Made my first return on eBay coin
Dog97
Posts: 7,874 ✭✭✭
Buying raw Morgans on eBay is always risky but it was a nice looking AU 97-O Morgan with pretty yellow album looking periph tone.
First hand the obv was covered with light barely noticable hairlines all going in the same direction, clearly a brushed coin. Tried to tell myself it was die polish but but the lines didn't go all the way up to the device edges but jumped up & ran across the devices. The clincher was the shiny surface with no cartwheel effect. The rev was nice & original.
The seller didn't have a stated return policy but I emailed him explaining the coin was cleaned and I would like to return it for a refund and he said I could. He refunded my PayPal as soon as he received the coin back and didn't charge me any restocking fee nor did he subtract any fees or shipping.
Weird thing is that he had left me pos feedback as soon as I paid. He aparently wasn't scared of negs or returns & waits to see what kind of feedback the buyer leaves first. I just left him a pos saying I was unhappy with coin and was issued a cheerful & prompt refund and it was still a pleasant deal.
He apologised in his emails for me being unhappy and he was not rude nor did he argue with or question me. Very professional & smooth throughout the whole deal.
I was only out the $4 he charged me for shipping & the $2 or $3 it cost to mail the thing back but it was still kinda disapointing but oh well. Oh yeah, PayPal charged me $1.66 on the money the seller returned to me. That sucked and if I ever return another coin I'm going to ask for my refund by check!
This nice seller was midascoins and the guy was George Ashley.
First hand the obv was covered with light barely noticable hairlines all going in the same direction, clearly a brushed coin. Tried to tell myself it was die polish but but the lines didn't go all the way up to the device edges but jumped up & ran across the devices. The clincher was the shiny surface with no cartwheel effect. The rev was nice & original.
The seller didn't have a stated return policy but I emailed him explaining the coin was cleaned and I would like to return it for a refund and he said I could. He refunded my PayPal as soon as he received the coin back and didn't charge me any restocking fee nor did he subtract any fees or shipping.
Weird thing is that he had left me pos feedback as soon as I paid. He aparently wasn't scared of negs or returns & waits to see what kind of feedback the buyer leaves first. I just left him a pos saying I was unhappy with coin and was issued a cheerful & prompt refund and it was still a pleasant deal.
He apologised in his emails for me being unhappy and he was not rude nor did he argue with or question me. Very professional & smooth throughout the whole deal.
I was only out the $4 he charged me for shipping & the $2 or $3 it cost to mail the thing back but it was still kinda disapointing but oh well. Oh yeah, PayPal charged me $1.66 on the money the seller returned to me. That sucked and if I ever return another coin I'm going to ask for my refund by check!
This nice seller was midascoins and the guy was George Ashley.
Change that we can believe in is that change which is 90% silver.
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Comments
How on earth can someone who does coin collecting / dealing especially not know a coin has been cleaned?!! If they can't tell after selling for more than a few years they must blind.
I am no expert but after spending morethan 50 hours over the last 12 months looking at both raw and PCGS /NGC slabs in auctioneers preview boxes I can spot most [90%] of cleaned coins. Why cant someone who spends probably 50 hours a week do the same?!!
Hence I just say no to raw, especially raw gold!
Twowood
Seems like a super seller. Though it seems to be the exception rather than the rule, it is the right thing to do when a seller submits Positive Feedback upon receiving a prompt payment.
Obviously it is too late now, however, if the seller had utilized PayPal's refund feature, your payment would have been returned to you without the $1.66 being deducted. He evidently sent the funds like anyother payment. Perhaps(?) he can get with PayPal and have the payment reversed and corrected. It is something to remember for the future. You definitely want to REMIND the seller how to complete the transaction. I recently returned a coin to R&I and my PayPal payment was returned without any fees being deducted.
For the Morgan collectors - The Morgan and Peace encyclopedia by Van Allen and Mallis
What would your slabbed coins be worth if the grading services went out of business? What would your coins be worth if the Internet was taken offline for good?
