Posted on 04/11/2010 12:32:04 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Dear Elliot Miller: your feedback is currently 98.8%. That's good. Get over it.
Just when you thought that set of flamingo-themed flatware was a questionable enough buy on eBay, your business might be even more risky: the seller could be a Miami lawyer.
Mike Steadman paid $44 for a "working" time clock for his small Cape Canaveral welding business in November 2008, but it didn't work -- and now he's out $7,000 in legal fees, without representation, and still facing a pending $15,000 defamation lawsuit from seller Elliot Miller, an attorney living in a $3 million dollar waterfront home on Miami Beach.
Perhaps he should have purchased a stone and a slingshot. "I made the mistake of leaving my honest opinion online," Steadman told Florida Today of checking "negative" in the feedback section eBay asks all buyers to complete at the end of a transaction. "The comments are there to let other buyers know who they're dealing with. [But] because I don't have the money to fight them, I'm losing. It's not right. I'm speechless."
Steadman says when he received the clock, it didn't run, stamp time cards, or work with the accompanying set of keys as advertised. "When I opened the box it was in 3 pieces [from three separate models] that didn't even fit."
Miller refused to grant a refund, so Steadman filed a complaint with PayPal's buyer protection plan and eventually got his $44 back. But the bad taste lingered. "Bad seller," he wrote in an effort to warn other buyers about EMiller1313. "Like a used car salesman." Unfortuantely for Steadman, Miller is just a tad uptight about feedback. He filed a lawsuit in Miami-Dade court last February, claiming that the single comment lowered his perfect 100 percent positive feedback rate to just 98.6% -- thereby "seriously harming" his "commercial reputation."
Seriously seriously? Apparently so: Miller wants $15,000 in damages from Steadman, whose lawyer quit last week when funds from a second mortgage on his house ran out. We hereby suggest the buyer who left the only other negative comment -- "Seller suggested we unload obviously broke unit on another unspecting buyer" -- start dodging process servers.
Malicious prosecution.
I don’t think it’s prosecution, unless it’s the state doing it.
Tort reform anyone?
I bet the lawyer is a bigtime democrat as well.
eBay is likely to lose long term from things like this. Fewer frank and honest reviews translate to less trust and fewer people willing to take the risk of buying through them. It would have been worth it to them to back the buyer in the lawsuits.
Definitely. Guys like Elliot Miller do this type of thing just for the fun of it.
Rule number one on eBay has been for a long time, NEVER leave negative feedback. Remember when Mom used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."...?
I learned that one the hard way too. Work it out with the seller in another way. If you have to eat the $44 and your pride, do it.
Also, that’s why now when a job seekers previous employers are called as a reference, companies only confirm that the employee worked there, and don’t say anything positive or negative, because they could be liable.
You can’t leave a negative feedback, we made a purchase that never did even arrive. None of the 5 star options let you give an honest answer. So we wrote “Never did receive it”.....WELL..that is a no, no! Got a note from seller, “can’t blame me if the post office didn’t deliver it”. Duh! After we filed a complaint eBay refunded our $7.99, sure wasn’t worth all the grief we got.
I would be far more scared of a welder and what he could do to my physical body than a attorney from Miami....
Blood sucking parasites. All of them.
I've hired six and interviewed more than that and not a damn one of them were worth the cost of a bullet needed to put them all out of our misery.
EBAY is a cesspool of deceit.
So true. It's just not worth it. There are always ways to recoup your losses. Negative feedback is ostensibly to warn others to a bad seller. Number one...I look out for number one. I don't care if someone else gets taken by the same guy.
Number two, I do the research and unless I see 100% feedback...I don't buy from that seller. To me 98% is just as bad as 0%. But that's just me.
My rule is always pay with PayPal by putting the charge on your credit card. If you have a problem, call the credit card company. They will reverse the charge.
I have done this once by going through the credit card company since PayPal / eBay was dragging their feet. And I also [amazingly] did this even though I allowed PayPal to take the funds from my bank account.
I have an unusually good relationship with my bank [Wells Fargo shameless plug] ... and they simply put the funds back into my account. PayPal / eBay sent me an email saying that my compliant was resolved. End of story.
Bottom line, you have the ability to solve these problems by going around eBay. The easiest is having PP use your credit card.
According to opensecrets.org there's an Elliott Miller from Miami Beach who donated to both John Edwards and Ralph Nader
I’ve only ever left one negative feedback for a seller but a bunch of sellers on the Ebay forum weren’t at all pleased. I suppose they were friends of his. I always pay instantly, no one can complain about that, and I expect exactly what I ordered, shipped right away. So far, in about 120 purchases, I’m doing great.
Which would make you think they might help the guy out with legal fees and/or ban the idiot lawyer seller.
I once purchased a tavalera ornament frog that arrived with chips on its toes and other places. It wasn't due to shipping, it was just plain junk that the seller should never have sent out.
I left a "neutral" feed back saying it was damaged. The seller contacted me wanting me to change my feedback and asked why I didn't send it back to him.
I told I was just going to consider it my loss of money due to the hassle of packing the thing back up and driving to the closest UPS station. I also told him that if he had a shop he wouldn't have even put it on a shelf thats how badly it was damaged and that he didn't even have any business trying to sell it it......
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