I don't get it
You see the clock online advertised as "rare", you have never seen nor heard of this clock in this color combination, it is priced high so you think it must be legit, you buy it and realize it is not. Now you are mad at the seller. In fact, I don't see where the seller really ever said it was rare, or original (maybe I missed it).
I am not condoning anything here...but if the color combo never really existed then it really wasn't "faked" was it?
We have all seen plenty of Eames shells painted in colors that aren't original for sale, never being mentioned that they are painted, but from experience know that the color was never offered so therefore must have been painted...how is this different?
Will you be sending the clock back once you get your refund? If so it will just be resold. I think at this point I would just hang onto it and display it as a reminder to myself.
Really, I'm sorry this happened to you. It was a shitty thing for the seller to do and they should be made to hurt, but at this point? Try to get over it, realize there are a lot of assholes in this world and try not to make it get to you.
I was burned back in the 80's by a seller of vintage guitars to the tune of 5 grand, still have the judgment against him, will never (obviously) see the money all because I decided not to send the guitars back to him after discovering they were fake (he had already sold them once, took the money I gave him to refund the previous buyer who then sent the guitars back to him which he then sent to me. I stopped the chain by keeping them and taking him to court).
I hope you get your money back
A reasonable and reliable seller would take it back, no questions asked. If she indeed bought like that she should be embarrassed she didn't inspect the item more thoroughly. Especially since she is supposedly an expert. The paint job is very obvious from your pictures. If she did it herself in a restoration job, that should have been disclosed. Nail polish is not ceramic glaze. That is just disgusting.
Have you seen it before in that color combo? From my eyes, looks like it was painted pink to go in a teenagers bedroom in a DYI project to match the pillows and shag rug.
Etsy will act if you open a case
In my experience Etsy's protections are similar to PayPal, and they can and will shut down shops that do not resolve disputes to the buyer's satisfaction.
Read the Etsy Help pages; search for "open a case". Do a search in the Etsy forums as well; lots of helpful advice there. Even if you paid via PayPal and not Direct Checkout (Etsy's in-house payment system), Etsy will follow up on your case and after the waiting period you can escalate. If you paid with PayPal, Etsy will advise you to open a Paypal dispute.
If Etsy decides the case in your favor, they will ask her to refund, although they cannot force a refund through a third party like PayPal. They will, however, suspend her shop if she does not comply with their request to refund.
So do your homework and start with Etsy, but be mindful of the PayPal deadline for a dispute and don't let it elapse. Do not close the Etsy case even if you open the PayPal claim. If PayPal doesn't rule in your favor, the last resort is to initiate a chargeback on your credit card if you used one.
CC chargeback is a bit more involved
Personally I wouldn't go the CC chargeback route before trying comparatively easier and quicker methods of resolution like opening an Etsy case and/or PayPal claim.
First, depending on the card issuer, the chargeback process can be tedious and normally involves more paperwork. It's not the kind of thing you want to be doing any more often than necessary.
Second, there is normally a much longer window, usually months, to initiate a chargeback -- certainly long enough to allow time for the Etsy/PayPal processes to run their course. I've even heard of people doing a chargeback a couple of years after a purchase, but it depends on the issuer.
Third, if the chargeback is for a "not as described" situation involving a vintage item, the card issuer may try to insist that you get a written "expert opinion" which in my case I managed to avoid, but only after strenuous argument. For less expensive items the cost of such an opinion, if available, may make the process not worth pursuing.
Yes Spanky. Thanks for...
Yes Spanky. Thanks for askin!
The seller had offered to refund money minus shipping and packing charges which were high-$70. That didn't seem quite right to me. She was really not nice about it.
Disputed it with Pay Pal and got all but my return shipping fee which was around $20 dollars.
The whole situation has made me reluctant to buy much on-line anymore. 🙁 There is a lot of competition for vintage. I think if people haven't been in the business for a while and handled a fair amount they don't know the difference between "excellent" and "fair" condition. Lots of people thought it would be easy to go on Etsy and flip things and there is the temptation for them to doctor things to make money. These days I want to handle an item in person. After this experience if I see something on ebay that doesn't have a lot of photos from every angle and in good light I refuse to bid on it and figure the seller is hiding something.
Glad to hear it, keewee.
I read a post back in the late 90s on an ebay board---someone said that he or she always took photos that were as close to possible as the experience of handling the object and turning it over and around to see all angles of it. I always did that with my photos. But I don't think that poor or inadequate photos are always a sign that the seller is trying to hide something. After looking at a billion or so listings on ebay and other sites since 1998, I'm quite sure that most people who take crummy photos simply don't have any objectivity about what their photos look like. They stand in front of the thing and snap a pic and look at it and say, "yup, that's the thing I just took a photo of" and boom. Uploaded. They know what it looks like up close, they just lack the ability to look at their photos of it with the eyes of someone who has never seen the thing in person.
Of course, plenty of people do try to hide stuff. Not saying that doesn't happen. But most just don't know how to take photos objectively. And yeah, it's worth asking for more photos.
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