I am fed up of 'dodgy' sellers on ebay who try to get away with certain 'tricks'. Yes of course they are obliged to give you a refund etc but at the end of the day it's the hassle and the inconvenience of sending something back that's either inferior or not even the item in the listing! And I'm sorry but in my experience, whilst they may be 'UK based' it is invariably sellers who I will tactfully describe as 'not from these shores'. In 90% of cases I would say that is the case. I have no problem with foreign sellers in fact I buy a lot from the far east and my experience with them has been first class.
Here is a recent example (but I have lots if them). I ordered a pestle and mortar (fixed price item) costing around £8.50 with about £4 postage. I ordered that one rather than others because it had a nice 'fancy' pestle and the mortar was a nice shape. But when it arrived I was horrified to see that it was not the one I ordered, the colour was the same but that was where the similarity ended. The pestle was the usual baseball bat shape and the mortar was rather clumpy. To make matters worse it was cracked! I wrote to the seller telling him that I was none too happy, as this was not the one I ordered, to see what he had to say. I usually do that before opening a case because there are a lot of genuine sellers and I think it affects their reputation adversely if there are lots of cases being opened. Whilst waiting (24 hours) for a reply, I started looking at similar listings again as I knew it was very likely I would be returning this one! And what do I find? The same one ie the 'wrong' one that the seller has sent me, listed by none other than the same seller at a price of £8.50 with free postage (making it £4 cheaper than what I had paid)! So I promptly sent him another message telling him that whilst I wasn't happy at the time I sent my first message I was even less so now and pointed out the said listing I had found. This time I got a reply! But no apologies or thank you for your message or we want to try and put things right. Oh no, his message just said - 'Thats different company'. Then another one saying - 'Hi, return to us we will refund'. I was just speechless. No apology for the inconvenience at all. And I believe this was no mistake. I think they have sold out of the 'nice' ones but instead of taking the listing down they just send out the other (cheaper) one and hope that many people won't even realise it's not the one they ordered or will just not have the time or want the effort of returning it.
This kind of thing is happening more and more on ebay. And there seems to me to be no retribution for sellers who play these games. You can only leave feedback (I think) for completed transactions, not ones where you've returned the item. But this will continue until ebay introduce some kind of penalty for sellers found to be habitually sending out goods that do not fit the description.
