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Ordered some solar auxilia via ebay that seemed painted fairly well. I was pretty excited about them, and then I opened em up; they were all packed into one bag loose - so you can only imagine what this did in transit. The damage wasn't terrible but it sure is annoying. That and the pictures in the lighting didn't tell the whole tale of the hodge podge painting coverage. I can't tell what was chipped in transit, and what was unintentionally missed when the person painted it.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me, and it sure isn't the worst one. I once ordered some bolt action stuff that looked nice, but the guy threw the plastics in with the pewters, and yea... it was sad. I told the guy, but didn't bother looking for recompense, I just didn't care to collect it from 'someone' who would be that oblivious.

If you order anything on ebay pay attention to the lighting of the miniatures (ask for more photos) and don't be afraid to ask for a discount if they were careless with shipping (if not recommend for them how they should pack it - offer to pay extra even).

Anyone else have horror stories they care to share?

The closest I have is when I ordered some inks for use with making into Les Bursley's washes.

The inks were in glass bottles. They lady packed them by lumping all the bottles together and wrapping them in a single sheet of newspaper inside a postal box. In what is sure to be a huge surprise to everyone reading this, some of the bottles broke in shipping, so I got a box that was dripping with ink; the processing plant had to wrap the whole thing up in plastic wrap just so they could deliver it.



The really irritating thing is when I contacted the last about a replacement, she got super rude and blamed it on the post office. I responded by telling her I would open a case, and I would win, and I would get all of my money back. and it would be super helpful if she would not just waste everyone's time and just replace the bottles that broke (which is, I think, more reasonable than she deserved).

She responded by cursing me out.

So, of course, I opened a case, and of course, I won, and so on. It just wasted like 2 weeks.


Annoying, but not really a horror story per se.

I don't use ebay as a rule.

However, when I do ship stuff, I make sure it's all well packed, and hope that people I do trades/sales with would do the same for me.

I, however, worked in logistics and shipping for Government stores, and got quite sick of having to re-send the same order of lab glassware because one (or more) of the packers couldn't be arsed or didn't know HOW to pack it properly (and not counting the number of times that the distributors shipped it to us in packaging not up to the task). So breakables get packed well.

I've had a couple items that I got were pretty badly shipped. Noting horrendous, but over time enough for me to limit ebay purchases pretty much to NOS or NIB.

I do scout for bits from ebay with a healthy appetite, and am a regular customer of the 3 most common bit stores on searches, and have never had problem 1 with any of them. I don't buy from anybody who doesn't have a 99.>5 user rating, and reported transactions in the hundreds if not thousands.

Ouze wrote:
The closest I have is when I ordered some inks for use with making into Les Bursley's washes.

The inks were in glass bottles. They lady packed them by lumping all the bottles together and wrapping them in a single sheet of newspaper inside a postal box. In what is sure to be a huge surprise to everyone reading this, some of the bottles broke in shipping, so I got a box that was dripping with ink; the processing plant had to wrap the whole thing up in plastic wrap just so they could deliver it.

Spoiler:

The really irritating thing is when I contacted the last about a replacement, she got super rude and blamed it on the post office. I responded by telling her I would open a case, and I would win, and I would get all of my money back. and it would be super helpful if she would not just waste everyone's time and just replace the bottles that broke (which is, I think, more reasonable than she deserved).

She responded by cursing me out.

So, of course, I opened a case, and of course, I won, and so on. It just wasted like 2 weeks.


Annoying, but not really a horror story per se.

There's a lot we don't agree on but I'm with you here. Good job.

I've had some stonkingly bad packaging in my time.

Worst was probably when I bought a Balin's Tomb with an accompanying LotR plastic fellowship (built) and the seller had a problem. The tomb was boxed, but the figures weren't.
So he taped them in a food bag to the outside of the box, wrote my address on the box, and mailed that.

Weirdest was someone who sold me two old slim DC heroes RPG supplements and a small Grenadier box of figures, and packaged them by wrapping them in a stack of sixteen intact newspapers, boxing that, and mailing it.
The postage cost them more than the auction total.

As a seller, I sell clothing I've made, and I hate selling abroad.

My wife collects Meiji era Japanese ceramincs. She has had several eBay items delivered in bits because of shoddy packaging.

When it happens we take photos and complain and get the money back. But it is a crying shame to see a beautiful work of art that has survived 100+ years lying in shards because some idiot thought a single sheet of newspaper would be adequate protection.

