http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=coolstuff159
You can now read the complaints from other buyers about shipping delays, condition problems and non-delivery, including another buyer who claims he paid $2,400 for a book and the package arrived with 2 pieces of cardboard in it. Sound familiar?
-_David
on 9/14/05 7:55 AM, David Kuspa at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Dear MoPo members,
Thank you all for your public and private responses to my transaction with Al Shevy, aka Ebay ID "coolstuff159". For those of you who sent me private accounts of your own dealings with Al Shevy, I encourage you to post them publicly (perhaps you just forgot to hit the Reply All button?).
Here is the link to the auction page: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=60332&item=7525124231
And here is a link to photos of the poster I received from Shevy: http://homepage.mac.com/dkuspa/PhotoAlbum11.html
You can decide for yourself whether my disappointment and return request was reasonable. These defects were not visible in the auction page photo (which was slightly overexposed), nor were they described by the seller. BTW, these defects are pretty unique, so you might want to take a look at them in case you ever run across this poster. Mail theft/fraud is a Federal crime and it would be very satisfying to nail the criminal.
Al Shevy has never responded to my complaint that the poster had significant defects that were not disclosed, regardless of the grade he gave it (Fine). Notice how he uses the "Blame The Victim" approach:
"...I did ask you to send it back because YOU were unhappy with it."
"...in reality it is you throwing a temper tantrum."
"...you get mad because I told the TRUTH..."
"...Feedback on ebay is a joke anyways."
And the topper, a demand for my APOLOGY in his latest profanity-laced private email, or else he will no longer assist with the insurance claim. So I doubt that mine or any other MoPo member's opinion of his grading or his business ethics will change his behavior, since in his mind, he is always in the right. I'll settle for this warning to my fellow MoPo members and they can decide for themselves whether it's safe to do business with him.
It is true that the USPS Insurance Claims office in St. Louis is extremely frustrating to deal with. It's also true that I pleaded to Al Shevy to help me out by getting his local post office to file a Damage Report, and that I expressed frustration that he owed me this much since I never would have bid on his poster in the first place if he had been honest in his description. My reality is that I was running out of time to issue feedback (90 days from the auction close will pass in a few more days), so I checked Al Shevy's seller ID and saw that 4 other individuals had given him negative feedback in the past month and that he had made his feedback private. THIS IS WHY I DECIDED IT WAS TIME TO GO PUBLIC, BECAUSE I SAW A RECENT PATTERN OF UNHAPPY BUYERS and wanted to alert others. Of course, he has retaliated to my negative feedback, but that is a small price to pay. All 3 of my other negatives are retaliations from sellers just like Al Shevy (I have 146 positives). Believe me, if I wanted to nit pick about undisclosed defects, there would be more. I accept that grading is subjective, but significant defects should always be disclosed, so I save the effort for what I feel is gross misrepresentation.
What have I learned from this experience?
1. If the seller refuses to send a higher-resolution photo upon request before you bid, WALK AWAY! The original photo the seller uploads to Ebay is almost always better quality and higher resolution than the heavily compressed version that winds up on Ebay's server. This seller claimed he was having trouble with his email account, so couldn't send the original.
2. If the seller claims it will take 30 days to deliver ("I'm only a one-person operation...", blah blah blah), WALK AWAY! Important safeguards like PayPal's satisfaction guarantee start expiring at 30 days after the auction close.
3. Don't get lazy because you've had a string of good experiences with honorable Ebay sellers--you'll eventually run into a bad apple. Protect yourself by asking the right questions up front before you bid and warn the seller that you must take action to protect your rights within the window of opportunity should a transaction start to go bad. In this case, I should have started a PayPal Buyer Protection Claim and an Ebay "Item Significantly Not As Described" complaint before I returned the poster, so I would have some leverage over the seller.
4. Take photos of any poster you return for a refund, especially if there are substantial defects the seller did not disclose.
-_David
on 9/13/05 6:19 PM, Al Shevy at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
David You want to throw a public temper tantrum then lets do it the right way. Yes I sold you a poster and I did ask you to send it back because YOU were unhappy with it. The package came to me OPENED and empty except for 2 pieces of cardboard. On top of that it was delivered to MY NEIGHBOR not me. I told you about this and since it was insured you filed the ins claim. I received a letter from the post office asking me to take the packing to my post office and drop it off. I did that and had them date stamp a copy of the letter so that I had a way to show the date and time when I dropped it off. Then I get a email from you asking about a damage report. I told you I receivd a letter and did what it said. Then you tell me to send a damage report to some woman at the post office. I tell you I have no DAMAGE report.Never received one. Then you send me a number to call this person at the post office. I call it and they dont know who she is. I tell them the problem and they say YOU NEED TO SHOW the INS RECEIPT. I say that I believe you already did that and I get a big run around from them. I ask them again to put me in touch with the person you asked me to call and again they say they DONT KNOW WHO SHE IS. I tell you this and you send me another email with the same thing again. I tell you again and you come back with a email about how im not trying to help you and so on. This pisses me off. What the hell have I been doing????? I cant do anything else. You have to do it. You have the ins receipt. So now you get mad because I told the TRUTH that I cant do anything else that I have done all I can and you do this MOPO assualt.Yes I made my feedback private. I am late on getting some items out and have some negs(by the way 2 have been removed)but this has nothing to do with me and you . So you make this PLEA to MOPo in the guise of a plea for help when in reality it is you throwing a temper tantrum and you want to cause me grief. Well all you have done is create more problems for yourself because I wil NOT help you in ANYWAY now. Why should I???
Al
