auction question

[Nostalgiac]

save2600 & tone2600: haha, I just realized. You two are from the States....the land of Blame Culture where a person can purchase a cup of _HOT_ Chocolate from McDonalds advertized as "SCALDING HOT" and yet sue McDonalds for serving it "too hot" when you get burnt.

sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own actions and their consequences

whahaha - I don't entirely agree with you on this occasion - but I DO agree with you on a general point  :-D

Tom UK

[Nostalgiac]

I thought non-operating hard drives could take something like 40 Gs these days.  Seems like they shouldn't be all that hard to ship successfully.

on a more serious note as opposed to my last reply.

The dot on the i here is.. TODAYS drives.... I would have a fair guess the drive he was shipped was quite old, and therefore more affected to shocks/shipping

Tom UK

[save2600]

save2600 & tone2600: haha, I just realized. You two are from the States....the land of Blame Culture where a person can purchase a cup of _HOT_ Chocolate from McDonalds advertized as "SCALDING HOT" and yet sue McDonalds for serving it "too hot" when you get burnt.

sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own actions and their consequences

Hey, just because I live in the States, does not mean I subscribe to that level of worthlessness! I'm ashamed of a lot of what's been allowed to happen over here. And yeah, that was a frivolous lawsuit if ever there was one. There's a lot wrong with this country Re: laws and mandates. We're now out to save and protect the people that routinely achieve Darwin Awards. The book entitled 'The Death of Common Sense - How American Laws are Ruining the Country' sums it up real well.

But my bottom line here is that a potential buyer should not be afraid to purchase something like a HD simply because the seller doesn't possess the gee-whiz to pack it properly. Especially when told how and refused to comply!!

What should orange have said? "Because you are an online seller, I suspect you are dense and before packing and shipping this HD out to me, give me your phone number so I can talk you through the packing procedure"...  LOL!  Admittedly, I've worded e-mails close to this when buying on occasion  ;-)

[terminator4]

save2600 & tone2600: haha, I just realized. You two are from the States....the land of Blame Culture where a person can purchase a cup of _HOT_ Chocolate from McDonalds advertized as "SCALDING HOT" and yet sue McDonalds for serving it "too hot" when you get burnt.

sometimes you have to take responsibility for your own actions and their consequences

It is the seller responsibility to pack item properly to ensure safe delivery.  If it cannot be packed properly then it should not be sold.  No excuses.  A 14 year old knows how to pack a hard drive.
PS I am not from the States.

[amiga4ever]

It is the seller responsibility to pack item properly to ensure safe delivery.

You cannot "ensure" the safety of a HD shipped via general post, even with great effort and money spent on packaging. a 14 year old also probably knows that you're not going to get "safe secure" bomb-proof packaging from someone that charges 2euro shipment too. they might even know that it's more than risky shipping eggs (ie: an old rickety HD) through the post and not moan when they arrive broken and cracked, probably due to the postman's less than careful handeling.

anyway, i wish this guy good luck trying to get his 7eur back and hope he has learnt something from the experience!

let me just give an example: I recently purchased a Philips CM8833 mkII monitor from a guy on eBay. The listing showed the monitor in perfect working order. This for me settled that no matter what happened during transit, the monitor would leave the guy's home WORKING.

Now the only question i had to ask myself was: "am I prepared to risk the monitor being broken during transit?" I decided it was worth the risk, but if it HAD arrived with the tube shattered into a million pieces then I decided in my own mind from the beginning that I would not hassle the seller for a refund. Simply because it is the type of item which is inhernetly likely to break during transit, much like a harddrive (no matter HOW WELL you package it!).

I would NEVER have dreamed of giving the seller a negative or asking for a refund if the monitor arrived broken. Nevermind the "consumer legalities", it's a question of morals, and people being reasonable with eachother. One guy trying to sell his item and another wanting to buy but also appretiating that he is sharing the risk in some instances.

I took the risk to have that item shipped. It was my decision, I don't care about the power "consumer rights" grant me to _demand_ a refund. This is an individual amature seller, he's not insured like mega online stores such as Amazon, so I'm not going to make him pay for my lack of common sense.

[save2600]

I would NEVER have dreamed of giving the seller a negative or asking for a refund if the monitor arrived broken. Nevermind the "consumer legalities", it's a question of morals, and people being reasonable with eachother. One guy trying to sell his item and another wanting to buy but also appretiating that he is sharing the risk in some instances.

I took the risk to have that item shipped. It was my decision, I don't care about the power "consumer rights" grant me to _demand_ a refund.

Of course there's risk, but that's why insurance exists. Definition of insurance is that it relieves one of liability.

If a seller did a shoddy job of packing *anything*, of course it's more likely to get damaged. Agreed, the 2euro cost of shipping was a red flag - but often times, sellers realise they estimated too low and eat the cost. A seller is a total wanker for saying: "he only paid this much for s/h, so I may as well do a shite job of packing".

In the case of humans being honourable or reasonable to each other (rare, but not uncommon with groups such as this), the seller could have taken the time to properly pack and then write to the buyer asking for some more money to cover the cost. I've done that before and have always had good results. When you take the time to explain a situation, most people are willing to make it right with you.

[orange]

hm, I didn't expect an interesting discussion.
well here are more details:
the drive is SCSI (unsurprisingly) and its 18Gb.
it was a local auction, the seller is in the same country and postage was about 2,5eur (as for most things here)
interesting note, the auction did state that it was 'reopened' because the last buyer decided to quit. maybe that should have been a hint.
he has some negative feedback already.
BTW, IIRC I had never left negative or even neutral feedback here or on ebay.
didn't plan on leaving positive now, it was either negative or forget-about-it

[amiga4ever]

Of course there's risk, but that's why insurance exists. Definition of insurance is that it relieves one of liability.

