I was so looking forward to getting a "Old bakerlite black telephone, made by Siemens,likely to be 1940 origin, wall mounted on its wooden base. Real collectors item." and thought it was a good price at £45 with 4 bids.
i.e. one of these http://www.britishtelephones.com/siemensb/085.htm
What I actually got:
Handset is not Siemens, but TR (Telephone Rentals)
Wallboard is at best incomplete and possibly not original -- looks like an offcut of desktop
Case cover fixing screws replaced by woodscrews and glued in. Had to be drilled out.
Case cover and base glued together. Only way in is through removing the back plate.
All internals missing. No plungers (and something glued in the plunger holes, so no hopes of restoring them), no hookswitch, no mechanism, no coils, no bell, only one bell gong, no terminal strip. No paster diagram.
Packing -- the bottom of one box, the top of another box, and some cardboard over the gap. The handset was over the phone of course, and no internal padding whatsoever. Strangely it wasn't broken.
The final insult is the seller asked for extra money for postage after the close of auction!!! I even sent extra on top to cover the paypal fees.
I put this down to incompetence rather than malice, but really it was not a good buy! £45 isn't much for one of those phones if in good condition or at least complete but it's quite a lot of money to me. This one isn't even restorable because of all the glue, it's just for looking at, which is fairly clearly what it was tricked up for by someone in the past.
Haven't decided on feedback yet.
Sounds like a return & refund situation, it's not as described, so you've every right to reclaim your money... :)
Quite agree, TwoCVBloke. The Seller may try and wiggle by saying that the handset and board could be seen in the photo, he didn't know about the internal condition and didn't say it was complete. However, he's in violation of e-Bay rules by asking for extra postage.
Open a Return Request and if the Seller doesn't accept it wait eight days and ask for e-Bay to judge it. They nearly always take the Buyer's side. If the Seller doesn't co-operate you may end up with both the 'phone and your money, though I can't see any way of getting the extra postage back.
Good luck.
Did you buy it on eBay?
Does he have a large seller feedback rating? (In other words, should he know better than to misrepresent the item?)
No seller feedback, 200+ as a buyer.
I'll probably live with it, as I'm not sure I can afford a better version. And in the swings and roundabouts I've had a couple of good buys this week.