Hi Everyone,
I am a seller on eBay, and I recently sold an Omaha the Cat Dancer porcelain statue to a guy in Spain. The statue sold for $50, which is actually far below what it's worth. Oh well, you take the good with the bad. The seller had been sending me messages about helping him out by lowering my shipping cost, (which by the way, I always include insurance and tracking, on me). I took off $5 from the shipping to help out. It was getting to be a strange scenario from the start because he told me he usually had his purchases shipped to a family member in Las Vegas, who would then ship it to him in Spain, but this time he didn't want to bother them, and wanted it shipped to him direct, but asked for a little help on shipping. Long story short, I shipped it, it arrived, and now he writes me that they are asking him for $35 for an import tax, do I know anything about this? I responded, that as far as I was concerned the cost of shipping, which was also $35, was paid for on my end, and he should check if his government has an import tax, and that'd be that. Now he sends me another message:
"Hi Dude, they told me there's an import tax here in Spain. Curiously, the tax is 35 dollars like the shipping costs, and they told me (also) that you must pay it if I return you the item. I don't know what (...) to do. Tomorrow I'm gonna speak with eBay on the phone. I'll keep you informed.
Regards from a crying kid."
Now if you look at my feedback under tripletn5n0o, it's stellar. I feel like I'm dealing with a child here, "DUDE"?, and if I say no, I'm gonna get a negative feedback. It'll end up costing more than the actual item was bought for to ship it back to me. How would you deal with a person like this, and I feel if your grown up enough to bid on an item, you should be grown up enough to pay for it, shipping, tax etc.
On a separate note, has anyone else noticed the amount of sellers now who are putting up unlicensed statues and getting away with it (particularly Superman and Batman)? The one time I tried to sell 2 unlicensed statues (Superman), and for less than I bought them for, I got caught, and threatened with copyright infringement. I guess all the wonderful unlicensed statues I bought and proudly own, are stuck with me forever.
Sorry for the rant. I needed to vent. Thanks in advance for any advice.
