Post #271725 by TikiJosh on Mon, Dec 11, 2006 12:34 PM

Not a recent story, but I bought a couple orchids mugs off Ebay a few years ago, the guy was selling 'em for $1 each. I bought like three. He says he'll combine shipping to save me money, and charged me like $20 for shipping. My fault for not asking about shipping first, I guess. Anyway, I give him the benefit of the doubt, and figure he must be doing the best packing job I'd ever seen, and it just cost him a lot to do it. Well the box shows up and it looks okay, but I can hear the glass rattle. I open it up and one mug is broken in three pieces, and the other two are chipped on the rims. The guy wrapped all the mugs together, like in a bundle using only a single piece of bubble wrap.
Then I look at the box again. It cost him less than $5 to send it. He charged me $15 for a lousy piece of bubble wrap? Of course I hadn't paid for insurance since everything was so cheap to begin with. So I send him an email to the tune of If you're going to charge $15 in handling, at least make sure you do a decent job of packing. Lots of back and forth emails with me pretty ticked off, and he eventually gave me a little money back and sent me another mug. It worked out to be some of the cheapest mugs I ever bought, but they're also in the worst condition, and they were way more of a headache than they're worth.
Ever since, I pretty much never buy off Ebay unless it's something I'm not likely to find locally.