Received a return request for a CD, how would you respond?
Summary: musicyouneed received a return request for a faulty CD and decided to refund the buyer without asking for the CD back. Several participants suggested handling the return process through eBay and expressed concerns about the costs of returning items. musicyouneed noted that after testing, the CD seemed fine, suggesting the issue might be with the buyer's equipment. Although the buyer was cooperative, musicyouneed is considering blocking him to avoid future issues. Participants provided mixed advice, with some suggesting blocking the buyer to prevent further complications.
I received a return request for a faulty CD from a buyer in the US. I don't want the CD back and I am going to give him a full refund. But want to send him a message that I do check each CD with EAC to check for errors but sometimes the CD is just faulty and it doesn't show any errors. What would you say to this person? I don't want to discourage him from buying used CD's.
Visually, the CD looks great, but I tested on 3 different CD and Blu-ray players. It plays back with horrible scratchy surface noise like an LP. I m not sure what it is - perhaps a refurbished CD that wiped away some of the data? Sometimes the playback is so bad that the player skips parts of the songs. It is across the entire album, on multiple tested systems.
musicyouneed
OP1 month agoUpdate - I refunded the buyer and told him to keep the CD as I believed him that it was faulty. He volunteered to send me a sound clip of a song that he felt was bad. "Here is the rip of track two. You can hear the noisy pretty clearly here." He did, it was Rush A Passage to Bangkok. Well I played it, through Bose speakers, then played another copy of the CD that I had, then went to youtube and played it and they all sound the same. This was a non remastered copy, no issues with scratchy noise. i don't think there was anything wrong with it but I wasn't going to pay for return shipping from the US . I told him that he had better hearing than me as I could hear what he heard. I suggested this: A scratchy, LP-like surface noise on a CD usually points to a dirty or smudged laser lens, a heavily damaged disc, or an issue with your audio cable connections. He said that wasn't the issue, I think it was. I am inclined to block him. He was nice and everything but until he gets his equipment fixed I don't know if I want to sell him more. What do you say?
john_koenig99
·1 month agoI'd block the fellow.
ricarmic
·1 month ago · EditedIf you are right then the next one will be a problem too... unless hes a long time repeat I'd block just to avoid the future effort and likely loss around the next one....
I will add that I do extend a LOT more flexibility around folks who are polite and seemingly honest. My best example is a guy that complained about content of a lot, very polite etc, IMO he was wrong, but I went along with the resolution we agreed to and subesequently he bought thousands of $$$ of stuff with no issues..... so it was worth the flexibility on that one...
shallow_karl
·1 month agoEbay has made it next to impossible economically to return anything small. An item that cost $18 to ship by UPS will cost you $40 to bring it back. They want it like Amazon where high volume sellers just refund the money and no product is returned.
flipistics
·1 month agoIf that's happening, you can buy labels (and return labels) from places other than eBay. There's lots of great options now if you shop around a bit. Sometimes eBay Labels are cheaper, sometimes they're considerably more expensive.
reallynicestamps
·1 month agoIf you have a polite relationship with the unhappy buyer, just have them return it without tracking (if possible).
Then refund promptly when it does return.
Most people are honest.
ricarmic
·1 month agoI'd probably just advise that:
I'm sorry that that the CD was disappointing. I do check each CD with EAC to check for errors but sometimes the CD is just faulty and it doesn't show any errors. Given that the CD is faulty, to follow the eBay process, please just open a return request for it and I'll simply provide a full refund as the response. The CD can just be thrown out. Sorry for the frustrations and I hope you have a great day!
If it's a repeat buyer all is well, if not, you can decide whether a block is appropriate or not....
flipistics
·1 month agoDon't make it complicated. Ask him to request a return and refund him through that process.
You could note that you haven't refurbished the CD (I assume?), but the refurbishment process does not cause scratchy noises. CD data is digital and includes check bits. If there are issues it will either skip or completely refuse to play. I know there are some special CDs that won't play on some players so maybe it's an issue like that.