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David,
You should definitely leave the non-performing seller negative
feedback -- and you should file a formal complaint with eBay. The dollar amount
doesn't matter. If you pay someone for an auction they are legally and morally
obligated to send the item to you. No one should ever let a seller get away with
this, not ever. It just encourages them to do it to other people. I wish you had
posted this seller's eBay name so that the rest of us could avoid a similar
problem with this person.
It is always best to establish direct communication between buyer and
seller before any money changes hands -- which is why I hate (and won't use)
eBay "automatic checkout" features.
I never send payment until a seller sends me an invoice -- I refuse to
use things like "checkout" and linked PayPal buttons because I find them
subject to error, impersonal and an invitation to abuse. Bruce
Hershenson tells people not to use eBay's automatic checkout when they win
one of his auctions, even though it would clearly save him time if he told them
all to use automatic checkout -- but he knows such devices are bad
policy. When I sell, I ask my buyers to wait until I send them an invoice.
Those who jump the gun and use eBay's checkout tools to pay before I can send
them an invoice -- well, I send them the invoice anyway.
On MPB it is a requirement that all sellers must send an invoice to a
winning bidder within 48 hours of the auction's close (unless they very clearly
state in their description that they want the winner to contact
them).
As for our "And Anonymous" nay-sayer, I'd like to comment that this ain't
your father's MoPo. What you talk about may been true 4 years ago, but in
recent years the dealers seem to be much more willing to speak up about
wrong-doing by other sellers in public -- that's because the incidence of
problems has continued to grow and the good dealers now want to make it very
clear what their own policies are, and that they do not appreciate bad sellers
screwing with people any more than the buyers do.
It is true that sellers like to resolve differences in a non-public forum
if possible, that's understandable. But that's a big "if". I don't think any
reputable dealer objects to someone bringing a complaint into public when that
person has done all they can to handle it in private and is getting nowhere. In
this case, since the dealer has been paid 4 weeks ago and has not responded to 5
or 6 emails, the only thing left to do is bring it out in public. The only thing
David did wrong was he did not mention the dealer's eBay user name in his
post -- I wish he had.
Look, if there's a deadbeat bidder out there stiffing dealers with
non-payments, the dealers don't have any problem posting that bidder's user name
to MoPo and urging everyone to put that name on their "blocked bidder" list. OK,
fine. But the same standard must be applied to dealers who screw up -- their
names should be posted as well, along with all the details -- particularly if
the buyer has done everything they can to resolve the problem in private.
It's a two-way street. Bad transactions -- either by seller or buyer --
need to be public knowledge.
--JR
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