Yes, definitely. Because the buyer in question returned something, I was obligated to refund them for it. Because it was not what I sent to them -- incomplete, open and damaged badly enough that I didn't recognize it as the item which they were sent as the one being sent back to me -- ebay was supposed to protect me. Which they eventually did. After I kicked up a fuss, readied my police report, and asked for assistance from ebay sources outside the Returns department.
With the buyer being refunded on ebay's dime, however, I should hope they will watch this person more closely now. It's their skin in the game now too. And, who knows, maybe this will have scared that person just enough that I fought back and that they won't try it again.
This is a problem with Returns in general. As a Cars collector, there was a well-known scandal within the community where a fellow 'collector' was buying four-packs of a certain release and then carefully swapping out the one 'exclusive' character of four that had the value to people, replacing it with another, and successfully returning them to the store from which they were bought. Then they sold those ill-gotten characters on ebay at a premium. Everyone knew who it was. Police had been contacted, and apparently the stores affected in the circle around where this person lived eventually clued in. But the person working at the Returns desk at that retailer just didn't notice or care any of the times the boxes came back with the wrong characters in it. It's fraud, plain and simple but unless YOU are the one being defrauded, it's not going to much matter until then.
The same thing happened with LEGO; certain people have also learned how to un-seal the factory-seals on boxes to take stuff out and then return them to the store missing the most important or valuable parts. LEGO is switching to unstoppable glue. Like, it takes a crowbar to open the flaps that have been glued now.
Back in the day, one of my friends worked at a Returns desk at Sears and she had horror stories about the stuff people would try to return. (Like evening dresses stained with deodorant, lipstick and gravy while claiming they were unworn.) When I worked the Customer Service desk at a grocery store in my youth, most of those returns were akin to, 'This cheese tastes funny' and the return would amount to a few dollars but the store was locally owned in a small town and the owner would give everyone the stinkeye, and people knew they would be shown the door if they tried that too often.
The River has set an unrealistic bar for Returns, I think. I bet you can buy a box of kleenex there and send it back a big stack of used Kleenex and still get your money refunded, no questions asked.
w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
3g~~_7.JPG "retroman_studios"){kind=avatar}
