I sold a bike via ebay, guy that bought it moaned about a scratch on stanchions caused by parcelforce during delivery.

I offered refund straight away, he said he wanted to keep bike but things the forks might develop oil leak in time. Asks me to look into repair.

I asked friends who have had forks repaired – they had scratch filled for about £10-20 offered to pay for this.

Guy demands new stanchions or forks.

Ebay limit passes so takes me to same claims court, demanding £300 where do I stand here?

You have offered a full refund so don’t think he will get very far with the small claims court.

Attend, gather evidence, prepare, stay calm.

Exact opposite of that bloke earlier in the week basically.

Send him some wet and dry and a bottle of clear nail varnish and tell him where to go?

Surely if they were damaged he shouldnt have accepted them from PF?

I can’t see any court siding with him.

He bought 2nd hand
He was offered a refund and didn’t take up the offer
He didn’t make use of the proper Ebay/Paypal dispute resolution process
He’s been using the bike for at least 3 months

It’ll be a pain though as you’ll have to attend to represent your case. I would demand your costs when he loses.

Just send Fruit to argue your case. I hear he is very good, and is yet to lose a case.

Do you have it in writing/email that he agrees that parcelforce did the damage? If not, do the ‘for sale’ photos show that they were undamaged before you sent them?

The small claims process is quite a hassle for the claimant. Worth calling his bluff and pointing out what neninja said. You get offered mediation before it get’s to court and they’d tell the claimant he’s onto a loser.

It’ll be a pain though as you’ll have to attend to represent your case.

I sincerely doubt it will get this far.
I don’t gamble, but will buy the OP a pint as commiseration if it does. 😉

IANAL but I can’t imagine it’ll get any where when your first response was to offer a refund. When I went to small claims court it was all very “common sense” and not legal BS.

People will just try their luck. I sold some forks where the advert clearly stated there was a scratch. It was in a position that wouldn’t affect performance, and they were priced low accordingly. Buyer complains and wants a silly amount for a repair. I offer a full refund, he goes quiet – presumably because he knew the forks were a bargain in the first place. Sounds like your buyer is in a similar position – just trying it on IMO.

A shame that honesty is not in every Ebay members virtues, this guy sounds like a total tosser, go to a solicitor and see if you can get legal aid and countersue him for all the stress he’s caused you!

IANAL

Erm….well done?

But what will he get from small claims ? A refund which you have already offered. So he should also not be able to recover his court fees .

The court should side with you, section 1 of the Civil Procedure Rules is that every possible course of action should have been tried before court proceedings, I.e issuing a claim should be a last resort. You have done this as you have offered a full refund. I suppose if you can confirm that it was parcel force who scratched the station you could claim against them for the new stations or the fact you have had to refund the customer. Might be worth a letter before action to parcelforce.

Heavyman he won’t get legal aid for anything like this and there isn’t a counter claim for stress or inconvenience.

Just happened to come across this thread whilst looking for something else. I am the said ebay “tosser”, so thought I’d put my side of the story.

Bought a bike from the OP. It was delivered in a bike box, but all he had done was take the wheels off and put the bike in the box with no protection, no bubble-wrap etc… and cassette had badly scratched the the frame and one fork stanchion. On opening the box (after ParcelForce had left) immediately contacted the OP with pics and he did offer a full refund, but since I’d split and sold my bike whilst waiting for his to arrive I said that I’d rather come to some solution.

To cut a long story short, we exchanged emails, I contacted Mojo for a repair quote and sent this to the OP. Instead he offered to purchase another set of forks if I sent him the scratched ones in return (he offered this, I didn’t demand it). Seemed fair so I agreed. He did purchase another set of forks on ebay but then didn’t pay the seller and stopped communicating with me. I phoned him and left messages with no response and so then raised an ebay dispute, but by then it was outwith the dispute period, so had no option other than to go to small claims.

In the end it was settled through small claims mediation, point being there are always two (or more) sides to every story.

Should have taken the refund….. 😀

Did you win at court or didn’t it get that far?

monkeyboy – you should try reading the post immediately above yours.. you know, the only one that’s not 8 months old…

eemy – Member 

Just happened to come across this thread whilst looking for something else

What were you looking for?