My Strangest eBay Transaction

I have mentioned troublesome transactions, but here is the story of my oddest transaction. By odd, I mean a transaction that was really unusual but not necessarily horrible.  It has been too long for me to remember the specific details, but I found where I wrote about it years ago. This was in response to a person questioning whether anyone should risk bidding on an expensive book offered by a seller with 51 negatives.
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I can tell you for a fact that last year he was an extremely slow shipper. Unless you don't mind waiting a very long time and can afford to be out the money for possibly months, don't bid on this auction!

I made the mistake of doing a Buy It Now on one of his books in July 2002. I saw the negatives, but it was a very good Nancy Drew book and the price of $35.00 was well under value. I decided to take the risk, and I knew it was at least a moderate risk. I remember thinking about it for about 5 minutes before doing the Buy It Now. I didn't receive the book and did file a complaint with eBay. He said that he was away on location doing filming (like motion picture - it sounded like he was a director or something) which was causing the delay and that he would put me at the top of the list.

This was in September 2002. By October 2002, I had given up completely on the transaction. Much to my surprise, the book arrived in the mail in May 2003, ten months after the auction, and yes, it was mailed via priority mail two days before I received it. I had not communicated with the seller since September 2002 and couldn't believe he honored the transaction. I still don't get it.

I'm sure this seller deserves many more than the 51 negatives that he has. I know I didn't leave him a negative, and he did deserve one. I think he was NARU'ed (no longer registered) within a month of my purchase so I wasn't able to leave a negative during the 90 day time frame for leaving feedback. He must have worked things out with eBay since last year. If you look at his feedback, there is a one year gap in the feedback. Maybe he has straightened out his life since last year, but even so, there is no way I would bid on this expensive of a book offered by a seller with that many negatives.

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Here is a link to the seller's feedback profile, and this is his negative and neutral feedback as viewed on Toolhaus.org.  I've never forgotten his ID since the transaction was so unusual.  The ID has a total of 157 negatives and neutrals.  He was kicked off eBay for the second and apparently final time in 2007.  It is amazing that eBay let him go on for so long with that kind of record and especially that eBay gave him a second chance after he was kicked off the first time.

It's been so long that I can't remember for certain, but I'm pretty sure that in the fall of 2002 I filed a claim using the buyer protection program that eBay had at that time. That program had a maximum payout of $200 and did not cover the postage cost.  The program also had a $25 deductible.  This meant that the program paid out $35 minus the $25 deductible.  I received $10 back but was out the $25 deductible plus the postage cost. 

In the end, after ten months, I finally had my book and at a $10 discount thanks to eBay's buyer protection program.  How's that for an odd transaction?