E-Bay: What can I do If the buyer won't Pay?

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Originally Posted by Alan Klein

Why would he sell it less than he paid? I'm missing something, Bob.

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We never got an answer to that. He was simply trying to upset the marketplace for his own reasons.

We had a fairly similar problem with Heliopan. A guy in the Virginia mountains was somehow direct importing filters from somewhere in Europe and the factory wasn’t supplying him.
He would then smuggle them into the USA without paying duty. He then sold them far below dealer cost on EBay. Since we owned the Heliopan trademark in the USA we could make eBay stop all non authorized sales.
We got in touch with this guy and offered to buy all of his inventory at our cost and make him an authorized dealer.
He said that he couldn’t do that as he was on disability and he would have to register as a business with VA and then have to report his filter income to the state as well as declare the sales as income to IRS.
So he decided to continue his black market activities!

Isn't this the basic problem many industries have had with China? And it is not just from e-Bay. In Houston there is a multi block strip along a major therefore many just call "Harwin" (the name of the street) that has shop after shop offering products of every sort that are openly known to be pacific-rim knock-offs.

There is a Chinese company making "Summicron" copy lenses too, and everyone on the Rangefinder forum is enabling the fraud, discussing them, buying them, letting the guy have free advertisement. Why? Same reason everyone shops at Walmart. It's cheaper than when we had mom and pop stores in every town, selling American goods. No one will buy a real Summicron, but they'll buy a Chinese counterfeit.

Gentle Irony alert!
That seems a bit strong. I don't think this is the hill to make a stand on. The patents on the design are expired. The labeling of the lens has nothing Leica about it. Are you much pissed at Cooke for making a knockoff Pinkham and Smith? or Lomo for making a Petzval? And conflating Leica with American goods is just a wee bit disingenuous, eh.
Anyway thanks for letting us know about them.
Irony off.
Your underlying point is well understood but this company's lenses look like an honest effort.
Regards
Bill

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Originally Posted by cowanw

Gentle Irony alert!
That seems a bit strong. I don't think this is the hill to make a stand on. The patents on the design are expired. The labeling of the lens has nothing Leica about it. Are you much pissed at Cooke for making a knockoff Pinkham and Smith? or Lomo for making a Petzval? And conflating Leica with American goods is just a wee bit disingenuous, eh.
Anyway thanks for letting us know about them.
Irony off.
Your underlying point is well understood but this company's lenses look like an honest effort.
Regards
Bill

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Pinkham and Smith are long out of business. And Petzval is a lens design. Summicron should be an enforceable trademark of Leica but Leica USA can not own and enforce that trademark as they are a subsidiary of the Leica factory. The factory would have to enforce that trademark violation.

I recently bought a new Nikon battery pack from a Unique Photo in NJ, the thing wouldn't charge. This is a $150 made in Japan EN EL 18c . I contacted Unique by E-mail, they didn't hesitate, put another unit in the mail. I contacted Nikon USA, they wanted pictures, I even sent a little 10 second video of the charger giving an error code.

As Nikon said these are "smart batteries" . I have a free replacement from Unique, never heard back from Nikon. Makes me wonder if it might have been a counterfeit that slipped in the supply chain. Probably not. The "Smart Battery" is interesting. To get the high frame rate out of a D850, it's not a matter of voltage etc. You need to have the grip, 8 AA cells won't do. You need a MH-26a charger (D4, D5, D6) and a 18b or 18c battery pack with a chip, that say's "It's OK to shoot 9 frames a second" :rolleyes:

OK I know I'm off topic, selling, especially, on Ebay can be a chore. I pay a friend who runs a Ebay store to sell my stuff, he gets a 20% commission, which I think is so low, because he knows I will spend it in his shop.

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Originally Posted by Bob Salomon

Pinkham and Smith are long out of business. And Petzval is a lens design. Summicron should be an enforceable trademark of Leica but Leica USA can not own and enforce that trademark as they are a subsidiary of the Leica factory. The factory would have to enforce that trademark violation.

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I have not really got a dog in the fight except fairplay. The lens maker makes no reference to Summicron, only the commentariat.

Anybody ever have one of the Stanly/Aladdin stainless vacuumed bottles for coffee? The older ones have a lifetime guarantee inscribed on the bottom. I contacted them about my 40 year old quart and pints which have actually been around the world and had gotten tired.

The company customer service folks told me to send them a picture of the items and they sent me two brand-new vacuum bottles . . .without a guarantee engraved on the bottom.

...lol...

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Originally Posted by drew bedo

anybody ever have one of the stanly/aladdin stainless vacuumed bottles for coffee? The older ones have a lifetime guarantee inscribed on the bottom. I contacted them about my 40 year old quart and pints which have actually been around the world and had gotten tired.

The company customer service folks told me to send them a picture of the items and they sent me two brand-new vacuum bottles . . .without a guarantee engraved on the bottom.

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They honored their guarantee With the first replacement and bought you out with the second! Probably a good deal since I’ll bet the company, the one you purchased from, no longer exists even though the name and products persist.

That’s actually a good news story!

Were the replacement products as good as the original?