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Author Topic: stupid things sellers do (tell me)  (Read 16404 times)

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Offline Ponyfan

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #45 on: June 02, 2018, 03:24:08 PM »
stinky ponies and haircuts are nothing, man.  ;)

Some "highlights" of the Bad Trader List:

- the time a scammer sent a printed-out picture of the pony rather than said actual pony




I remember this one. Didn't the scammer claim that the buyer should have known they were buying a picture and not a pony?


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Offline goddessofpeep

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #46 on: June 02, 2018, 05:53:18 PM »
My favorite seller story is a bit complex, but well worth the telling.  I sometimes see people bringing up the most outrageous detail in these kinds of threads as it's become a bit of a pony community legend, but I'm the one it happened to:p

Apologies for the length of this.  It's pretty complicated, and the good stuff is in the details.

*cracks knuckles*

This happened way back in the early days of the community when ebay was a lot more of an online garage sale, and Paypal wasn't even a thing yet.

I was dating my now husband at the time, and we were doing a long distance thing.  It was around Valentine's Day, and I was a few days away from getting on a plane to visit him when I noticed a good Valentine's Pony(MOC SS Bangles - I thought her symbol was romantic) come up.  I had an arrangement with my sweetie with certain gift ponies - I was better on ebay and had the patience to watch the auction until the end, so I'd bid, but he'd pay for most gift ponies.  I'd get a price limit from him, and he'd just let me take care of the winning part.  After the auction was over, I'd tell him ending price and put him in touch with the seller.  They'd work the payment details out between them.  It was usually a money order since there was no Paypal, so there was a lot more interaction with the seller than there is now.

Anyway, this particular pony ended a few hours before I was supposed to be on a plane to visit him.  I ended up winning the pony, so I contacted the seller within minutes of it ending.  I told the seller what was going on and to contact [my guy's email address] for the payment, and then I emailed my guy with the important info about the seller, including their email address for him to contact her.  Then I left for the airport and was out of touch for 8ish hours.

To move this story along, I get to my guy's place several hours later and I eventually check my email.  The seller must've tried to contact me before reading their emails because the seller sent me the invoice and her payment info a few minutes after the auction ended.  Another, later email told me she had been paid and everything was fine.  My guy showed me his invoice email just to confirm that everything was good, and that's where things got weird.

The invoice he got was $20 more than the one I got.  The shipping quote the seller sent to *me* was already fairly outrageous for the time.  The shipping quote I got was over $10 at a time when a flat rate large Priority box was $3.50 to ship anywhere.  The shipping quote my guy got was $20 MORE than the already outrageous $10! $30+ to ship one pony! He had already paid for it by the time I arrived, so the deed was done.

I contacted the seller about this little "clerical error", and things just went to hell after that.  I asked her why my guy's invoice was $20 more than mine.  She never answered why my total was less, but she did tell me that the $20 was for "gas, wear and tear on her car, and lunch at McDonald's near the post office". 

Yeah, you read that one right.  McDonald's.  That's some burger for $20 in 1999-2000 money!

Well, the money order was already in the mail, and there was no such thing as a partial refund back then, so we both just accepted that this seller was greedy and awful, and $20 was relatively cheap for a "don't ever deal with this seller again" lesson.

But the seller didn't stop there!  Oh no! 

A few days later I get an email from the seller stating that something happened to the MOC Bangles I won, so she couldn't send it out anymore.  But I was in luck!  She had another one!  This one had a slightly better card than the one I won, so it was more of course.  I won that MOC Bangles for $50.  The new one was....$200.  FOUR TIMES as much! 

This was still during the time of the cheap MOCs.  I've gotten MOC ponies for as low as $15 during this time, and $50 was on the higher end for a MOC Bangles already.  At the time, $200 could easily get you a Rapunzel, and you might even have enough left over for a Mimic to give you an idea of what she was asking.  Anyway, there was nothing wrong with anything in the pictures of the MOC I won, so I'd love to know why this one was 4 times as much. 

I said no.  I said just send back the money order and it's over.  I consider it a personal triumph that I was able to refrain from telling her where she could stick that MOC Bangles of hers.

