Usually I agree, but he signed for it in good condition. You as the seller don't know what it looked like when he signed for it. If the seller has to contact the shipping company then he has to guess as to what the buyer received.
Another thing is he gave you a good rating, how does he do that if the item is in that condition?
yes, the lathe is damaged, but also about 1/2 of it is completely missing!
I don't understand how, even if a box is severely damaged,
if huge heavy bits fall out why aren't they picked up?
Ken, it doesn't matter what you or I think, eBay makes the rules and eBay says I have to make this right or lose the money.
I know, I've been through it with them and you're right, we have no power as sellers. The buyer has all the power in this situation. But you can at least contact eBay and at least point these things out. I'd explain that the buyer gave you a good rating and signed for the delivery as "in good condition".
Jesus.
This is why I'm so nervous about selling on ebay. I always assume the buyer is going to screw me over or the item is going to arrive broken. Hassle, hassle, hassle.
I sold a bike for my brother a few years ago and the buyer was a complete cock. I ended up giving a partial refund because he hadn't looked at the high-res photos properly to notice the seat wasn't brand new.
I will be arguing my side, and I will try hard to point out that the buyer has made this MUCH worse by accepting the package etc, etc
So much is missing that it's unusable, I hope that will carry some weight with the shipping company.
I lost my old eBay account with a stupidly high rating because of dickbag customers.
Sold two things (one was a car, one was some car parts) and on both of them the winning bidder didn't pay and didn't make any kind of contact. They both had 100% positive feedback - but then if you actually read the feedback the comments are all negative. Turns out ebay stopped sellers leaving negative feedback for buyers - da fuck. So yeah, both buyers with a history of winning things and not paying for them. Both items had other (lower) bids, and if i'd realised the high bids were from assholes I'd have rejected them. Instead I was left with unsold items and a big bill from ebay for insertion fees.
Lost my account because I refused to pay the insertion fees (and wrote to them telling them why) on the grounds that my items failed to sell only because of ebay's decision to prevent buyers getting negative feedback and then failing to properly police member accounts.
Did you engage the courier as a consumer or as a business?