came home and discovered the guy had borrowed his treasured cast iron skillet. That would have been fine, except that the guy thought he would do my friend a favor and had spent all afternoon "cleaning" it by scraping the black off of it!

That same thing happened to my Uncle. I have to blow off some steam so here is a shot of me in my new Cavanagh Liner...

 

[alphy27]

As is the way with things, you can find some folks on the Bay who really either don't care, or don't know what their doing. Other times you find swell people truly know their stuff.
Caveat emptor.

 

[alphy27]

That same thing happened to my Uncle. I have to blow off some steam so here is a shot of me in my new Cavanagh Liner...

That's a great look for you. lol lol lol You should try to start a trend.

 

[ideaguy]

"Liner's in very good shape, no discoloration; there is a slight problem with the
brim, but nothing that can't be fixed..." ( for 2-3 hundred bucks...)lol

 

[Bull Moose]

No, you are not alone. I got 2 fedoras off ebay, with one box included. The seller crammed both hats into the box, and mailed it. Both fedoras are dented, and the brims are wavy and distorted. I was ticked. With the fedoras sitting out for a couple days, they seem to be taking back their correct shapes.


By the way, is there any way to get the musty smell out of a fedora??

 

[Rick Blaine]

By the way, is there any way to get the musty smell out of a fedora??

White Gas (Coleman Camp Stove Fuel)

 

[tracyam]

Unfortunately, I'm now a member of the eBay shite sellers club. The brand new hat was shipped in a tiny box and arrived all bent up. Because the transaction was quick and I was able to fix the damage I left neutral feedback rather than negative. Three weeks after the transaction, tonight, they leave negative feedback on me even though I paid on time and was truthful in my feedback. It was purely retaliatory because I dared to ask them if I bought another hat from them if they would ship it in a bigger box. How dare I care about what I buy? We've been arguing through emails tonight and I've finally given up. Stupid eBay policy won't let you get retaliatory feedbacks removed.
Sorry if this isn't the forum for venting about this...that woman just really pushed my buttons.:rage: [huh]

 

[tracyam]

Would it be against FL rules if I posted the sellers ebay business as a warning in case anyone on this board is looking to buy some cheap fur felt Scalas or beater Stacy Adams? Yeah, it was a cheapo hat I know...nothing to get bent out of shape over (no pun intended).

 

[AlanC]

^To my knowledge that wouldn't be a problem. Sorry about the hat.

 

[tracyam]

Thank you. The seller is "n-fashion-styles." My Stacy Adams was squashed up when it arrived. I'd been wanting an inexpensive fur felt to see what the difference would be like so I questioned her about a dark green Scala they were listing. It all went downhill from there. They have a lot of positives and are a power seller so maybe they're good. In my opinion though, they're lousy packers and vindictive. She actually blocked me as a buyer for the Scala unless I retracted my neutral feedback.

huh...guess it's a sign I need to step it up a notch and buy more expensive hats.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Unfortunately, I'm now a member of the eBay shite sellers club. The brand new hat was shipped in a tiny box and arrived all bent up.

In a couple of months sellers will only be able to leave positive feedback for buyers. It's ebay's response to buyers complaining about this sort of situation. Many sellers won't leave feedback until after the buyer's left theirs. As a result a lot of buyers are afraid to leave accurate feedback. Personally, I think they should have made it so that feedback is hidden until both have posted feedback.

I don't know how tiny the box was that your hat came in, but I do know that after the postage changes last year my hats started coming in smaller boxes. Usually it's not that big a problem (if you'll pardon the pun) but sometimes they just need to go with a larger box. I think many are worried about the postage costs scaring away potential bidders, or they're just trying to help out their customers by sending it as inexpensively as possible.

One of my peeves is sellers who use already well-used and hence no longer structurally sound boxes to ship things in.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[toobacat]

Unfortunately, I'm now a member of the eBay shite sellers club. The brand new hat was shipped in a tiny box and arrived all bent up. Because the transaction was quick and I was able to fix the damage I left neutral feedback rather than negative. Three weeks after the transaction, tonight, they leave negative feedback on me even though I paid on time and was truthful in my feedback. It was purely retaliatory because I dared to ask them if I bought another hat from them if they would ship it in a bigger box. How dare I care about what I buy? We've been arguing through emails tonight and I've finally given up. Stupid eBay policy won't let you get retaliatory feedbacks removed.
Sorry if this isn't the forum for venting about this...that woman just really pushed my buttons.:rage: [huh]

I just don't leave feedback for bad transactions. Sometimes it's just better to let it go, since if you leave negative or even neutral feedback, you are going to get negative feedback in return. I now bid lower for anyone who doesn't have 100% positive feedback. Still I've bought hats from 3 people with 100% positive feedback that had moth damage that wasn't disclosed. I even ask the sellers on two of the hats if there was moth damage and was told there was none. Two of the sellers offered returns, but didn't offer to refund shipping, so it really wasn't worth returning the hats. Occasionally I get a good buy on ebay and that helps balance out the bad deals.

