I want nothing from Greg. I offered him the chance to make things right, by paying the cost to put the cue in the condition he claimed it was in. He refused, I advised him that I would leave honest feedback about the transaction. I left him 1 star for item description, 3 stars for communication, and 5 stars for shipping.
First, I want to say that it's too bad this thread has descended into whether or not the op actually has a son or if the op is really Justin or knows the address where a certain pool hall was or even what the market value is for this cue, if he, in fact, got a great deal or not because all of that is irrelevant to the central issue, imo.
bowiebill, looking at your response above, it demonstrates a few things to me:
You are very good at careful wording because you make it sound like you were being generous where you said
"I want nothing from Greg. I offered him the chance to make things right, by paying the cost to put the cue in the condition he claimed it was in. He refused"
What you are not coming to terms with is the fact that in this transaction while you can certainly *suggest* to the seller that he consider contributing to a refinish, he is under zero obligation to do so.
What he was obligated to do was to let you return the cue for a full refund and he did that and even offered to cover all of the shipping costs which he wasn't obligated to do.
I get that you are frustrated over how the cue arrived but the seller offered to put you back to where you were before doing this deal and you chose to go another direction by keeping the cue and assuming whatever work you wanted done.
When I see an eBay seller with over 2700 all positive feedbacks who also has an extensive all positive iTrader rating here on az, my first thought is that this guy has busted his ass dealing honestly and making sure his customers are happy.
So if I did biz with him and something wasn't as it should be I would not have immediately thought I was dealing with a liar or a crook. I would have figured this cue slipped by, maybe he was having a bad day or whatever, but not that he was engaging in something dishonest.
When you brought it to his attn that the cue had a problem, he offered to make you whole. He was under no obligation to participate in the cost of a refinish.
You decided for whatever reason to keep the cue but then you wanted a pound of flesh so you ruined his perfect ebay rating by issuing a negative (because he wouldn't agree to pay for a refinish) plus posting this thread trying to drag his rep through the mud.
The seller absolutely should have caught the buttsleeve issue.
You overreacted.
That is the bottom line.
imo
best,
brian kc