Question about how to handle an Ebay negative

Bjorn

It seems that the buyer of my coin assumed he was getting a gold coin for $7.50:

Auction

Feedback Left

Obviously, I meant AU as in About Uncirculated in the title and nowhere state that the coin is gold. It also seems hard to believe that a French coin collector would think a 1950 20 franc coins was gold. Can I get Ebay to remove this negative? If so, how would I go about doing it.

Regards,
Bjorn

WillieBoyd2

Bjorn,

I guess that the obvious thing is to contact Ebay and ask them.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-removal.html

Or contact the buyer, politely explain what "AU" means, and ask him/her to remove the feedback, or offer a refund.

Another item for the Ebay Black Museum.

mrpotatoheadd

<< <i>Can I get Ebay to remove this negative? >>

I would guess it's unlikely.

<< <i>If so, how would I go about doing it. >>

Contact eBay and ask. Won't cost anything but some of your time.

If you sell on eBay long enough, there's no way to avoid this sort of problem. If it were me, I'd post a response to the neg and then forget about it.

Zohar

Agree with mrpotatoheadd.

I had an even worse situation where the buyer purchased an NGC graded coin. They cracked it out sent it for a regrade and when it did not get them the desired grade they asked me for a refund. When I refused for obvious reasons, they left me a negative feedback.

Ebay is not a place to seek real life justice yet as a buyer I always look at the general feedback responses to get a feel for the seller. Over time the negative feedbacks carry far less weight.

wybrit

How absurd can some of these characters be? Surely anyone with an ounce of sense will read the negative and will recognize how petty the comment is.

Even though it's unlikely this person will bid on any of my stuff, I blocked him (her).

LochNESS

There's a form called "feedback change request" or something like that. It works sometimes (up to their discretion / requires their action).

Neutral feedback is a compromise they may be willing to accept (and doesn't count against your rating).

I would offer them to ship the coin back for refund. Usually they will not wish to bother, and agree to change feedback.

northcoin

As responded to the same question posed on the US Coin Thread:

"Since English is presumably not the buyer's first language it makes sense that our acronyms would be meaningless. It is likely that he put Au into the search engine looking for gold coins since that would be universal and the search engine is not going to make a distinction between Au and AU. A simpler way to avoid such a problem would be for the seller to restrict bids to U.S. buyers which one can do. From this perspective the buyer had every reason to legitimately complain and the negative was well deserved. Of course that is not our perspective because we are English language centric.

To get back to the original question, I think your best case to EBay would be to acknowledge that something "got lost in the translation" and plead for EBay to excuse your mistake in not being clearer in describing the coin so that a misunderstanding would not result."


This thread is a good lesson to all of us to be more careful in how we represent the coins we offer for sale.


EDITED TO ADD: IN GOING BACK TO LOOK AT THE AUCTION I SEE THE SELLER IS LOCATED IN GREAT BRITAIN. I GUESS IT MIGHT NOT BE THAT EASY TO RESTRICT THE BUYER POOL TO ENGLISH SPEAKING BUYERS AS IT IS FOR US IN THE U.S. TO SIMPLY BLOCK BUYERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES. Candidly, going back to look at the original auction, I have to agree with the poster above who pointed out that the photo does make it look like the coin is truly Au (Gold). That coupled with AU in the title and no disclaimer in the text that the coin is not Au (gold) really brings home the point that a less principled seller might well have been "fishing" for gullible buyers to up the bids based on thinking that there was a bargain to be had here. Lots of sellers start out with very low bids on valuable items so the offered price being low would not itself tell the buyer the ultimate value of the item and if he was lucky enough to have no one else bid against him he remains entitled to the win at the teaser price.

WillieBoyd2

The seller is located in the United States, the buyer in France, according to Ebay.

Seller:
http://myworld.ebay.com/medieval_coin

Buyer:
http://myworld.ebay.com/rouer-castaing

The seller couldn't restrict buyers to the United States, he was selling a French coin,
and in my experience as an Ebay seller, coins many times went back to their home countries.

