Disgraceful Luck with eBay lately

I thought I might share some of my recent but plentiful misfortunes with you through eBay.

First off, we have this dreamcast game.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=150261704395&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=005

Sent to me in nothing but one small padded envelope, of course it got cracked on the way here. It was so cheap I'm not even gonna bother asking for a refund or return. This is not nearly the worst though. On second look u can kind of see the crack in that pic. Read on.



Next up, we have this game, Clay Fighter
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170215635550&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=007

Supposedly it is factory sealed. No vertical seam, it has some kind of weird horizontal overlap seal and 1 row of what seems to be "ventholes" on the front, but the box underneath is in such terrible shape there is no doubt in my mind this is resealed. The dude swears it is factory sealed and will be taking a refund at least.







Last but not least, we have the icing on the cake. Never ever have I seen such a blatantly misrepresented item before. What kind of slobbering retard buyer would think this game is actually new and "never opened" as the following listing insists:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190229597992&_trksid=p2759.l1259

Looks like a decent deal right? First of all, I was charged 12.50 for shipping, when really:



10$ gone right there. But here is the best part. I present to you the "Unopened new in wrapper" game.





What a joke. I guess that is the life of a collector though. You go through these garbage times

OMG !!! I had received at least 50 or more games which had a terrible sealed condition but your SC is a complete joke ...

The saving grace is that these games were dirt cheap. Your Clay Fighter btw is factory sealed. Not the best of shape but for $20 what did you expect?

I would punch the guy in the face litterally, for SCIII's condition...being a fan and all of the game.

If it were me, I wouldn't keep it and threaten negative feedback if a refund wasn't given, no matter how inexpensive. It's the principle.

Startyde wrote:I would punch the guy in the face litterally, for SCIII's condition...being a fan and all of the game.

If it were me, I wouldn't keep it and threaten negative feedback if a refund wasn't given, no matter how inexpensive. It's the principle.

lol at the SC, 'new in wrapper', more like new in fuckin cling film. but anyway yeah i totally agree with startyde, he cant get away with selling crap like that and trying to pass it of as sealed.

i hate it when people dilberately con people like that but if you look at it technically it is new in a 'wrapper' so he may try and get away with it but when writing that description he probs knows full well that collectors are gonna look at that and think new in wrapper means factory sealed.

This dude is a piece of work. He INSISTS that he sent it to me new and unopened.

The game we sent you was still in the wrapper we bought it in and was the original wrapper. The package we sent it in was in an original shipper and the shipping label had no price on it. Are you saying that the game came with the wrapper off and the game opened?? And I got the shipping and handling off of the calculator and told you what it was before you bought it and you said it was ok. I normally do not ship anything outside of the USA, and if you have looked at our e-bay score and feedback, you will see that we do not mess around with our items. I do not know what happened to your game, but what you describe is not the game I sent you in ANY way.

I e-mail him back saying no way in hell could that be true. He replies:

We never opened the game ourselves, and there was no sticker on the front of the case. When it left here it was in perfect condition. I did notice, however, that you have also posted OTHER games you have had "problems" with as well as this one. Clayfighter and Royal Rumble? Maybe you should be more concerned with your local postal problems if this is the way it seems. We work VERY hard to maintain our 100% customer satisfaction rating and we do not deal junk. Check your local delivery system since you have had this problem before. As I said, I bought this game new and shipped it in perfect condition. Sorry you have had problems but they do not appear to be on our end.

So according to this guy, my post office either opened this game and played it before sending it to me, while putting a sticker on the case and ripping/crumpling the manual, or took home the game and sent me a used one from their own collection. What a LOAD. I will be contacting eBay about this matter.

rarebucky wrote:Your Clay Fighter btw is factory sealed. Not the best of shape but for $20 what did you expect?

How can you think that it's factory sealed? The box is beat up to s**t while the wrapper is in tact still? No seam?

Horizontal overlap seam is not replicable.

striker wrote:This dude is a piece of work. He INSISTS that he sent it to me new and unopened.