To tell a more positive story, I bought my Russian 6mm Napoleonic army from Reinforcements By Post, who operate from Bangladesh. The army was delivered with the large bases of cavalry and infantry individually packed in small cardboard boxes filled with puffed rice, and the smaller bases (generals, etc) wrapped in tissue and packed in small cardboard boxes.

Unpacking the army was like an archaelogical dig, unearthing a new little treasure in every emall carton, with the only problem being that the puffed rice grains had a tendency to scatter around, so I needed to hoover the room. Much better than polystyrene popcorn, though, as the rice went into the compost.

Ouze wrote:
she got super rude and blamed it on the post office

It's amazing how many people don't understand, including amazon, that how something gets to you is not the buyers problem. You pay them to get goods to you. How they subcontract the shipping is down to them. They can use the post office, a courier, a carrier pigeon, leave it in the care of a traveling monk on pilgrimage or employ 10000 commoners to deliver it in a single round. As long as it gets to you in reasonable time. People seem to think that once they have passed it to the post office then they have no more responsibility. I have had far too many discussions with people who won't re-ship stuff until the post office has paid them for loss/damage and I have had to argue with them that it is not my problem.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
My wife collects Meiji era Japanese ceramincs. She has had several eBay items delivered in bits because of shoddy packaging.

When it happens we take photos and complain and get the money back. But it is a crying shame to see a beautiful work of art that has survived 100+ years lying in shards because some idiot thought a single sheet of newspaper would be adequate protection.

That's heartbreaking. :(
I used to collect Yare Dragons, which whilst not in that league, were odd, hand made pottery dragons produced by one studio by a certain river. They have a unique colouration/glaze that was only done there, and are a generational thing that won't be remembered in future quite likely.
I say "used to"... I got too depressed by the amount of casualties. Some of these things were one of a kind.

Ah man.

I have a tale from the opposite end, as a couple of years ago I shipped out a massive painted Eldar army, of which every figure was metal.

Wrapped and taped in rolls of bubblewrap and padding, everyone seperated and no one touching, in a massive secure box.

Added a note inside the box begging customs to be careful with them, just in case they opened the box.

They arrived to the owner semi unwrapped and dumped back in after a customs check. So many were chipped and damaged, it was horrendous.

I wish you could just freaking trust the postal services when you send thing, but.. oh well :(

That sucks. I've never had a bad experience with customs but I know perfectly well I've just been lucky.

 Ifalna wrote:
Ah man.

I have a tale from the opposite end, as a couple of years ago I shipped out a massive painted Eldar army, of which every figure was metal.

Wrapped and taped in rolls of bubblewrap and padding, everyone seperated and no one touching, in a massive secure box.

Added a note inside the box begging customs to be careful with them, just in case they opened the box.

They arrived to the owner semi unwrapped and dumped back in after a customs check. So many were chipped and damaged, it was horrendous.

I wish you could just freaking trust the postal services when you send thing, but.. oh well :(

My company deals in diamond product and we've had instances where customs pulled the stuff out of it's casings, banged it together during the inspection process, chipping the diamond and sending it on to the customer, giving us product we had to eat.

I use ebay a lot and I hardly ever have problems. Though with miniatures I'm usually buying stuff to fix up, or strip and repaint so I don't really mind if it's all chucked in a box together. I have received stuff where it seemed like more good luck that it survived than anything. I remember my dismay at having my new hard drive dropped through the letter box in padded envelope.

The only thing I recall actually breaking in transit was a set of vintage plates that I bought as a present for my aunty. I think the person had sort of tried to pack them well, but just didn't seem to understand how physics works. The entire stack of plates had been taped tightly together (without separators) into one big 2 kilo brick. Then placed in a large flimsy box that had been quite liberally filled up with news paper, but not densely enough to stop a big 2kg wrecking ball from moving around inside. The box was sagging quite badly when the postman handed it to me. And unsurprisingly half the plates had broken, all in exactly the same pattern. Probably from exactly the same knock reverberating through the whole stack. Again, the person wouldn't accept responsibility, and blamed it on the royal mail. I did get by money back in the end, and managed to eventually complete the set again from different sellers, but I was so annoyed with the person for insisting it wasn't her fault, I made a bet with her. Since I had to forward the plates overseas to my aunty in Ireland, I told the seller that if a single plate that I packed broke in the post, I would give her back the money for the whole set. Needless to say, I packed that gak like it was going to get fired out of a cannon, and they all arrived perfect.

