Ebay seller collectables.777 - Be aware

[Burkina2008]

So I was doing a few purchases online and then I saw a nice WC 74 Album from this guy who was accepting offers.
We negotiated down the price around 15% and I paid for the item. 12 hours later he sends me a message that "I should explain to him why my account was created in Germany but I had a US address"
My account is active since 2006 in Germany where I lived at the time and since I have lived in 5 countries since then my shipping address is in the US and unchanged in more than 2 years.
He then complains that for sales to the US he needs to pay ebay 30 Euros extra than sales to Germany so he was going to cancel the sale. I said that this would be a contract violation and that I was going to leave a negative feedback accordingly.

He then proceeds to call me a scammer (mind you I have around 3000 items sold, 1700+ ratings and 100% feedback).
Somehow he manages to call ebay and they remove the negative feedback.
I then wrote ebay on the chat and they apologized and said that they will givin a "non-selling" warning and they might suspend him...(if anyone wants I can post the print screens of this conversation).

That said I would stay away from guys like this! Sorry about the rant!

 

[dantzig]

Hmmm... at least this is just a miscommunication case, which is much better than real frauds or scams.

Let me play the "devil's advocate" here... I don't know how much was the final price, but 30€ can be a high or low percentage of his final cut (I guess it's more low because it's a Munich 74 album)... and he can't see your current address until the deal is done, right? So he checked "Germany" in your profile and there you go, "caldo entornado" as we say in our country... he felt deceived because you didn't tell him right away that you were in the US, but he could have asked too, as a seller I also got so many people with a different country in creating, billing and shipping (my last one was to an argentinian guy living in the US too).

Calling you a scammer was indeed too much though, probably lost it after you didn't accept to pay the 30€ extra and even give him negative feedback.

Considering both of you were dealing with good faith, my question now is: have you both tried to reach a consensus? Like paying that extra 30€ halfway? It's not like you were obliged to pay that, but you do realize when it's related to US, ebay charges taxes for every single little thing.

Seems like both didn't even bother to understand each other pov, but ok, you are there for yourself, not for the other guy... actually, if I was either you or the seller, I would have acted the same way as both did... no way I would pay more after the deal was completed and no way I would accept less 30€ when I already lowered the value by 15% (unless it was like +1000€).

 

[Burkina2008]

No he did not even offer a solution, just said he was going to cancel, I was willing to negotiate, but this seller just started saying that I was scamming him...and it was close to 450 Euros.
Contrary to Europe in the US the buyer pays sales tax, so its more expensive to me to buy stuff on top of the price comes 9,70% sales tax.
That said it was basically the attitude of this guy that pissed me off. And the issue on ebay is that you cannot change the country on your profile, because it is the country you are registered originally in, I tried because now that I sell on ebay.com instead of ebay.de, i get less money as it is sent to my german account (no you cannot add a USD account) so I am charged the ebay exchange rate.

 

[dantzig]

That clarifies more the full story and it does changes a bit my perspective on him... 30€ out of 450€ is not that bad to support, I would definitely go on with the deal and wouldn't even bother the buyer for it... No one wants to earn less 30€ than expected, but the deal was completed and then it is what it is.

He should have negotiated first instead of threatning to cancel the deal... it's not like it's your fault that ebay displays the country when the account was created and not the current one... he should have known that by now.

I forgot the US buyers also get charged too... I've criticised ebay in the past for making sellers have to receive their money ONLY in their "ebay native country" directly to a bank account... considering I buy and sell in many currencies INSIDE ebay, Paypal was great to have a wallet with multiple currencies and avoid currency conversions as much as possible.