Man, it took the grace of God not to hit a new seller with negative feedback on his second auction.
I bought a programming book off of eBay. I checked the auction description and it looked like the book and edition I wanted. I bid a little bit less than what I could get it for on Amazon.com. I won the auction, and received the book.
I was not happy at all when I opened up the package to find a softcover Indian-subcontinent-only knockoff of what I thought I had ordered. The seller did take a picture of the book and had I read the top part of the front cover in the auction picture it does say "Low price edition." However, nowhere in the auction did it specify this. In fact, it stated three times that the book was hardcover!
I emailed the seller expressing my displeasure with this. He e-mailed back promptly to apologize and said that he would allow me to return the book. He also admitted that he didn't check the information that appeared on the auction when he inserted the pre-filled information for the book.
EBay makes it very easy to create a detailed description for a number of types of items. Books are one of them. If I'm using Turbo Lister, all I need to do is enter the ISBN, the author, or the title, and select the correct book from the search results. Piece of cake. What I suspect this guy did is that he found the book by searching under author or title but not ISBN (since the number is different on my book), and figured he was done. The description in his auction had the incorrect ISBN, and the incorrect type of book (hardcover). Not good.
Anyway, I ended up e-mailing him back, told him it wasn't really worth my time to return it, and said that I wouldn't leave a negative. I chalked it up to me not looking at the picture carefully enough and taking my lumps. But I also warned him that other buyers might not be as understanding, since it's now much, much easier for buyers to leave negative feedback without any fear of retaliation.
I also strongly suggested that he check the descriptions to see that they're accurate. It's still the seller's responsibility to ensure that the description is an accurate representation of the item.
It absolutely is the seller's responsibility to accurately and honestly list items for sale on ebay. I have taken the approach on ebay to ask for additional pictures on items that are over $40. I was looking at a comic book collection and asked for additional pictures as the total auction was over $40 and had only two pictures. The seller never got back to me and I didn't bid on them.
I agree that it sometimes isn't worth the time to return and item, get insurance, and deal with the seller again. How much is your time worth to stand in line at the post office? You never know, the seller could be a flake and say they never received your return. I do know you can file a paypal dispute, but that is a long and tedious process and who wants to wait months for a decision.
If you can still use the book, it's worth keeping it and avoiding the hassle, though maybe a little partial refund would be in order. Or hey, you get some good karma out of it. 🙂 And this will be his lesson to be more careful!!
That is def close to leaving a negative feedback situation.
Thanks for the article. I've gotten pretty lazy about using the automatic listings on ebay. I just went and checked a video game I have listed now.
I trade a lot of books on Bookmooch.com and I have had to get in the habit of checking the cover art that comes with the codes I've punched in. Those are supposed to be garage sale, thriftstore, giveaway type books and people still get upset if the cover is not what they are expecting.