You might have caught a glimpse of a recent story detailing the turmoil of a US eBay seller when he sold a locked safe to a buyer, not realising that $26,000 was hiding inside. According to the Mirror the buyer is refusing to give the seller any money back. Who’s side are you on?
This story is interesting because it ultimately comes down to morals and opinion. Since the safe was sold locked and as the eBay seller said himself “what you see is what you get” this isn’t a legal matter. It was after all the sellers fault for not checking the safe but can fellow sellers feel sympathy for this poor guy and could the buyer have at least shared some of the findings?
The public seem to have split feelings about this situation. Some are on the sellers side and others are on the buyers but there are even the odd people who think this all sounds a bit too good to be true.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as the buyer left some positive feedback. At least his seller ratings are up. The seller has even given himself the perfect opportunity to start a safe business. Customers would be coming from far and wide hoping to score 20k.
So there you have it, don’t go selling locked items without checking them first as you never know what you might find.
Who are you sympathising with?
8 Responses
Hadn’t heard of that story.
I suppose if it’s sold as seen and WYSIWYG then it’s tough luck for the seller really.
They will know better for next time.
Out of interest, how did the seller find out that there was a load of money inside? Surely the buyer didn’t leave that information in the Feedback comment!!
Good luck to the buyer in this case. If the seller doesn’t go to the effort of checking the safe then their lose.
Tough luck to the seller, they should have checked it before shipping it out.
I believe the buyer should be putting in a claim with eBay “Not as described”
It the seller didn’t open the safe him/herself or pay to have it opened, then the seller would sell the safe in “AS IS” condition. This means that the contents of the safe would be the legal property of the buyer.
Morally, the answer can be more of a grey area. The options are: give it all back, give some of it back, give none of it back or give the money to charity.
Seems an old story, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104897/Mystery-safe-Man-finds-26-000-safe-bought-eBay–confused-seller-insists-empty.html
Lesson learned Tamebay – don’t copy anything from the Daily Mirror! Or any tabloid in fact. Even my “trusted local newspaper” is full of these hoax stories. And they have the gall to try charging a subscription fee… if you haven’t experienced it first-hand then don’t report it (which would be good practice to get “journalists” off twitter and the internet in general and out into the real world to do some actual research).