I would like to know if the seller contacted the buyer.

spoon

1. The coin is terribly common. (but harder to find quite as nice as Bjorn's)
2. The buyer resides in the country where it circulated 60 years ago and should reasonably be expected to have some familiarity with it.
3. If there are gold strikings available, they are certainly not common and do not sell for under ten dollars. (I'm not aware of any)
4. A fleeting acquaintance with numismatics should inform most that there are golden hued coins made of alloys not gold - such as the 10 through 50 euro cent coins in current circulation where the buyer lives (the auctioned coin is aluminum-bronze)
5. The buyer weighed the coin and announced it's weight in the feedback - a weight that, in gold, would presently be worth over $200 - yet still expected gold at under ten dollars.


There is no excuse for confusion here - in any language - unless the buyer is an idiot.


Edit - Look at the buyer's feedback left for others, click the transactions (x6!) with chocopat.. he's bought this exact (type) coin before. Something ain't right here. He knows it's not meant to be gold.

mnemtsas2

eBay is the wild west and populated by some truly crazy and vindictive people. The longer you're on there the sooner something like this is going to happen. Make a calm instructive response to his feedback, put the whole episode out of your mind and move on with your life.

newsman

<< <i>
There is no excuse for confusion here - in any language - unless the buyer is an idiot. >>



Or someone looking to commit fraud. I'm with Spoon on this.

YQQ

Soon is right... the guy is a shyster..
lets all watch out for him.
h

Gazza

Being British and living in Great Britain I can see that from my point of view the wording could have been better. To me if you state such and such a coin " in AU" it would at a first past mean that the such and such coin was minted in gold. If you had said in "AU condition" then it suddenly all becomes clear.

ormandh

My only comment on this is the old adage which states "If it is too good to be true, then it probably is not." I think that eBay should ban this type of idiocracy on their site. Although, I guess, after careful consideration, maybe eBay should ban you as a seller for not explaining in full detail that the coin you were selling was not made of gold and the fact that you did not give your potential buyer a degree in the 'History of Numismatics of Circulating Coins of France.' Shame on you for not holding the hand of the meek and humble! Shame on you!

Bjorn

Thanks for the comments guys, along with the comments in the US thread this has me leaning towards either contacting the user to offer a refund if he/she will remove the neg, or trying to get Ebay to remove it. I think I inadvertently showed my Yank-dom through my use of AU - while I live in the UK, I grew up and started collecting/dealing coins in the US. Most older dealers in the UK would likely have spelled out about uncirculated, but growing up with the Red Book and later attending US coin shows I often use AU when not thinking about it. Anyway, if I cannot get the neg removed I think I will respond with something along these lines:

In this auction, AU meant About Uncirculated (but I admit this was a poor choice in which to use this abbreviation, as it turns out that it can cause confusion in International Auctions). That said, this coin is from a series that is never minted in gold and if the buyer had contacted me about the problem/misunderstanding I would have had no issue in granting a full refund.

Anyway, the feedback has helped!

-Bjorn

LochNESS

I'm sorry this happened to you, but you shouldn't be making ANY excuses and you should continue to use "AU" in your titles. What if it were slabbed AU58? what then?
What if your coin was About Good? would you not use AG, lest someone think you're selling silver?

You can't let fools and thieves like this guy take advantage of you. Fight it all the way. You did nothing wrong.

edit: notice I suggested (in my first reply) that you should offer the refund if they return the coin. I would not, I repeat not, refund the money unless they ship the coin back to you.

Gazza

What you need to consider, and I know we will never know, but the winner may have put a max bid on in line with it being gold. It wasn't his fault that he won it for $7.50.

SYRACUSIAN

2. The buyer resides in the country where it circulated 60 years ago and should reasonably be expected to have some familiarity with it



Exactly. His feedback proves that he collects coins, and he knew perfectly well, that this particular 20 francs, had nothing to do with the 6.45 grams that he mentions in his feedback, a weight that applied to 19th century and pre 1920 gold 20 francs. It was inflationary money and the second smallest denomination in France in 1950, worth 0.20 frs after 1960, and this is common knowledge in France, wether you're a collector or not. References to old/new francs abound in the cinema and elsewhere.

A carefully chosen reply will expose his fraud well after the 3 month period that the item will still be visible to other ebayers.

I gotta give Zohar's buyer the first prize for the most unbelievable attempt to deceive, it really exceeds everything I've heard so far.

ormandh

Have you spoken to eBay about this yet? I am interested in how they respond. I find that eBay has a very nonchalant reaction regarding sellers' genuine problems regarding their feedback system.

LochNESS

They will probably tell him to send the Feedback Change Request form.