Originally Posted by cudak888

I recently bought a pair of rims from an eBay seller, based on a discussion we had about one of his existing listings and another set of rims he had. In the course of the discussion, I'd learned these came from a tandem factory, and some used "thick" spokes. He told me these had been laced with "thin" spokes. He made a special listing for them, I bought them.

When they arrived, I found out his definition of "thin" was 13 gauge, and that the particular brand of 13g spokes used had oversized spoke nipples - the rims had been drilled out so each spoke hole was 5.2mm. Unusable for modern 13g, much less 14g.

Some situations are not worth finding "fault" between the two parties, especially when one could argue that the headache could have been solved by being just a bit more specific with each other.

Granted, it sounds as if you ran into a particularly greedy sort, only too eager to promise you the world and still take your money when it turned out not to work despite the trumped up promises (whether out of ignorance or out of hopes you'd keep the item, we'll never know). As you've seen, eBay will refund the whole thing, regardless of circumstance, for any item (with exception to those listed For Parts/Not Working), so your risk was zero from the start.

Yes, the seller had to cover the cost, plus the shipping to you and for the return for their errors.



Might as well add "screw Jeff Bezos" here too, because Amazon is about the only alternative to eBay for online sales that aren't local. Unless anyone here wants to code up a competitor - which really shouldn't be difficult at all for a small group of reasonably competent web devs.

-Kurt