Problem on eBay. Should I refund or not?


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I sold a storage / PVR drive on Ebay (Seagate Pipeline HD .2) and the buyer is asking for a return, claiming that the drive is faulty. Before shipping I checked the drive thoroughly, I performed a zero fill erase pass in HD Tune 5.50 (and ticked the Verify option to ensure written data was readable), and the drive passed, it was in excellent working order when I shipped it. I also packaged the drive carefully, putting it in an anti static bag and packaging it in a padded envelope.

 

As I know for a fact the drive was working when I shipped it and not on the verge of failure (I also checked the SMART attributes and they were all normal) I am pretty reluctant to agree to the return as I sold it because I was really short of money. I know it wasn't faulty when I sent it so the only options are as follows

 

- Damaged by Royal Mail (Unlikely as the buyer says the drive still spins up, that his computer doesn't read it. When posting the auction I noted that buyers choosing the free shipment option took responsibility for the risks of not using a tracked option)

- Damaged by the buyer during the install process

- The buyer is an idiot and doesn't realise the drive needs to be initialised and partitioned before it shows up in explorer.

 

I have a photo I took of the drive, and a screenshot of the successful test in HD Tune.

 

I'm pretty sure I met the legal obligations, the drive was provably working when I shipped it, I took as much care as I could when packaging it, and warned buyers that they accept the risk of not using tracked shipment options, but I would still appreciate some advice. Since I'm sure I shipped the drive working, should I take the hit and let it get returned to me anyway, when I know I did nothing wrong, or do I fight it and take my chances with PayPal?

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I sold a storage / PVR drive on Ebay (Seagate Pipeline HD .2) and the buyer is asking for a return, claiming that the drive is faulty. Before shipping I checked the drive thoroughly, I performed a zero fill erase pass in HD Tune 5.50 (and ticked the Verify option to ensure written data was readable), and the drive passed, it was in excellent working order when I shipped it. I also packaged the drive carefully, putting it in an anti static bag and packaging it in a padded envelope.

 

As I know for a fact the drive was working when I shipped it and not on the verge of failure (I also checked the SMART attributes and they were all normal) I am pretty reluctant to agree to the return as I sold it because I was really short of money. I know it wasn't faulty when I sent it so the only options are as follows

 

- Damaged by Royal Mail (Unlikely as the buyer says the drive still spins up, that his computer doesn't read it. When posting the auction I noted that buyers choosing the free shipment option took responsibility for the risks of not using a tracked option)

- Damaged by the buyer during the install process

- The buyer is an idiot and doesn't realise the drive needs to be initialised and partitioned before it shows up in explorer.

 

I have a photo I took of the drive, and a screenshot of the successful test in HD Tune.

 

I'm pretty sure I met the legal obligations, the drive was provably working when I shipped it, I took as much care as I could when packaging it, and warned buyers that they accept the risk of not using tracked shipment options, but I would still appreciate some advice. Since I'm sure I shipped the drive working, should I take the hit and let it get returned to me anyway, when I know I did nothing wrong, or do I fight it and take my chances with PayPal?

 

Try to asses the buyer in fixing all the issues before he wants to return it or is he just downright settled in returning. You have proof that you fully tested the HD, other than that, I have no experience in paypal legal battles...

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I've advised him to use diskmgmt.msc (disk manager) to see if the disk is actually being picked up, and I have advised him that it will need to be partitioned and formatted.

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You shipped a hard drive in a padded envelope?  I'm not sure how the Royal Post handles packages, but none of the shipping companies in America would I trust with shipping a hard drive in just a padded envelope.  

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I would always ship a hard drive in a small box with lots of bubble wrap around it. I wouldn't trust Royal Mail not to drop it and a padded envelope just wont cut it.

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If you said to me "I received a HDD through the post in a padded envelope and it didn't work" I really wouldn't be surprised.

 

In this case I'd be inclined to give the buyer the benefit of the doubt, but check if they have actually set it up correctly.

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Is a padded envelope the only thing you shipped It in? because I've never received a hard drive in less then 2 inches of bubble wrap or foam in a box that is about 2-4+ inches bigger then the drive.

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You shipped a hard drive in a padded envelope?  I'm not sure how the Royal Post handles packages, but none of the shipping companies in America would I trust with shipping a hard drive in just a padded envelope.  

 

I don't think hard drive manufactures would accept you returning one to them in a padded envelope even when it's faulty, they usually insist it's in a well padded box when I've returned them under warranty in the past.

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If the drive had been damaged in the mail there would be a sign of that. The buyer mentioned no physical damage, the drive spins up properly which makes me inclined to believe it's not physically damaged.

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If the drive had been damaged in the mail there would be a sign of that. The buyer mentioned no physical damage, the drive spins up properly which makes me inclined to believe it's not physically damaged.

