Listing Error Question

John Eckhardt

I thought I made a good purchase of 9 stamps priced from $0.45 to $1.20 each, but the seller refunded my money rather than filling my order. He sent me the following message ... I have refunded your entire payment . Obviously there is an error in these listings.Really a $24.00 stamp for .45 . I apologize for this error....

I always thought a seller was obligated to honor their listings, but apparently that is not the case. I have made errors in my listings before and have lost money honoring the sale. Perhaps that wasn't required of me. I also didn't like the apparent "dig" towards me of buying a $24.00 stamp for only $0.45. I also purchased one for $1.20 which is 5% of catalog. Many stamps from this county are listed by sellers at 10% of catalog or less.

I would like to know how other sellers handle situations like this. What type of "feedback" should be provided?

Michael Almond

John:
If I was the seller than I would honor your order and make sure that I did not have any other listings that i had incorrectly priced. To me that is the right thing to do regardless of any other rules that might be in effect
Mike

andrew Hellenschmidt

Curious what the actual site policy is as I think auction errors stand firm.

andrew Hellenschmidt

John, I experienced several times over the years. Sellers should be careful as to what they post. Perhaps give forgiveness once.

Richard Willis

John, I have made errors in my listings before and have lost money honoring the sale. That is the right thing to do. It's not the buyers fault. I have the same thing happen to me and the seller would not honor the sale. I guess I wasn't out anything.
Richard

Jerry.Burkhart

i agree with your concern on this but compassion is always the best policy. compassion really has little to do with the person other than yourself. hopefully in the future you will not run into sellers that are not professional here. i have had very good luck with the dealers here. i would just move on and smile. :-)

John Eckhardt

Thanks for the feedback. Glad to know others do business the way I do. Hopefully we can "educate" this seller. I just sent him the following message. ...

It is very unfortunate that you chose not to honor my purchase. That is not the way to do business. I and several other sellers (see forum posts) have also made listing errors, but all of us "honored" the sale and bit the bullet.

Your comment that my buying a $24 stamp for only $0.45 was totally out of place. For your information, I also purchased 9 other GB stamps that day from a reputable dealer for $0.49 to $0.99 each with catalog values listed between $30.00 and $72.50 each. Therefore I consider buying a $24 stamp for $0.45 to $1.20 to be very reasonable.

I will refrain from leaving you negative feedback; however I also want you to know that we will not be doing any future business.

Ron Lenke

I hear your position John. I do marvel, though, that a $72.50 cat stamp selling for 99c. It's quite unsettling seeing that's just over one percent. Has the value of our products gone that far south??

John Eckhardt

Hopefully this seller doesn't make any more listing mistakes, otherwise I feel others will also being given a "refund" based on his reply to my message. ...

I SHALL REFRAIN FROM MAKING ANY COMMENT

Henry Brooks

I honor pricing errors (always). However if I see what appears to be an error on the sellers part I always send them an email advising them that they might want to look at the pricing on that particular stamp. Others have done that for me.

John Eckhardt

Carol ---- I would also advise the seller, if I saw it was an obvious error. However, on these particular stamps, the only possible "error" I saw was they might have been misidentified as being on "deep blue paper", when if fact they might have been on "bluish paper". It was impossible for me to tell in the scanned images. That type of error would reduce the cat value from $24.00 each to $9.00 each which was OK with me as they all had nice clean cancellations and I wanted the stamps.

Again, glad to know most sellers honor their mistakes. I will continue to do so.

Richard Willis

Just sold #1612 MNH $5.00 Plate Block. I Listed it for $9.97 by mistake. I will honor my listing its not the buyers fault. I need to double check next time.
Keep on Stamping
Richard

Wayne Buza

Yesterday I sold a plate block below the face value because it was a forever stamp and the value of it is more than it was when I listed it. I, too, need to do some checking for that issue.

John Eckhardt

Being honest may hurt the bottom line, but you know you did the right thing.

Bill O'Malley

Amen!