I have sold literally thousands of items on eBay.  I long ago figured
out that the law of averages meant there would be premeditated crooks,
irresponsible buyers and mistakes made by me personally.  So I decided
to simply save stress and I do not fool with the feedback feature and
if a complaint arises or a package is lost I refund the money without
anguish on the assumption 99% of the other transactions will be fine.

I only insure items over $300.  I don't hold checks or do any
bookkeeping.  Once the stuff is shipped I have no control over the
events to follow so proving what happened or did not happen is moot
when someone on the other end is upset. It becomes my word against
theirs and I have no choice but to assume they are correct.  Out of
$60K worth of stuff, as I divested myself of things, maybe I have
shelled out $400 in lost or damaged items and I could have weaseled
out of most of that had I wished.  But for my $400 I saved endless
paperwork, stress anxiety and so forth.

The radio guy was a crook.  You 'neg' him to protect others and move.
Or you do what I will explain in a few sentences.  That's how I got
the four negs as retaliation for the crooks that I felt needed to be
flagged.

But eBay will not consider _any_ case and a crook will not respond
unless you use the Don-Winter-Handy-Dandy-Collection-System that
I personally developed and works _every time!_  I have even used it
with large government agencies.

And it is easy.  You go through all your drawers around the house and
get a stack of postcards, around 50, all styles, etc.  Or just buy
a bunch, around 50.  Then you compose a simple non-liable statement,
such as "I want my money," and hand-write it on the post cards with
your contact information.  Then every day you mail around three of
them, forever.

Pretty soon the recipient will tired of reading them, as well as his
employees seeing them, and he will ask you to stop.  But you do not
stop until you receive your money.  You do not negotiate and talk about
it via phone.  You just keep sending in the postcards until he sends
the money, do not stop on a promise of sending the money.

I use this only in two cases: (1) where the principle is important,
or (2) the money involved is large.

For example, when I retired from the Orange County School Board, my
retirement check would get started even after many trips to the home
office downtown, registered letters, jumping through all kinds of
bureaucratic hoops over a period of months, phone calls, etc.

Three weeks of the postcards and they called ME!  And I explained the
post cards would keep coming, that I was not longer willing to send
them any more filled out forms.  <Lots of luck!>  About a week later
I had a small stack of retroactive retirement checks.

Don Winter