"Jon Elson" wrote in message
...


Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:
"Paul K. Dickman" wrote in message
...

I hate to just jump on your misery, but why on earth are you buying art
glass on ebay?!!


No problem, Paul. Susan buys art glass from eBay because it is a
source
for an otherwise scarcely available commodity. We almost never travel,
so
she has almost no opportunity to see or buy things otherwise. Both of
us
recognize the risk, and to quite honest, up until this issue, she's had
relatively good results. Two scary previous experiences that were
readily
settled by the sellers, one even demanded returning our shipping fees.
Not
all people, we've found, are crooks. Some make a mistake and are
willing
to settle immediately.

Well, looking at Myers' feedback, you are the first unhappy eBay
customer he has had in 4 1/2 years! I note he says he has offered
a full refund. Did he actually make this offer? It seems pretty
unlikely that a real scumbag would have 1158 positive feedback
from 647 different buyers, and only one bad transaction listed.
The truly infamous Al Babin can't get 4 positive feedbacks in a
row before he gets a string of negatives and gets removed from
eBay. He rarely operates for more than 2 weeks before getting his
username pulled.

Jon


Yep, his incredible feedback is what gave Susan the confidence to bid,
especially when she got a reply from Mary that the item had no issues with
condition. It's all too hard to believe, right up until the time you see
the area in question on the vase. You also must have a firm understanding
of what defects do to both desirability and value in art glass. What might
be dismissed as "nothing" to the novice can have a profound effect on value
for those the sell and collect. That isn't making our task any easier
because we're the ones with the pictures of the repair, unlike his posted on
eBay, which show a perfect piece. Perhaps it might be a good idea for me
to post the picture of the repair for others to see? He accused us of
trick photography, but all we did is side light the area so it better
defined the repair, which I have already mentioned was determined to be a
repair, not an inclusion, by a certified, accredited appraiser that had
nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling lies. His reputation
would be on the line, and he is the author of published books, so being
right would be very important to him. We did not know this man until we
sought him for the appraisal. We were referred to him by the Antiques Mall
in Centralia. The bottom line on this issue is this: Whether it is a
repair or an inclusion, it SHOULD have been disclosed. All decent sellers
do so as a routine.

Regards the return, when I told Mary that we expected that they should
refund shipping charges because they had misrepresented the piece , she is
the one that got defensive, telling us she
had no obligation to disclose the anomaly, and their terms clearly state
that shipping would be at our expense. I brought to her attention the fact
that her terms also clearly state that they would disclose any anomalies
with the items they sell, and they hadn't done so, which lead us to bid on
an item that we, otherwise, would not have been interested in buying.
When she couldn't convince us that it was an inclusion, the discussion got
heated so we terminated the conversation. We received a follow-up phone
call from the owner,
Michael J. Myers, in which he told us that there was no way in hell
he would accept the item in return because we had upset his wife. In
other words, we can agree that it was an inclusion and they had no
obligation to disclose it, or he wouldn't accept it in return. He could
lie to us, but if we didn't agree with his assessment, then we must be
punished by being refused a refund.

*They lied about the refund* because he withdrew the offer to send us our
purchase price, minus shipping, which was over $50 both ways. He clearly
states that we "sealed our fate" in the exchange between us and eBay, which
I will gladly forward to anyone interested. It all boils down to this:
If they had been honest,
we wouldn't be where we are today. We wouldn't have bid, which is the very
reason we inquired before doing so. * They lied to us*, and they continue
to lie about how it has gone.

By the way, they did offer to accept it in return if we would discount the
amount by the $175 that eBay awarded Susan for all her trouble. In other
words, they would get the piece back, make a small amount for their trouble,
and we're out the several hundred miles of travel we had to do for the
appraisal, plus the time we have spent. The bad guys make a profit on
the heads of the victim? I'd rather die first.

EVERYONE that does business with these people should know and understand
that if they are unhappy and unwilling to eat a loss that is not at their
hand, they would be better off to not do business with them.

This brings to mind a guy that was selling certified items off eBay from the
Seattle area a while ago. One person complained and was ignored, yet when
the truth came to be known, everything that was being sold was fraudulently
represented by him, and he was the owner of the business doing all the
certification.

This is a quote from the email I received:

"I've followed the thread, ouch. Your comment about being Myer's first
ebay
"negative" reminded me of the Seattle Times story about Thesaurus Fine Arts,
beginning with their article in Jan. 2003. This outfit, owned by a
prominent Asian economist and professor, had a high-profile gallery in
Seattle and sold expensive "Chinese antiquities", authenticated by a
well-known lab in Hong Kong. Turned out nearly 100% of what they sold was
elaborate, entirely deliberate fakery, and that the gallery owner also owned
the "independent lab". He's now wanted for fraud but will never be
extradited back to Seattle."

Bad things happen when good people don't speak up, and often not everything
is as it appears.

Harold