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.
Ok, malicious persecution
Gut!!
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
That is your right, but it is completely unfair to the vast majority of sellers. I have a 100% rating, but I had a buyer mark me down on the detailed mark area when he received a CD without shrink wrap - even though my listing SPECIFIED it was without shrink wrap. "Oh, I guess I didn't read that part." Duh! My Amazon rating was dropped by one buyer leaving a neutral rating with the comment "Satisfactory". WTF? I wrote (politely) to ask if there had been a problem with his order and he never answered. If a seller has a 98% rating it's usually (not always) because he had the misfortune to have a buyer who was unreasonable - and sellers are no longer even ALLOWED to leave bad feedback for a buyer.
I noticed they removed this "funding" option a while back. Lot's of folks opting to have the card issuer reverse charges.
The work around is to insist your seller send an invoice. Then the option to pay with a card reappears. You still have to look for it though, they don't make it an easy one.
Oh, and eBay/Paypal sucks.
Great idea ... except that eBay doesn't want to do squat, except collect their fees. eBay doesn't want to do any actual work ...
Sounds like a business opportunity for their competition.
I just bought a photograph yesterday and paid via PayPal funded by my credit card. It’s still there, but you have to select your funding choice each time.
They don’t make it easy, but you can pay with credit card funding.
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