I recently had an item returned on eBay, pretty standard, I have free returns enabled for all items.

Unfortunately, this time the buyer swapped out the item for a similar one and then initiated a return. I’m a bit leery of eBay policies, so I won’t post the buyers name here. I have reported them though.

The item sold was a two pack of black and color ink for Canon printers. When I got the return shipment arrival notice, I issued the refund without concern. I didn’t check the returned item until the next day.

That was my mistake.

The BLACK ink cartridge was swapped. The buyer even returned it in a hard case with an orange sticker on it. The one I shipped was sitting in an open plastic wrapper with a Yellow/Green seal on it.

Weighing the cartridge also revealed it was 0.8 oz lighter than a full unit.

My loss is the dollar I paid for the ink plus the return shipping cost of $4.76. I can still probably sell the color cartridge on its own and I can recycle the BLK one for a small return.

It still is disappointing, I don’t recall any other times I had a bad buyer.

I’ve had odd returns certainly, like when someone sends and offer or haggles over the prices in chat and then returns it saying they ordered by mistake.

I mean, like, just imagine someone pulling that crap at a yard sale. “Oh, yeah I didn’t mean to buy that.” What? After you spent an hour haggling the price down!