The game we sent you was still in the wrapper we bought it in and was the original wrapper. The package we sent it in was in an original shipper and the shipping label had no price on it. Are you saying that the game came with the wrapper off and the game opened?? And I got the shipping and handling off of the calculator and told you what it was before you bought it and you said it was ok. I normally do not ship anything outside of the USA, and if you have looked at our e-bay score and feedback, you will see that we do not mess around with our items. I do not know what happened to your game, but what you describe is not the game I sent you in ANY way.

I e-mail him back saying no way in hell could that be true. He replies:

We never opened the game ourselves, and there was no sticker on the front of the case. When it left here it was in perfect condition. I did notice, however, that you have also posted OTHER games you have had "problems" with as well as this one. Clayfighter and Royal Rumble? Maybe you should be more concerned with your local postal problems if this is the way it seems. We work VERY hard to maintain our 100% customer satisfaction rating and we do not deal junk. Check your local delivery system since you have had this problem before. As I said, I bought this game new and shipped it in perfect condition. Sorry you have had problems but they do not appear to be on our end.

So according to this guy, my post office either opened this game and played it before sending it to me, while putting a sticker on the case and ripping/crumpling the manual, or took home the game and sent me a used one from their own collection. What a LOAD. I will be contacting eBay about this matter.

How did this person know that you posted about Clayfighter and RR? Are they a member of this forum?

They obviously scanned his feedback to try and make a case for themselves.

Well, back to Plan P...for PUNCH IN FACE!

He also explained his shipping charge calculator quite accurately.

I wondered how they knew about those games too, but it seems like by uploading the pics all at the same time I made a gallery out of the pics, so clicking the "BACK" and "NEXT" or "Gallery Index" button on imagebam takes u to all the pics I've posted in this thread. I doubt they are a member here.

The guy is slick tongued tho. If it wasn't for the ripped off sticker RIGHT ON THE CASE and the ripped manual, I might even believe that the border slackers ripped it open themselves. Then again, the ripped off seal isn't even y-fold. It's probably just a piece of glad cling wrap.

Looks like a DVD case wrapper actually.

It looks like what FYE uses to reseal their "new" games.

FYE??? You mean gamestop?

And about the overlap seal, I thought those had to be vertical??? This one is horizontal.... Also I've seen copies of this game with the proper vertical seam.

No - overlap seams on N64 and SNES games can be either horizontal or vertical. I have plenty that are done both ways. They cannot be replicated. Trust me, your game is factory sealed. The wear you see there can absolutely happen under the wrap from things getting moved around, bumped into, etc.

OK. Well, the seller of that particular item is a good one, he has accepted to refund my money if I send it back (I'm not TOO much of a stickler on condition but this is one is just brutal).

The other dude is a different story though. I've given the guy a chance to at least partially refund the shipping and the game. If not I'll have to forcefully fight for it through paypal.

I too have similar bad luck. More often it seems than having good luck. It's as if the only people selling on eBay these days are the shifty type who deliberately neglect to mention certain details, or falsely represent their items in the first place.

I once had a US PlayStation game sent to me, from America, in nothing but a paper envelope. Not a padded envelope, a paper one. Needless to say, it arrived more cracked than ypu could imagine. Luckily, the seller sent me another copy he had, and even let me keep the damaged one.

I seem to find lately though, every other game I receive is not what I expected. My "Trade" box is getting fuller and fuller, and most of the time it's not from damaged packages, but rather sellers who don't describe the item properly. Most of the time, if I complain, I get met with the sentence: "Well you should've asked questions first...", which is all well and good, but if there's huge crack on the back-side of the case, then I think it's significant to warrant writing about in the description in the first place, rather than being described as "Perfect" or simply "PS2 game, sealed". At the end of the day, I shouldn't have to eMail every single seller for every item and ask them a long list of questions, but lately i've found myself doing so.


