As I said earlier this is the problem with long distance sales. Add in the international factor and it gets more complicated.
With a wire transfer the receiver often has to go to the bank and wait for the bank to fill out the paperwork to release the money. You can't simply reverse a wire transaction. The seller has to find out the information then fill out the paperwork etc... now with SOME banks this can be done online but not with all of them.
Then there is the question of the shipping costs, who pays? etc....
At the end of the day refunding the money means that the international seller takes a pretty good hit financially. When deals are done in person all these costs are minimized and come down to pretty much time.
Yes, the default position ought to be satisfaction guaranteed. But the buyer should also be doing extra diligent questioning and ask for every possible bit of information on the product before pulling the trigger. At the end of the day this isn't WalMart here, it's non-commerical people doing off-the-books private deals.
Whoever said over-describe was right. This is the only way to insure that there is no disappointment.
I once ran a sale on Ebay that I called the Crappy Cue Sale. I had a batch of junk cues that I had to get rid of. They were usable but in horrible condition. So I put up the description with every flaw and probably threw in some flaws that weren't there just to be sure. Surprisingly I started to get feedback where people said things like, "this cue is just fine" and "not nearly as bad as described" and even "best cue I ever used". Which only helped to spur more sales. The net effect was that I made a $1700 profit when all the cues were gone with many of the cues bid up to $40-50 on a no reserve $1 starting bid item.
You really can't go wrong with over-description. No one is misled, intentional or otherwise. And buyers are much more likely to be flexible in their expectations when an item is described accurately warts and all.
