PUBLIC OPINION NEEDED, WAS I WRONG?/edited to show sellers response

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 2:15AM

To retract this bid after seeing sellers feedback?

heres his reply letter:

To member: pontiacinf@aol.com
From member: smoking_coins

--------------------

Do not lye on your bid retraction, YOU DO NOT EVEN TRY TO CONTACT ME.
Thanks
for not bidding.

heres my reply:

eBay does not tolerate spam (i.e., unsolicited commercial email) and is
taking steps to protect members from this abuse. In addition, solicitations
to buy or sell items outside of eBay violate eBay rules and are not covered
by services that protect members such as feedback, insurance, escrow, and
dispute resolution. If this is an offer to buy/sell items outside of eBay,
please do not participate. Enter the following link into your browser to learn more. Link: http://pages.ebay.com/help/new/stopping_spam.html

Obviously you didnt take the time to read the above...your business practices has been exposed and you for the "honesty" policy you employ.

This has been sent to eBay.

"YOU" have a nice day, and please enjoy reading what the PCGS Board Members are posting about on "your" honest auctions.

LucyBop · April 25, 2003 2:18AM

why did you even bid to begin with????

K6AZ · April 25, 2003 2:20AM

Not at all. Namecalling in feedback is a good tipoff that this is someone you don't want to deal with. I always look at a seller's feedback before I bid. I have no use for sellers who resort to juvenile, petty namecalling.

Clankeye · April 25, 2003 2:22AM

Based on reading the response the seller wrote to the only neg I read on the first page... you were not wrong. Wouldn't touch an auction with a ten foot pole by a seller that would respond that way.

Read first--bid later.

Clankeye

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 2:30AM

bee-bop-ta-loola I didnt look at the sellers feedback...big mistake...I took time to read description and said hey this sounds like a cute old couple ebay team...

guess i should have read farther...glad I didnt buy it and find out later.

Tonekiller · April 25, 2003 2:42AM

Just a quick observation: The seller has 98.5% positive feedback and most of the negatives came from one buyer. If buyers can respond in an emotional manner to feedback then why can’t sellers? Do a few of bad transactions negate the other 500+ positive ones. If so then your standards are very high. IMO

Also you stated in your bid retraction that you could not contact the seller……if I am reading this thread right thats not why you wanted to retracted your bid.

Its ok to back out of a bid even if your having doubts……but don’t lie in the explanation for it for all to see is rather unfair.

ksteelheader · April 25, 2003 2:43AM

You did no wrong...............Ken

maddogale · April 25, 2003 2:50AM

Obviously the people were right to their complaints, else why did the a$$ resort to name-calling?

for now, "fuhgetaboutit"

IrishMike · April 25, 2003 2:51AM

Wrong?, probably not given his reaction. I hold sellers to a higher standard when they reply to feedback (to answer TBT's question). However, those kind of comments would eliminate about 30% of the posters from this forum from your potential list of sellers.

Coppernicus · April 25, 2003 2:55AM

Retracting your bid after reading the feedback is no problem. This is one of the reasons ebay has bid retraction. Often I bid on a bunch of auctions at a time and only later that night, do I get to peruse the feedback. If you don't have the time (or access) and want to bid fast, you wait until later to check feedback. Then, retract if you wish. I see no problem here.

Mike

hookooekoo · April 25, 2003 3:05AM

I don't see an issue with his feedback. Overall, it's pretty good.

Now the one thing the negative feedback does show is that he is not always a "strait shooter". Based on that, I think you can be sure that he has searched the coins, there will be no key dates (or anything else worth more than a couple of bucks).

Once again, remember that there is not Santa Claus in coin numismatics. If you spend $40 on a set of coins, the set of coins will be worth $40 (or less).

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 3:25AM

ebay has prefab excuses..i couldn't use "Cause the Sellers feedback negates distrust" as its not an option

I was clearly worng here in as I didnt read the feedback first.

But ill be dog gone if im gonna eat 80 bucks because of it.

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 3:27AM

so true on no santa in da coinage business...

sooooo truuuue

grip · April 25, 2003 3:41AM

I just retracted a bid,I thought the coin was PCGS,it was PCI and my fault for not looking closer(ihad been looking at PCGS coins for quite some time).And ebay only gives you three options ,and none of those options relate to my retraction=I had no choice but to enter..wrong price bid..
I see nothing wrong with retracting an honest mistake.Al

coinslinger · April 25, 2003 3:50AM

As a seller on ebay, I have 1688 positives, 1 nuetral, and 0 negatives. I would certainly stay away from anyone who has 6 different people leave him negative feeback out of 500 or so. I've never had a problem with people cancelling bids on my items, as I understand that everyone changes their mind sometimes. just my opinion.

Alex

DCAMFranklin · April 25, 2003 4:33AM

Well, certainly not an auction I would consider bidding upon, however, not due to the feedback. I've always felt the description for these "lot" auctions should tell me exactly which coins I am bidding on. How many Morgans, SLQ, mercury dimes, etc. You seemed to like the surprise element to the grabbag. I certainly don't feel you did anything wrong cancelling your bid.