For the Morgan collectors - The Morgan and Peace encyclopedia by Van Allen and Mallis
What would your slabbed coins be worth if the grading services went out of business? What would your coins be worth if the Internet was taken offline for good?
i know i'm like a broken record but feedback is why ebay works. there was no stated return policy, (which is the other thing that makes ebay work), but a good seller is a good seller. they don't want unhappy buyers, but more importantly they are just normal nice people and feedback really has nothing to do with it.
i emailed a seller tonight about a coin, asking what it would take to end the auction. he came back well over greysheet and i immediately accepted. i will not be able to leave neutral feedback for postage due, or positive feedback if i'm even just a teensy tinsey bit unsatisfied and the seller says "please, please send it back if you're unhappy." but you know what, i've done my work already. i'm happy with the type and quantity of feedback, and with the price range of the coin.
if i get screwed, either on ebay or off ebay, it's basically my fault. i won't blame anyone else. it's nice to have a feedback to give, but i never send off money thinking, even remotely, that i'm going to have to leave a negative feedback. if a deal really goes south i don't think anyone's going to be happy just being able to leave negative feedback, anyway.
i just read the post of the seller in the infamous 12c thread and they obviously don't have as much problem with Russ leaving neutral feedback as some of us did. if i recall correctly, he left positive feedback for Russ, without waiting to see what Russ said.
to me, that's a good seller. as i'm sure will be the one to whom i send off a fairly decent sized check tomorrow (well, later this a.m.).
oh yeah, DCAM, thanks for the paypal tip, i've lost a couple bucks on returns not knowing there was a return option.
a) the buyer receives coin then fraudulently refutes the credit card charges, thus keeping both the coin and the money
b) the buyer is unhappy with the coin, but does not take the appropriate steps to safely return the coin, or sends the wrong coin back
c) the buyer, in one of many possible ways, makes the transaction unsatisfactory once he has received his positive feedback (i.e. complaining about clearly posted shipping charges, or the actual price of he decided to pay for the coin, or the delivery time of the USPS, etc., etc., etc.)
d)the buyer performs one of MANY other actions that warrant him a negative, or at least warrant him not getting a positive.
(btw, we NEVER leave feedback upon just receiving payment; however, ALL of the above situations have happened to us on eBay)
These are all reasons for the seller to wait until the end of the transaction to post feedback. If feedback is why eBay works, then feedback must be posted correctly for eBay to correctly work. Prematurely posting positive feedback for someone who potentially could be a bad eBayer, or even a downright criminal, hurts everyone. Some folks will say that you can post a follow-up if perhaps someone doesn't deserve their initial positive, but that does little good. Bad eBayers need that Red Mark on their record for anyone to take notice.
Feedback is important, but only if it's properly utilized.
Chris
welcome to the boards! that's an excellent first post, thanks for bringing up all the bad stuff that can happen to, i'm making a big assumption here, an ebay seller with unquestioned integrity.
my point is that feedback is an indicator of probably future performance. and that for me i have rarely had problems where i had seen a stellar feedback profile for a prospective transaction.
in one draft of my earlier post i did mention that selling was much more difficult than buying, for me, and as i reread i realize it did not make the final edit. i'm guessing that you do considerable business on ebay and for sellers who do a great quantity it must be very didfficult to keep tabs on all the prospective buyers and check feedback to see if there are potential problems lurking with the transaction.
for me, with coinage at least, i have usually been the buyer, and i can't remember a time where i misjudged a seller's integrity. when i do sell on ebay, it's usually just a couple pieces at a time and i've actually had more problems with the relatively few sales i've done than with the numerous purchases.
i actually got an email from someone i left negative feedback for about 6 months after the auction had closed asking if i still had the item. ( they didn't leave me any feedback, good or bad for the transaction). i had boxed it up and put his address on the package and it was still sitting there, but neither of us could even remember the hammer price, it had been so long. (we agreed upon a price, he payed me, i sent the item). this person had good feedback, but there was not a sufficient quantity of it for me to have considered them if i had been buying, rather than selling, by the way. it was a low ticket item, however, and the fact the package was still there is a good sign that it wasn't a big deal.
i suppose if you do hundreds of transactions a month it is difficult or perhaps simply too time consuming to check a buyers feedback before posting that they paid you in due course. i'm curious as to whether you check the feedback for buyers you are dealing with. that is, did you have any hints from prior feedback of any of thes people that there might be trouble down the road for you?