I haven't bought much lately. When I was first getting into 40k, I bought a ton of bits to bling out my troops. Had fun and all.

My only real advice for ebaying is NEVER ebay drunk.

Sure, I got a good deal, but I didn't NEED 2x boxes of assault terminators and 2x boxes of regular terminators.

Never again. As lord as my witness... Ooh! Black Templar upgrade pistols and chainsword! Where is my credit card?!?

I eBay everything and have damn fine luck.
I barely buy stuff from GeeDub because I lack the funds to do so.

Just out of interest, how does ebay handle stuff in the US?

Over here people will try and reclaim their money off you if you happen to put the bubble wrap out of place....the sad part being paypal will 9/10 grant them their money back with very little you can do about it.

I refuse to sell car parts on ebay as people just seem to take their non working part off the car then claim that was the one you sent, paypal just gives them their money back no questions asked.

Daston wrote:
Over here people will try and reclaim their money off you if you happen to put the bubble wrap out of place....the sad part being paypal will 9/10 grant them their money back with very little you can do about it.

This is why I dislike selling to anyone outside of the US. People in the US tend to be less a-holish because I'm also in the US and can pursue action if needed. Much harder to do that with a buyer in another country. I understand the reverse is also true.

I don't sell on ebay, only buy.

If I have something to sell I go elsewhere, I don't trust ebay. From experience the are only interested in th %fee, nothing else, and will shaft a seller without a second thought.
Buying is generally safer.

Another warning: at a Scenario Day yesterday, an out-of-town visitor was boasting of all the recasts he had, and how he planned to unload some he no longer wanted on eBay. He figured as long as he didn't say they were Forgeworld, the buyer couldn't complain. He's also given them all a coat of primer to cover up the resin difference (especially watch for Solar Auxilia - what he was planning on selling). Sorry, can't give any tracking info - I've never met the guy before, and didn't get his name.

It baffles me how little some people know about how to ship things.

Had a friend send me a hand me down video card. GTX 980, so it's pretty expensive as far as video cards go. When the box arrived, I discovered that all he did was put the card in it's original packaging box, wrote my address on that, and mailed it as is. I've had pretty obscure stuff come up "missing" in the mail. I guess an incredibly obvious $400 video card just screams sting operation, so it arrived without issue.

As for shipping things out, I just spend like 25 bucks on a sheet of bed foam, and cut it up. Grab one of those long/large boxes for magic cards, put a sheet in, put minis on top of that, then put another sheet in then close it for super cheap army transport. For mailing things, I'll wrap or sandwhich things between them. Never had an issue to this day.

I bought a 2000 point Tyranid army - about 60 small bases, a few MC's, all plastic...

And two pewter Hive Guard.

You can see where this is going. The seller shipped it all loose in one box, no packing material whatsoever, and the wrecking ball Guard models absolutely destroyed half of the plastics. I still haven't bothered fixing them, it's just too frustrating.

At least I was refunded most of the money.

I have never sold anything on eBay but I do buy stuff fairly often. Luckily, I've never had anything like what happened with Ouze... the worst I've had is a slight smashed box. So far, it's happened twice; once with a AMT/ERTL Virago model and the other was a 1/350 USS Ingersoll model kit, and both times the plastic inside the box was in fine shape.

I stress out when I ship out my commissions though. I found a huge stack of pink packing foam at work, so I took it home and I use it to line all of my shipping boxes. Then wrap everything in bubble wrap and then fill all voids in the box before sealing it so nothing moves around. Sometimes I even make cutouts in the foam for individual models, kind of like Battlefoam case.

Why are the customs allowed to recklessly open, throw around and even destroy our stuff if they feel like it?

Good ending to this thread - I ended up getting a partial refund at near 50%

I started repainting 'em and figured out a new colour scheme that I actually like more:

 Ifalna wrote:
I wish you could just freaking trust the postal services when you send thing, but.. oh well :(

I got one!

I friend of mine was shipping out a Warmachine army, all packed nicely and he paid extra for careful handling (it's a thing!)

He paid the shipping fees and handed the package to the rather corpulent lady at the post office. Then he witnessed as she got up to take the package to the back room, stumbled, dropped it to the floor and stepped on it.

There is no conclusion to this because he just ran out of the post office, as otherwise he'd probably do something that would land him in jail. The end.