I sit here at the keyboard chuckling to myself that Members here seem offended by the use of that name in feedback. I bet I have heard hundreds of sellers and numerous fellow Members called that name on these boards. Let's get real.....

Anyway, this seller has 769 Postive feedbacks, 2 neutrals and 13 negative feedbacks from just 6 unique users. Five of the negatives are from just 1 buyer. I agree with TBT, the buyer owed the seller the opportunity to make the deal "square". Just firing off a negative feedback without any attempt to negotiate a reasonable compromise, seems completely unwarranted. Just my opinion.....

ms71 · April 25, 2003 4:50AM

No problem. Sure his feedback is almost all positive, but that one response is enough to tell me this is not the kind of person you want to do business with.

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 8:22AM

I usually follow thru, actually i always do when I bid...but this was the one time I was tired as all heck,
and thought i saw a pair of old honest people. Maybe the feedback thats bad is from a few unique not
so honest people, or maybe it was...anyhow, I made a mistake, and like i said I dont feel I should pay 80 dollars
to squelch it.

NoGvmnt · April 25, 2003 8:45AM

Actually there were more complaints, they just weren't listed as complaints:

joejimbob (65) Apr-10-03 15:32:55 PDT 3016058675 S Praise : I got the crap tin, hardly any silver, no penny older than 41, not like pictures.
Response by smoking_coins - Sorry no 1909 S VDB, Do not forget you got a tin worth more then you paid.

jusdoy8354 (308) Apr-09-03 12:47:12 PDT 3012197498 S Praise : fast delivery----fair coins----------wouldn't buy again------be careful !!!!

pontiacinf · April 25, 2003 8:45PM

ttt for the sellers reply

Rampage · April 25, 2003 9:10PM

Bill

You really did the right thing. He seems allot like the person who sent me the nasty PM last night. Only your guy did not use all caps.

Richard.

Singapore · April 25, 2003 9:13PM

Isn't this what you should expect when you bid on one of these kinds of auctions? If it looks like a scam, it just might be a scam.

Tonekiller · April 25, 2003 11:57PM

pontiacinf,

You have the right to retract your bid, but of the choices eBay allows for the reason to retract, you picked one that insinuates bad things about the seller……..It was a lie and done with malice as the theme of your post dictates. Why? To warn the PCGS board of what? Speculation? Again you are in the right to retract but not slander and assume.

Shame on you for posting in a public forum about someone you have NEVER done business with. This lynch mob mentality is medieval and wrong. His response proves nothing but that he is upset about your unprovoked attack.

I have had it with the constant attacks on dealers and eBay sellers in the US coin forum. Take it to the open board where this belongs.

billiardmaster · April 26, 2003 1:26AM

an obvious scam. why would you believe such nonsense? Like your box will be full of siver dollars and not 69-s pennies.
Rusty

tgilliams · April 26, 2003 3:41AM

Great Post ToneKiller.

Sometimes & only sometimes this lynch mob mentality takes over these boards. While some are justifiable and good info on blatent abuses, these posts can have a great financial impact on dealers and collector's (selling off duplicates) business.

In some instances this is downright slander! I'd like a dealer/collector who is unjustly harmed and can prove it take the poster to court and seek damages.

Posters have to be 100% certain that what they say will stand up in a court. Those posts are very helpful to all of us if the info is 100% verifable and not wriitten out of anger. But to single out people that make a mistake or two don't deserve to have their business suffer because one collector or two collector's may have percieved he was taken advantage of.

I've been very lucky as a collector and part-time seller not to have run into this situation yet. But one person commands too much power on these boards to make it a level playing field. Maybe it will take one or two collector's to be charged with slander and loose their collections to pay damages. While I'd hate this to happen, I think that this lesson would really hit home!!

If your case/experience is rock solid, then please post. But before someone posts, a review the financial/emotional impact on the seller HAS to be taken into consideration. Facts have to be solid enough to stand up and be able to completely defend their their actions with concrete facts and showing a pattern of abuse. If they can't, then DON'T POST IT!!!

And lastly, put yourself in that person's position and see how you'd react. His comments are obiously out of anger, Don't we all say/do things steming from emotion rather than good sense when hit between the eyes without warning? Enough said.

wayneherndon · April 26, 2003 3:52AM

Tonekiller,

It used to be that eBay would allow one to specify the reason bids were being retracted. However, honest bidders used the option in scam auctions to send a message to potential victims about the scam nature of the auction. eBay felt it necessary to cut off this avenue of communication and has now limted the reasons to a choice of these three:

--Entered wrong bid amount.
--Seller changed the description of the item.
--Cannot contact the seller.

In most situations, like this one, none of the reason are true. Yet, the system eBay has set up requires legitimately retracting bidders to give a false reason for retracting in most situations. I suppose pontiacinf could have picked the first one which does not cast any aspersions on the seller. However, for this one to be true, I'd then expect to see a replacement bid of the correct amount. In fact the rules about retracting seem to require this action stating in bold red letters "If this occurs, re-enter the correct bid amount immediately."

In any event, if you agree pontiacinf was within his right to retract, he should probably be given a break on the reason given (given the way eBay has set up the system).

JMHO,

WH

PUBLIC OPINION NEEDED, WAS I WRONG?/edited to show sellers response

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