She got the money order the next day, and told us she sent it back. 

We waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited. For 3 weeks we waited.

Finally, he got the money order back.  Why did it take so long?  She didn't open it and resend it with my guy's address and new postage.  No, that would cost her money and time.  Instead, she marked it "Return to Sender", so it got stuck in the postal system for weeks.  She couldn't even be bothered to pay the 30 cents for the postage to get an $80 money order back to us safely!  I guess we should've been grateful she didn't cash the money order and claim that it was stolen in the post:/

After asking around, I found out this seller did this kind of thing all the time.  If one of her auctions didn't end for what she wanted it to, she'd "lose" the item, or "her cat ate it", and she'd either relist it, or offer "another one" for a higher price.

A MOC Bangles popped up on her auction listings not long after I told her I wasn't paying $200 for the"better one she found".  It looked pretty darn close to the one that was "lost".  Suspiciously close.  It had a starting price of $200.

It sat on ebay for at least a year without ever selling.  Every now and then she'd email me out of the blue and offer it to me for the bargain price of only $200.  She did this for several years afterwards.  I only think she stopped because I stopped using that email address.

As far as I know, she never found a sucker to buy that MOC Bangles.





Offline Motion-Paradox

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #47 on: June 02, 2018, 08:11:37 PM »
I haven't had anything quite that bad but a few problem ones:


In terms of overpriced Ponies I once saw a listing Glow asking $10,000


Having trouble working out where a package would be shipped and the seller opening an unpaid item case during negotiations.

Sellers holding an item and then dropping the hold because I took more than a day to reply

Sellers of foreign pony books asking around 10 times what they paid for it

When I first started collecting G1 Ponies a seller had a lot that had one Pony I really wanted and a bunch of others I wasn't interested in, I contacted the seller asking if they'd be willing to sell just that pony alone and they agreed, and it was much cheaper without the other Ponies. So they closed the original auction and I sent a message letting them know that I was going to be out of town the next day because of a previous appointment and asking if they could mark the listing as being for me (something I'd seen other sellers do) and gave a list of times I would be free in the next few days so we could work out a good time. They ignored the message and posted it in the middle of the afternoon the next day, without marking it as being reserved, and somebody else bought it; when I messaged them about it they said there was nothing they could do and that I should have been watching the page at a time I already told them I wouldn't be near the computer

An unpaid item case being opened and closed on a simple my little pony painting somebody had done and listed for $20 with shipping and selling it to somebody else because I took to long to reply; my aunt had been hospitalised the day after the listing ended, had to have major surgery, and nearly died. When I explained what had happened she said she could make me another for $200 "Because making the same picture twice isn't fun"


Buying an Equestria Girls Minis doll where the box ended up seriously damaged and the seller would only do a full refund with the item being sent back and would not do only a partial refund; I didn't do anything more because my dad was in the hospital....he DID die a few weeks later

Offline WaterDraw

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #48 on: June 02, 2018, 08:49:13 PM »
stinky ponies and haircuts are nothing, man.  ;)

Some "highlights" of the Bad Trader List:

- the MIB Italian Dream Castle Re Unicorno fiasco
- the time a scammer sent a printed-out picture of the pony rather than said actual pony
- the Sugarberry Photoshop movement
- the time a scammer sent a lot of ponies in the mail, maliciously covered in glue
- the scammer that got away with $1000's of dollars related to Muffin Pony sales...

 :facepalm:

Ohhhh it's only my second cup of coffee, I am sure I will think of others...

Did you ever get the glue off of the ponies or were they just totally beyond repair?

----

Also one last pet peeve I have is when seller's list g3 ponies as g2 ponies. It happens a lot more often then you would think.
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Offline Duenia

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #49 on: June 02, 2018, 09:47:38 PM »
Also one last pet peeve I have is when seller's list g3 ponies as g2 ponies. It happens a lot more often then you would think.

That one drives me up a freaking wall... I swear there are more G3s listed as G2 than actual G2s listed.

