My horror story was a Mercian King of Mercia. The seller paid a bike shop $50 or maybe even $75 for "professional packing". These "professionals" not only used minimal padding, they just threw the front wheel in the box, neither padded nor secured. Not surprisingly the wheel caused a large dent in the top tube.
I proposed to the seller that he should refund me the shipping, which I think was about $125 because the packing charge. He agreed. I had the dent repaired and the area around the repair repainted my Mike Barry in Toronto. MIke is a real genius at this type of work. His price was very reasonable, although the cost wound up being more than the $125 adjustment becasue I had to buy the very hard to match purplish blue flamboyant paint from Mercian in UK. But Mike's repair was so good it is impossible to detect that there was any damage.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Big Spring, Republic of Texas
Fraser Cunningham <frasertri@ispanywhere.com> wrote: As a suggestion to fellow listmembers, whenever I receive packages that are of 'considerable value', I take a series of digital pictures as I open it up. That way I have a record of how the item was packed, and the conditiona of the outside of the packaging - as received.
If all is well, I simply delete the pictures - happy that I don't need them! But if I do, for any reason - they are invaluable!
It might seem anal, but I do this because of two bad experiences with ebay sellers who did a very poor job of packaging, and then they tried to blame the shipper. One example was a nice on-topic Claud Butler which was shipped in a large box, with ZERO padding, and the rear wheel bungee strapped to the frame - freewheel against the paint! Unbelieveable! This is why I began my current practice!
Good luck to you all,
Fraser Cunningham.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:56:08 -0500 (EST) From: Greg Lone
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Ebay,PayPal, buyers advantage? Message-ID: <20061031205608.24352.qmail@web51104.mail.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Precedence: list Message: 3
I am currently embroiled in my first dispute with a EBay seller. {bicletaville in Roseburg OR } I "won" a early 60's Bianchi Specialisma frame ,with quite good original paint. I like original paint. The box arrived UPS with a accompanying brokerage fee and taxes.{$60.00} The box was in near perfect condition .When opened, I found a very well wrapped frame. when unwrapped I immediately saw significant "impact damage' to the bottom of the head tube and down tube, the thing had clearly been crashed at some time in the past. The seller had stated that other than minor paint blemishes it was in great condition. His photos in the listing weren't great but led one to think it was a nice original frame. I Emailed my findings to him ,his reply; it was perfect when shipped , go chase UPS. Knowing I would be laughed out of UP S's office I lodged a dispute with EBay. Fine, get a repair est .from a third party and their opinion as to why the item materially differed from the listing description. My LBS happily provided all with little problem and modest cost. Submit to pay pal, fine claim accepted. Now I have to return the frame and wait for whatever Pay Pal decides to refund me. The refund will not include the brokerage fee ,the Canadian tax, the charge for the repair estimate and letter from the LBS. My time and trouble to take it back across the U.S. border to UPS it back to the seller, not always a easy proposition in this post 911era. Finally the shipping charge back to the louse who sold it to me in the first place. All in all I will be out at least $100.00 {on a item which only sold for a little over $100.00] and have nothing to show for it other than a very bad taste in my mouth. I must say I have bought vintage parts from over 100 EBay sellers {including several list members} with normally great results. However I find EBay's and Pay pal's handling of problems like this one to fall far short of satisfactory.
Greg Lone Langley British Columbia
Canada