the reasons you gave above are all excellent reasons for merchants to hold off on feedback. i'm curious as to the quantity of transactions you do on ebay, and the percentage of bad buyers you get both with respect to the total number of deals but more importantly to the feedback of those bad bidders that would have given you an indication that they could have been trouble.
thanks for the thought provoking post.
z
TBT
We only give positive feedback in three situations (and these all assume the buyer payed in a timely manner):
1) The buyer has given us positive feedback, thus indicating the coin safely arrived and they are pleased with it (unfortunately, even this method backfired once on us)
2) The buyer contacts us and informs us that the coin was received, and that they are happy with it.
3) The buyer informs us that they are returning the coin, and they do so in a safe and timely manner.
As I mentioned in my first post, I was a proponote of eBay's feedback system - but just somewhat. Admittedly, we are not very proactive in leaving positive feedbacks. As a seller, I am only concerned with someone's negative feedback rating (assuming a positive rating of over ten). I don't care if someone has 100 positives or 10,000 positives. If they have a 'respectable' positive/negative ratio, then that works for me. We are very busy simply listing coins, and handling our other day-to-day business activities. Quite often, positive feedbacks are never even left (I have no problem with a buyer contacting me in a non-demanding way and requesting feedback, if they state that the coin was satisfactorily received). Regarding eBay feedback, a seller's biggest responsibility is to protect other sellers and to not prematurely give positives, and to definitely give negatives when due, and MOST certainly requesting a Final Value Fee credit (three of those and that eBayer gets kicked off).
Our way of doing it may be far from perfect, and we've gotten some negatives ourselves since the beginning, but I'm more concerned with spending my time listing more coins, and also protecting ourselves (and other sellers) than I am with placating buyers with quick positives.
Sorry to be so long winded. That's about I have to say feedback! Hopefully this will shed some light on how at least some of us eBay sellers operate.
Chris
p.s. Our eBay id is northeastnumismatics (or nencoin@aol.com). I hope that information is okay to post here.
thanks for your thoughts and relating your experiences. i guess as a relatively frequent but careful buyer i can afford to take the time not only to check for a better than "respectable" pos/neg ratio, but also to make sure that any negatives i see are either retaliatory or they have been responded to in a manner that satisfies me. another thing i check is for the general price range of items that have been sold, paying particular attention to high ticket items (especially if that's what i'm looking at), as well as looking for transactions with other ebayers i either have dealt with or have other knowledge of.
it's obvious that sellers and buyers are going to have different attitudes toward the merits, drawbacks and finer points of feedback, and while it may not be foolproof, if used carefully, you really can get a very good idea of who you are dealing with before your first email.
and while i've never pushed a seller to leave me feedback, i think your viewpoint could be informative to buyers who might be inclined to.
At least the time limit is now 30 days to be able to do refunds. Used to be something ridiculous like 7 days.
<< <i>This is what irks me about ebay sellers and dealers who sell raw coins.
How on earth can someone who does coin collecting / dealing especially not know a coin has been cleaned?!! If they can't tell after selling for more than a few years they must blind.
I am no expert but after spending morethan 50 hours over the last 12 months looking at both raw and PCGS /NGC slabs in auctioneers preview boxes I can spot most [90%] of cleaned coins. Why cant someone who spends probably 50 hours a week do the same?!!
Hence I just say no to raw, especially raw gold! >>
I know dealers who`ve been in business for 20+ years who couldn`t tell a cleaned coin from a coconut.Many make their living dealing coins, so it`s important that YOU, the buyer,can tell if a coin is cleaned.
One dealer I know once had a proof walker in a type set and asked me to make offers on any coin I was interested in.I offered $225 for the walker.He asked if I made a mistake on the offer, which I replied "You do know it`s a proof?" which he replied "Gee,I thought it was just polished!" I could`ve bought it for $2.00!
Good deal, Dog, on the positive feedback, it`s possible he didn`t know it was cleaned.I left pos. feed. upon mailing a coin out.If you stand behind what you sell,that is the right thing to do.Luckily, I never had a coin returned, or a problem buyer that I would have regretted leaving pos. feedback.