Collective Commiseration

[Andrew Benn]

Has anyone else been burned by ebayers not properly detailing their items?

 

Just got a squad of Cataphractii Terminators the description for which said "used, undercoated". Now they've arrived; none of them have tabards, four of them have no shoulder pads.

 

I just felt the need to tell someone somewhere that I'm annoyed by this turn of events.

 

Are there others out there who are also smarting from similar misadventures?

 

Also is there like a tradition that you have to pour a bucket of perfume over all the models you ship out? I've bought a lot from ebay over the last year or so and many of them have reeked of some chemical scent - no idea why.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Andrew Benn

[WarriorFish]

eBay has procedures for this sort of thing, if you've been miss-sold something you should follow them (usually best to contact the seller first). Whenever buying I'm always careful to check the images and wording to see what I should be getting and if I'm not convinced on either I'll leave it. It's better to have no purchase than a bad one I think.

[Andrew Benn]

Yeah, in other circumstances I would do that, but it was still a good deal - there were other models as well as the cataphractii and even with another few pounds to get some replacement shoulder pads it comes out cheaper than buying a set new so on the whole I'm not displeased.

 

This kind of thing seems to walk the line between ambiguity and mis-labeling in my experience. I do also check the pictures so very carefully - I saw that some shoulders were missing but not that all of them were missing. Also it seems folks use words like "used" or "sold as pictured", which covers them as far as product description is concerned, but, especially when it comes to miniatures, covers such a range of possible states for it to be in that it almost means nothing.

 

The absolute worst one I had, also one of my first purchases, was, technically a "used" set of basic Chaos Marines, but what the description didn't mention, and the picture didn't capture, was that three of them had been practically covered in plastic cement - seriously they were almost just blobs of half melted plastic. They did aaalmost make some believable Plague Marines though :)

[Azekai]

Sometimes 'sold as pictured' means 'parts are missing or damaged' even if you can't tell anything is wrong from the grainy photo. 

I bought a pre-owned knight that way, had all the parts laid out and even though I looked closely, on arrival I discovered my new atropos was missing the ankle components(?!). I had to make a replacement joint socket out of a rhino hatch. Stuff like that happens. I wasn't bent out of shape because the seller had been kind enough to toss in a few tech thralls he had lying around for free. 

Edited August 31, 2017 by Azekai

[NiceGuyAdi]

Most of my purchases have arrived as expected, although my first purchase to get back into the hobby, a load of Dark Vengeance Tactical Marines, had a load of mismatching weapons so that from the unit of ten only seven could be made up properly. In the end it's not been a disaster as I was just dipping my toe back into this plastic space soldiers silliness, and now they're test minis for when I want to try something out.

 

This is the downside of eBay in general, and whilst most sellers in my experience are really good, you do get some who are less than honest or just lazy. You can always take it up with the seller, and I certainly wouldn't give five stars for 'item as described' in the feedback.

[Olis]

I think the only time I've had a problem with something that turned up (we won't count the ones that didn't...) was when some forge world models turned out to be china-cast, despite the continued assurances of the seller that they were bona fide FW. Given the colour and the smell of the resin, I knew it was all hogwash. Got a refund in the end.

[NovemberIX]

I've made some dumb mistakes on my own, like buying a massive amount of 3rd ed old metal Legion of the Damned when I was looking for the more recent design or buying old small metal Terminators for probably too much. Sometimes I've had issues with bitz sellers sending the wrong thing, like there was one that every time I ordered from them they screwed up, like sending tac shoulder pads when I ordered Terminator ones or sending bare heads when I ordered Helmets. One guy tried to pass off a recast Lysander as the actual thing, except for how screwed up it was, and not at all like the posted picture. He first tried to fight it, and when it wasn't going his way he deleted his e-bay account thinking that he'd get to keep the money, he was wrong.

[Frater Cornelius]

I sell plenty on eBay. A tip of those who want to: make plenty of images, seeing as multiples are now free (not like back a few years where only one was free) and always go with the WYSISYG. That way everything is clear and any attempt to mislead from the seller or buyer can be proven wrong by the other side. Greedy people lose, justice wins ;)