 

[Spellflower]

I understand your reasons for not leaving feedback for negative transactions, toobcat, but it only seems right to me that if I'm going to base my bids on feedback others have left that I return the favor by leaving feedback too. I've never left negative feedback, but if I had to I would.

Retaliatory feedback is certainly a problem. My suggestion is to require sellers to post before feedback can be left for them, since they should only be posting about how quickly payment was made, not about subsequent complaints a buyer had. I've heard that ebay is going to go one step further, though, and eliminate feedback for purchasers entirely. Of course, that was before the strike. [huh]

 

[toobacat]

I understand your reasons for not leaving feedback for negative transactions, toobcat, but it only seems right to me that if I'm going to base my bids on feedback others have left that I return the favor by leaving feedback too. I've never left negative feedback, but if I had to I would.

Retaliatory feedback is certainly a problem. My suggestion is to require sellers to post before feedback can be left for them, since they should only be posting about how quickly payment was made, not about subsequent complaints a buyer had. I've heard that ebay is going to go one step further, though, and eliminate feedback for purchasers entirely. Of course, that was before the strike. [huh]

I think you make a valid point, but retaliatory feedback can skew the system to the point that you don't really know who the good ebayers are.

 

[HarpPlayerGene]

I'd be tickied off too!

Geez. I only had a couple of scrapes with EB over many transactions so my "There are more good people than bad" rule seems to apply.

I had one hat arrive with five or six fairly obvious moth divets which were not mentioned in the "excellent condition" description or shown in photo. Everything else went smoothly and I knew I wasn't buying a real collectible prize anyway - it was a 4X Beaver Stetson Western gambler style hat from 80s(ish) with a goofy band and feather which I replaced. So, when I left feedback on that I designated it Positive - but I added that the seller had not disclosed moth damage. That guy really seemed to feel bad and emailed me to apologize, said he hadn't noticed (I'll give the benefit of doubt on that) and offered return. I let him know I wasn't hoppin' mad and would keep the hat but to be careful in the future. I felt later that maybe I should have contacted him prior to leaving the feedback...but in any event my feedback was factual - whether he explained himself or not.

The best/worst one was last month or so I bought an old Champ with its vintage box. This box looked pristine but wonderfully old in the listing and the hat had a great style. I always pay IMMEDIATELY - I mean right as soon as I "win" the auction so after a couple weeks I nudged the seller with a "how's it going with the shipping" email. No reply. Week three saw me getting more forceful in emails and threatening to record the item as "Item Not Received" at EB. Then he woke up and wrote me back "I'm surprised you haven't gotten that yet yadda yadda... I'll track it yadda ya..." Several days later the item arrived postmarked the date of his last email to me. I'd have had more respect if he'd said, "Crap, I got busy and distracted and haven't shipped it but I'll do it now." When it arrived my hat was in its very brittle old Champ box in a very flimsy cardboard shipping box with absolutely no packing material. The USPS had taken this as an invitation to stand their elephant on it for the duration of the journey from there to here. The Champ box was broken to pieces and the hat looked like something Red Skelton or Emmett Kelly would wear. For this one I went Negative with details why.

I haven't had occesion to check and see if these sellers nuked me back for any of this since I never sell on EB. (I'm sort of a one-way-human-vortex-black-hole of hat buying.) But I guess if you stick up for yourself in this life there are sometimes people who aren't going to like it. Oh well, if I don't stick up for myself I know they won't do it for me.

Gene

 

[AlanC]

Many sellers won't leave feedback until after the buyer's left theirs.

Although I buy a lot more than I sell on ebay, I don't post post feedback to a buyer until after they leave feedback for me. I justify it by saying I want to make sure the buyer is completely satisfied before I consider the transaction complete. The reality is it's also buying protection from potentially troublesome buyers.

Personally, I think they should have made it so that feedback is hidden until both have posted feedback.

That's probably the best solution.