Some of Us Never Win
A couple months ago an ebay seller of headcovers, lynn362436 (aka William Watson) bought 16 headcovers from kleesgolf (our eBay ID) via four Buy It Now auctions with free shipping. He emailed me about combining shipping if he bought other headcovers over the next two days. I told him he could do that. Watson then bid on a Dutch auction for 9 other headcovers, bidding on all of them for $.99 each. At the time kleesgolf had at least three other Buy It Now and Dutch auctions on ebay for headcovers, which were being managed by one of my sons. He wanted to make some extra money and this looked like an easy way to pick up a few bucks, plus get better at selling on eBay.
So, my son told me that one of the Dutch auctions is going to go off at only $.99 for Cobra Speed LD driver headcovers and he wanted to get at least $5 each. I told him to end the auction early and relist them for a Buy It Now price with free shipping as this seemed to be working better. As it turned out, my son ended the auction early on Watson's desired headcovers. What a disaster!
This guy sent me an email in all caps screaming at me about ending the auction early, threatening me with eBay sanctions for illegal activity and reneging on his earlier Buy It Now purchases. I was flabbergasted! Since my son had no idea he was doing anything wrong I had to take this guy's heat.
Ending an auction early is not illegal on eBay, but reneging on Buy It Now auctions is cause for unpaid item strikes, which I told Watson he'd receive if he didn't pay for the headcovers. BIG MISTAKE!
Watson told me (via email) if I made him pay for the headcovers he'd file a PayPal claim, give me negative feedback on all four auctions and screw me out of the $139 the headcovers cost. I didn't believe he could do all that. I was wrong.
Not only did lynn362436 give me four negative feedback strikes he also filed two Paypal claims, returned only half the headcovers he bought from my son and got to keep all his payment, just like he threatened. Paypal denied my appeal despite my phone calls and emails.
Charlie told me it served me right given the fact that this guy tipped his hand from the beginning. I'll never make this mistake again. The customer is NOT always right, but some of us never win. (And tha's what I told my son, too.)
