At 02:06 AM 9/9/02 -0400, Bennett Paul wrote: Hi Paul. I knew that id sounded familar but I couldn't place it. why didn't you put your name on the message? Incidently, I did Juat so the rest of you know what's going on. Paul called me on the phone and wanted to buy a VME GP-IB that I had ALREADY posted on e-bay. He wanted me to cancel the auction and sell it dirctly to him. At that point, two other people had already bid on it so I declined. Not only is outside selling against my user's agreement with E-bay but more importantly it's not fair to the other bidders. Call that suspicious if you like but I'd do the same thing again. That's true. No, not "too picky" just a cop-out. If he deserved negative feedback you should have posted negative feedback and not worried about it. I just posted negative feedback on someone for the first time, after I couldn't contact him via e-mail or telephone for over a month. After I posted the feedback he contacted me and told me that his secretary was supposed to have handled the transaction while he was on vacation. It's regretable that she didn't and that he got negative feedback but that's what happens if you leave things up to someone else without checking up on them. The Then maybe you should point that out to the seller before he ships it. I know you shouldn't have to but personally I'd rather be safe than sorry. I frequently get requests for special shipping, packaging, etc and I usually comply with their requests. So do mine. Even my books go out in anti-static bags! I bought a big pile of them and use them for EVERYTHING. I have to agree there. Too many sellers are trying to make a living just on what they charge for "handling". (You'll notice that a lof of commercail companies are doing the exact same thing). If I'm interested in it, I E-mail the seller and ask about that on EVERY auction that has additional charges. And I usually deduct the "handling" cost from what I'm willing to pay for an item. If they charged a "packing" or "handling" fee and the item was damaged due to improper packing I would file a complaint with E-bay (and file negative feedback) if the seller didn't refund my money. I must say, you seem having a lot more trouble with it than I do. I seldom have that problem and I've had leterally thousands of items sent to me. The items that I recieve damaged are usually do to gross mishandling by the shipping company and have nothing to do with how it was packing. Naw, they're worth at least $14. <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2049995705> That looks like a pretty simple and compact item. How did they manage to pack it so that it was damaged, put a stamp on it and send it bare? It looks like even a simple box would have protected it (not that that's what I'm recommending). Why didn't you post negative or even neutral feedback? Then why didn't you post negative or neutral feedback? I checked all the way back to June but didn't find it if you did. This and the one above are the only two that I checked and I didn't see any feedback on either one. Joe