I never buy anything without seeing an adequate photo of the actual item first. If it's a stock picture, I leave it. If the description mentions damage, I leave it. If i'm happy with both, I then proceed to ask the following questions:

* If the tear strip is not visible in the picture (Poor photo, or distance shot) then I ask about the tear strip

* For GameCube, DS, and Wii games I make sure I ask what colour the spine triangle is, as a lot of sellers will sell you a European copy of a game you believe is the UK release, and they will mis-represent the auction to make you believe that this is the case (Sometimes knowlingly, other times without a clue there's a difference)

* I ALWAYS ask now if there are any rips or tears in the cellophane; Loose pips inside the case (Ie, for PlayStation and Dreamcast games); Loose discs (As this is a common problem I have found lately); Or dents / marks (Ie, N64 games are prone to be marked or dented)

* I ALWAYS now insist how my games are shipped to me. Even if it's a regular PS2 game, I insist that they wrap it in extra bubble wrap instead of relying on just a Jiffy bag, and N64 / GameBoy games as well as PlayStation / Dreamcast games I insist are sent to me in a box


I have also noticed lately that some people are taking pictures in such a way that they hide certain damage to a game, and then they describe the game as "Perfect". I found this with two copies of Kingdom Hearts II and two copies of GTA III, and now have to get rid of two copies of both games due to them being less than perfect and not as described

Yea, I feel like I have to ask questions all the time now. I'm getting so sick of it. Add on the fact I always have to ask if they ship to Canada, it's a real hassle because if you don't they will inflate the shipping drastically.

A way around it is to buy graded games from VGA or from here, but god damn it those are way too expensive.

TBH, I was trying to pull moves like that DVD Galaxy dude. He buys dirt cheap sealed games, stock photo and all, and somehow they always turn out great. I get cheapo a bit and all of a sudden I'm hit with this trash. How does he do it?? My newest cheap game, NBA on NBC (Dreamcast) is also resealed.

This particular seller of SC3, is a real a**hole. I've emailed him 8 times, offering solutions, refunds, partial refunds, every time he replies with some sob story about how it's his sons video game, or dodges all my questions and gets all riley that I called him a liar.

Truth be told, I think he bought a re-sealed game from a store used (or as rarebucky said, some stores market them as "NEW"), the shrink wrap was torn to shit and in the transit it just came off completely exposing the used game underneath, while the seller was none the wiser and thought it was a truly brand new game. I don't know if I should leave him bad feedback, he is denying sending it in that condition down to his last breath.

The question is not whether or not the game was new (clearly it was used), but did they guy knowingly scam, or did the guy truly believe he was sending me a new copy? I keep trying to talk to him like civilized person but he keeps dodging and crying.

What should I DO????

Startyde wrote:I would punch the guy in the face litterally, for SCIII's condition...being a fan and all of the game.

If it were me, I wouldn't keep it and threaten negative feedback if a refund wasn't given, no matter how inexpensive. It's the principle.

Being a fan myself, I say we find him and jump him. Old school beat-down.

striker wrote:
Truth be told, I think he bought a re-sealed game from a store used (or as rarebucky said, some stores market them as "NEW"), the shrink wrap was torn to shit and in the transit it just came off completely exposing the used game underneath, while the seller was none the wiser and thought it was a truly brand new game. I don't know if I should leave him bad feedback, he is denying sending it in that condition down to his last breath.

The question is not whether or not the game was new (clearly it was used), but did they guy knowingly scam, or did the guy truly believe he was sending me a new copy? I keep trying to talk to him like civilized person but he keeps dodging and crying.

What should I DO????

Yeah he deserves a neg, no question. Anyone, non gamers included, gets a game like that new would instantly ask for a different copy. Imo he knew it all along......

You could try and file a dispute with PayPal and let them deal with it. You have to word your complaint very carefully to stand a chance though, and it's 50/50 what the outcome will be. I've had mixed success with this, and sometimes i've won and sometimes lost.

As you say, sometimes the sellers are genuinely naive and don't even realise the difference, but a lot of the time it is someone who deliberately wants to scam, or knows the difference and tries blagging it

I ended up just leaving the dude a (-) feedback and being done with it.

I gave him so many chances, like a refund, 50% refund, exchange, he wouldn't hear ANY of it. He kept denying that he sent me a game in that condition, even though his ebay ID was right on the envelope.

I couldn't be bothered for 20$ any longer.

Funny thing is, the clay fighter guy apologized and agreed to a partial, even though I told him it was OK and agreed it was truly sealed because of the bad condition (example of a good seller).