Offline Taffeta

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #50 on: June 03, 2018, 12:41:46 AM »
@goddessofpeep - I definitely remember the McDonalds one :D I didn't realise it was you though. And you are right, MOC ponies then were a lot cheaper and $50 was a LOT for any MOC. Newborn twins were still only about $35 MIB back then so $200 was insane. Even now I think $200 for Bangles MOC would be insane, 20 years on...

@Duenia - Any mislabelling of generation annoys me, but more it annoys me when the words cutie mark or brony appear in a G1 auction title/description. The historian in me demands terms are correctly used and not anachronistically applied...

I have one more seller tale but it's not pony which is why I didn't think of it till now.

Back in about 2000-2001, when I was building my Jem collection, I was really trying to get a Jetta doll. Ironically Jetta wasn't sold in the UK and there were a lot of US only sellers back then. So I had a friend in the US who would take parcels for me. This was also prior to paypal as standard and stuff like that.

So anyhow, I won a really nice Jetta with her box and her accessories loose and proceeded to give the seller my friend's details. Normally I would do the paying but this seller was not just rude but seriously offensive. They refused to sell to me because I was a foreigner - even though I had a US address, they said all kinds of things about how dishonest foreign buyers were and that we were all scammers and that they didn't deal with overseas people at all.

This went on for a while because I did have a US address to ship to. Ultimately I got my friend in the US involved, and she said she'd deal with all of it.

Next thing I know...Jetta has been shipped to her address.

Some weeks later (delayed due to the lovely timing of the petrol strike which wreaked havoc with our post for some weeks back then) Jetta arrived at my house safely. And the seller had put in some extra bits that weren't originally in the auction.

I have NO idea to this day what my friend said to this seller to sort them out. But I imagine it was pretty darn scathing...

So yeah. Not an issue of not shipping internationally, but holding the general view that even communicating with someone not in the US was dirty and that we were all scammers by dint of our location.
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Offline lovesbabysquirmy

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #51 on: June 03, 2018, 06:51:02 AM »

Did you ever get the glue off of the ponies or were they just totally beyond repair?


It wasn't my transaction, it happened to someone else decades ago.  I have no idea what happened - it was superglue and you need acetone to dissolve that, so I don't know what the buyer was able to do with their ponies :( 
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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #52 on: June 03, 2018, 07:28:04 AM »
Do Thrift Stores count? If yes then I spotted some common G3 Ponies last week. They asked 3,50 euros for one and the bad thing was: They wrote the price under their hooves with Ballpoint Pen....

Offline DreamvalleyMLP

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #53 on: June 03, 2018, 08:19:21 AM »
stinky ponies and haircuts are nothing, man.  ;)

Some "highlights" of the Bad Trader List:

- the time a scammer sent a printed-out picture of the pony rather than said actual pony




I remember this one. Didn't the scammer claim that the buyer should have known they were buying a picture and not a pony?


Ponyfan



An identical case - though not pony related - once appeared on Judge Judy. It was about a cell phone. Apart from her ripping the scamming seller a new one (and Rightfully so!), JJ also gave a great defense: the price asked corresponded to the general price paid for the actual object. Regardless of the seller's defense that she stated in the object description that it was an auction for a picture of the object, the price was deceiving and the determining factor to label the offer as an attempt to scam.

Post Merge: June 03, 2018, 08:32:47 AM

Also one last pet peeve I have is when seller's list g3 ponies as g2 ponies. It happens a lot more often then you would think.

That one drives me up a freaking wall... I swear there are more G3s listed as G2 than actual G2s listed.

At one time, Hasbro US attempted to document the entire evolution of MLP on their website. (maybe it's still up?). Strangely enough, G2 had been completely erased from the lineup of pony generations. I remember going "WHUT?!?!" when I noticed it skipped from G1 to what we know as G3 (apart from a single and vague mention of the PC game Friendship Gardens - but nothing about the actual toys). For non-MLP connaisseurs it might be confusing to ID a pony they want to sell if even the manufacturer takes creative liberty on the history of the toyline.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2018, 08:32:47 AM by DreamvalleyMLP »

Offline WaterDraw

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #54 on: June 03, 2018, 02:10:37 PM »
stinky ponies and haircuts are nothing, man.  ;)

Some "highlights" of the Bad Trader List:

- the time a scammer sent a printed-out picture of the pony rather than said actual pony




I remember this one. Didn't the scammer claim that the buyer should have known they were buying a picture and not a pony?


