Glad I collect vintage
Begin rant:
On Dec 10th, my 7 yr old son asked me to help him find a bat card of my 10 yr old son's favorite player so he can give it to him as a gift for Christmas. My 7 yr old understands ebay, as through me and my wife, he purchases pokeman cards on a regular basis. Within minutes we find a card that he likes and is in his price range.
I check the sellers feedback and handling time....feedback good and one day handling time....I buy and pay. Fast forward to today....still no card and no tracking info has been uploaded. I contact the seller and ask if there is any tracking info. His response, " Yes there will be, ships today". Wow, 10 days after the card was paid for and still has not been shipped and this is the response. Would have been nice to have received an apology or some sort of ownership for the delayed shipping.
I then let him know the intent of this purchase was to be a Xmas present.
His next response, " I'm sorry, I had a child in the hospital. If it doesn't just let me know and I will make it right.". At least he apologized this time....however, in reviewing his feedback received, he had at least 4 auctions that ended within a day or after the time of my purchase (including 2 auctions that ended 3 days later than my purchase)...this means he had shipped items after my purchase and they had been received by the buyer who subsequently left feedback. So at this point, I am not buying the child in the hospital, but who knows. Too bad he could not own the fact that he simply dropped the ball on this order and expedite the shipping. However, it took confronting him with his own feedback info for him to commit to Priority Mail the card......we will see if it arrives by the 24th.
Now, I realize that the following is not set in stone, but after years of collecting and selling I realize that both other sellers and myself will make mistakes....it happens. However, the response to the mistakes is what I am ultimately venting about. As I primarily collect/sell vintage, in the rare instances I deal with a post 80s/modern card seller and there is a mistake, almost always there is ZERO ownership of the mistake, just some BS excuses and no timely corrective action. In this case, I feel I was lied to about why the card did not ship(based on his other transactions). Who knows for sure though.
However, with a much greater sample size, when dealing with vintage sellers/collectors and there is a mistake, almost always there is some sort of ownership of the mistake, a swift corrective action and NO/minimal excuses.
Again, I realize there are exceptions either way, but.....
For this reason (as well as many others) I am glad I collect vintage cards.
End rant.
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