If a seller did a shoddy job of packing *anything*, of course it's more likely to get damaged. Agreed, the 2euro cost of shipping was a red flag - but often times, sellers realise they estimated too low and eat the cost. A seller is a total wanker for saying: "he only paid this much for s/h, so I may as well do a shite job of packing".

In the case of humans being honourable or reasonable to each other (rare, but not uncommon with groups such as this), the seller could have taken the time to properly pack and then write to the buyer asking for some more money to cover the cost. I've done that before and have always had good results. When you take the time to explain a situation, most people are willing to make it right with you.

2Euro shipment was more than a red-flag. I doubt very much if the listing claimed "insured postage" at that price. In fact, 2Euro would barely cover transit costs, let alone packaging material. Again, unless you explicitly pay for insured shipment, how (morally speaking) can you justifiably expect a refund from an amature individual seller? That doesn't make sense to me.

I think what happened in this case is that our friend in this post sifted through all the harddrives listed for sale, sorted them into asecnding order for shipment cost and picked the cheapest with the cheapest postage cost.

He was gambling, and his horse lost. And now he seems to be asking the booky for a refund on his bet.

thankfully we have these wondeful Consumer Laws which protect those who'd otherwise pay heavily for their idiocy due to Darwinism.

[orange]

I forgot to say, the drive was probably broken in first place.
the (68pin) connector was damaged and HDD behaved like completely dead. the scsi interface couldn't even 'see it'. (it would spin up and then heads start banging)
if only the mechanics was broken it should have been at least 'visible', right? and I doubt the PCB died because of shipping.

[amiga4ever]

orange: no personal attack on you my friend, but common. the negatives, the low p&p, the relisting? this didn't tell you something?

be more careful in future pls.

[skilgannon]

First off - Amiga4ever - love the Avatar  That has always been the best photo of KB!

Anyhoo - i agree, we need to all have common sense about buying on ebay or wherever, that's why I mentioned before to just ask for the money back for the drive (forget the postage) because when buying you need take the seller at his word regarding condition etc, he wouldn't intentionally sell a faulty drive but his packing more or less done it to death.  Yeah, he probably took a chance on shoddy packaging thinking "it will be allright" but has come a cropper.  When something like this happens (especially when there is no postage insurance - you could have paid for that you know - then you would have got all your money back, including the postage and the seller would still have had his sale) you just need to come to a sensible arangement between buyer and seller.  I've been selling IT stuff on eBay since 2000 / 2001 as well as buying and as a seller, I would never intentionally mispack or mis-sell something.  I also have a 100% rating and no Neutrals, so I feel reasonably qualified about what I'm saying here (also I'm an IT Service Manager, so I kinda know how to approach this kind of stuff).  

Seller - has the responsibility to list the aution as accurately as possible, pack the goods properly and send via agreed method
Buyer - has the responsibilty to query anything he feelshe would need to know about (i.e - if a laptop is for sale and it doesn't say it's working - ask the question), pay for the goods up front and pay for any postage insurance they believe necessary to cover potential losses.  

Did you ever think that you would be in the same situation that you are in just now if the drive hadn't turned up at all?

No doubt I'll get shot down in flames

[terminator4]

@ save2600.

I agree with you.  
Thats why you have insurance.  
Good packaging ensures item arrives in piece.  
I'm confused by the logic pointed by some in this thread.  Selling products, ebay or what not is not gambling, and buyer should never take any risks.  Insurance eliminates risks.  
I have been buying & selling on ebay since 1996, long before most knew what it was.  The above always worked for me.

@amiga4ever

about your monitor, should have been shipped with insurance.  if it was adequately packaged they you do have a claim and could get a refund without hurting the novice seller.

[tone007]

I recently purchased a Philips CM8833 mkII monitor from a guy on eBay.

Now there's one item that's worse to buy on eBay than a hard drive.

[skilgannon]

LOL - I did buy a 8833 from a guy on eBay.  Was fine too until a year or two later it fried

[amiga4ever]

I won my Philips CM8833 for £12 iirc, and uninsured shipment was £9. However, insured shipment would have cost around £18, so I decided to take a gamble. The gamble paid-off in the end because the monitor arrived in perfect working order and is going strong to this day. But if it had arrived in a million pieces, I STILL would have had the ability to force the seller to refund, despite me CHOOSING the cheaper postage option.

And I think this is the problem, many people opt for standard/uninsured delivery and when something goes wrong they demand a full refund...despite the fact that they were happy to knowingly opt for uninsured postage.

I guess the solution as many of you say is to simply ship everything insured but - with the rising cost of postage - some of us would like the option to ship uninsured. Yet sellers are now seem petrified to do that because they know that they will be legally obliged to cover costs if anything goes wrong, thanks to buyers without decent morals and high expectations which they pay low mony for.

This pisses me off a bit, because for many items I would like sellers to continue offering the uninsure option as I'm quite happy to take a gamble at times and suffer any potential lose. I'm not going to run asking for a refund in that situation.

[skilgannon]

The stuff I sell always has the option of being uninsured (at the buyers risk) but at the same time - I pack stuff just as well for insured as uninsured deals because I want anything I sell to be used by the buyer and in the condition I advertised it as.