Ponyfan



An identical case - though not pony related - once appeared on Judge Judy. It was about a cell phone. Apart from her ripping the scamming seller a new one (and Rightfully so!), JJ also gave a great defense: the price asked corresponded to the general price paid for the actual object. Regardless of the seller's defense that she stated in the object description that it was an auction for a picture of the object, the price was deceiving and the determining factor to label the offer as an attempt to scam.

Post Merge: June 03, 2018, 08:32:47 AM

Also one last pet peeve I have is when seller's list g3 ponies as g2 ponies. It happens a lot more often then you would think.

That one drives me up a freaking wall... I swear there are more G3s listed as G2 than actual G2s listed.

At one time, Hasbro US attempted to document the entire evolution of MLP on their website. (maybe it's still up?). Strangely enough, G2 had been completely erased from the lineup of pony generations. I remember going "WHUT?!?!" when I noticed it skipped from G1 to what we know as G3 (apart from a single and vague mention of the PC game Friendship Gardens - but nothing about the actual toys). For non-MLP connaisseurs it might be confusing to ID a pony they want to sell if even the manufacturer takes creative liberty on the history of the toyline.

I think they also could've got it from this (fan made?) MLP generation thing which showed the progression of the toys. Oddly enough G2 was missing from that but they labeled g3 as g2 or something weird like that and the current MLP blind bags were listed as G4.5. Maybe that's what confuses some people? I'm not sure.
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Offline Jocelyn

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #55 on: June 03, 2018, 10:09:31 PM »
I recently got a pony that reeked of smoke, mildew and other things, and was soaking wet inside the bubble mailer. When I finally got the guts to open it up I found like, an inch of nasty water inside. I had to take it outside and literally hose it down!
« Last Edit: June 03, 2018, 10:12:45 PM by Jocelyn »
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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #56 on: June 04, 2018, 01:06:31 PM »
I've recently had an issue with a seller actually. They said they would happily post the ponies to me and we agreed on an overall price. I payed and all was well and they seemed really nice and genuine. A week goes by and no pony mail had arrived, so I messaged them and they said that they hadn't got round to posting them yet, but promised that they would send them the following morning. Another week goes by and by this time I was getting a little impatient (it had been two weeks by then and second class only takes 2-3 days to arrive). I messaged them again and politely asked if they had actually even sent them. I got a really snotty and rude reply back basically saying that they would send them when they send them and they turned really quite, dare I say, abusive? towards me, saying that if i really wanted them I would collect them (They were way down south somewhere and I cant drive). Bare in mind that I'm still technically a minor, and the seller was an older woman.

Long story short, my dad went crazy, they never sent the ponies, I opened a claim through PayPal and was refunded my money.

I have since found the same ponies and have bought them for cheaper than what i originally payed, and they should be here tomorrow!

Offline WaterDraw

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #57 on: June 04, 2018, 04:44:35 PM »
I recently got a pony that reeked of smoke, mildew and other things, and was soaking wet inside the bubble mailer. When I finally got the guts to open it up I found like, an inch of nasty water inside. I had to take it outside and literally hose it down!

Oh my gosh that sounds awful. How did that even happen?
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Offline Jocelyn

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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #58 on: June 04, 2018, 06:48:54 PM »
I'm thinking it was a last-minute cleaning attempt in a less than ideal [not clean] environment, with absolutely no drying time  :huh:
« Last Edit: June 05, 2018, 03:48:58 AM by Jocelyn »
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Re: stupid things sellers do (tell me)
« Reply #59 on: June 04, 2018, 07:09:01 PM »
I bought a Moondancer from a garage sale once. She was in pretty bad condition (symbols almost gone, pink highlighter marks) but my first G1 pony find in the wild after I got back in to ponies. I brought Moondancer home and a little while later there's water coming around her. I cleaned it and went back a later and discovered more water and it it's coming from her tail hole (her tail was still attached) It turns out she had several inches of water in her.


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