You can damage a hard drive with no physical signs of damage... these things only take so much force before the parts inside start to bend or break... I've dropped hard drives of a desk before with no damage and they suddenly had read / write errors because the heads got out of alignment.. most drives have shock warnings on them with the max impact before issues start to happen, and usually, its not much

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The pic above does say 350 (or 360?) Gs, but I'm not really sure what kind if impact that translates to. Any ideas?

 

Well, 1g works out at 9.8-ish m/s/s. 350g , therefore, would involve a deceleration of around 3,500 m/s/s. If you drop your HDD from a height of, say, 9.8 meters (for the sake of convenience), it will be travelling at 9.8m/s when it hits the ground, around one second later. As soon as it hits the ground, that velocity will change to zero. Now, if you take that time interval between falling and stopping as instantaneous, then the g force becomes infinite. But of course, it doesn't happen that quickly -- the case will deform slightly, giving some measure of deceleration; depending on what you drop it on, the surface will also deform. If you drop it on, say, concrete though, the concrete isn't going to do a hell of a lot of bending purely to accommodate your clumsiness. 
 
In such a scenario as the one mentioned above, having the deceleration occur in just 1/350th of a second would be enough to apply 350g . By dropping the HDD onto concrete, that deceleration would be happening in a fractionally smaller time interval. I couldn't really say how quick it would occur, but to give some idea, Seagate boast a drive that can withstand a 2,000g shock -- this would be enough to protect it from a mere 1.5 metre drop onto concrete.
 
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I guess it largely depends on what your seller rating is and if you want to maintain 100%. What you described is why I have much more anxiety about selling tech items on eBay that I did when I started selling in '99. There are so many variables as to why an item wouldn't work upon arrival and, although it could be easy to assume that the fault is with the other guy, that isn't always the case.  On several occasions, I have had the buyer return the item and gave a full refund (including shipping) just to keep my perfect 100% rating, all the while knowing that I sent a perfectly working item.  Losing money on the deal sometimes is a painful reality, but crops up somewhere along the way to keep a perfect seller rating.  I avoid selling HDDs on eBay, mainly because it is an unknown as to how careful the shipper is with that item, however carefully it was packaged by me.

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I'm currently dealing with a seller who won't reply to my emails.  I ordered a matched pair of Xeon cpus and they decided to wrap them up tight in a thin padded envelope and ship them that way... one of the resistors on the bottom of a CPU broke off (during shipping i'm assuming) and I'm obviously not going to try to install the CPU like that.  

 

j9HDuc.jpg

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Is a padded envelope the only thing you shipped It in? because I've never received a hard drive in less then 2 inches of bubble wrap or foam in a box that is about 2-4+ inches bigger then the drive.

 

I have received a hard drive that had a chunk of bubble wrap at one end and at the other it had 5-10cm only covered by an anti static bag and that was from what i would consider a reputable supplier. 

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I'm currently dealing with a seller who won't reply to my emails.  I ordered a matched pair of Xeon cpus and they decided to wrap them up tight in a thin padded envelope and ship them that way... one of the resistors on the bottom of a CPU broke off (during shipping i'm assuming) and I'm obviously not going to try to install the CPU like that.  

 

j9HDuc.jpg

thin foam envelope? heck the potential static buildup alone would make me scream at them for shipping them like that...

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If you protected yourself by stating on the eBay page that the drive was being sold "as-is", "all sales are final", or "no returns", then I'd say you don't have to refund at all; however, it's always a tough decision to leave a customer empty-handed.

 

What I would do:

 

1. Let the customer know that simply telling you the drive isn't detectable isn't enough. There could be any number of configuration issues preventing it from being detected. They need to provide a diagnostic report, like S.M.A.R.T to prove there is something wrong.

 

2. If they're incapable of providing the necessary diagnostic report, you can tell them you can't help them anymore, have them take it to a computer repair company to have a S.M.A.R.T report printed (at their cost), or they can ship the drive back to you (at  their cost) and you will do it.

 

3. If you do end up refunding, make sure you have the drive in-hand before sending the money back. This is standard policy for any company.

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If the drive had been damaged in the mail there would be a sign of that. The buyer mentioned no physical damage, the drive spins up properly which makes me inclined to believe it's not physically damaged.

 

Not really.

 

There can be not visible damage to the pcb. Of course the data could be retrieved easily as the disk is still spinning but if the pcb has been damaged one way or another it wont be recognized by the bios and of course windows.

 

In a padded envelope it can definitely happen.

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Here's how it actually works on Ebay:

 

The buyer is always "right".  Yep, you heard me.  Even if the buyer would receive the object and then proceed to smash it on the floor, they can and will get a refund if they open a case.

 

I've gone through that crap a couple times and no matter how sincere you are and no matter how much proof you try to offer, as a seller, you will always get screwed in cases like this.

 

All you can do is try to settle it via email, but if he opens a case, you're basically screwed and the money will be yanked from your account.

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