Originally Posted by Lenton58

I must go back in my tracks and yield to your comment — to some extent. But rootboy's follow-up is also a point well-taken.

Let's look at it this way: there is a cut down the middle. On one side there are sellers trying to protect themselves from ... say, neurotic, obsessive and dysfunctional personalites who take a scratch or some evidence of road eash on a 40 year old item as a catastrophe and rip off. This may be an extreme, but I am sure a common ocurance. On the other hand, there are predatory sellers who use their intelligence and perverted skills to gouge as much out of the prospecting public as they can.

I believe that eBay has attempted to create something that provides an equilibrium and some justice in the auction market. Some people would will not agree. OK ... perhaps that's were we stand; things are not perfect and never will be. miami ... I am confident that you are merely protecting yourself from exploitive caprice.

Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is caprice and what is merely ignorance and stupidity. I once bought a vintage 531 frame that was carefully photographed and displayed on the auction site. I studied everything carefully. I took stock of the fact that virtually every vintage frame is liable to be out of alignment somewhere. A lot of 35-40 year old frames are going to come with 'issues' that many sellers will not know about. Anyway ... when the frame arrived, I quickly realized that one of two bottle cage positions was not on braze-ons, but rather some moron had chucked in a bit and bored two crude holes that were hidden by two dome-headed wood-screws that I had taken to be proper fasteners. This defect was never described and I could not pick out the vandalism from photos. The description made no mention of it. I was clearly in my rights to stuff the sale right up the seller's rectum. Was the seller an idiot, or had he pulled a nasty?

Sometimes it's hard to know, but I don't think that ignorance is a defense when you are selling or auctioning a product. But I do agree that the buyer has some responsibility as well. And still the weasels will hide behind disclaimers such as the nebulous one I cited above.