OK, I might have been a bit harsher than harsh back there.
But look at this combination of factors on EBay: sellers who are feigning IQs below room temperature with beyond-credible bad spelling ("dile"), sellers blatantly disguising flawed goods via "clever" photography disguised as amateurish photography, and then also some truly crappy packaging that doesn't even prevent objects sliding around and rattling audibly in the box. At some point there needs to be at least a minimum standard for "doing business."
Ebay isn't a social forum: it's a marketplace first, and occasionally you meet cool people. Places like this are social forums: Social first and a bit of trading on the sidelines (Erik I haven't forgotten your AE speakerphone).
Sure, I cut people plenty of slack when they appear to be operating in good faith. I might have mentioned a blueish-greenish Tesla phone recently: it arrived with damage to the front right corner of the housing. But it was reasonably well packed, maybe not quite as ferociously well packed as it might have been, but within reason anyway. I don't have a problem with that kind of accident, and I'm not going to hold that against the seller. In fact I did business with them again.
On the other hand, a few wads of crumpled-up newspaper in a weak cardboard box, that's a different matter. The limit is smashed goods due to truly beyond belief negligently bad packing. Negligence is not excusable any more than when someone causes a fender bender: there is a standard for safe driving, and it's enforced by insurance rates as much as by the police. There needs to be an enforced standard for safe business practices in vast many-to-many markets.
FYI, the way I run my moral/ethical system in general, goes like this: There's "good," there's a large gray zone, and there's "bad," and then there's "truly evil." The gray zone goes sufficiently over the line from "good," that there's wide latitude to forgive, right up to the point where something is truly egregious. If something is questionable, or excusable, or there's a plausible explanation, or someone made a reasonable effort, I'm more likely to urge forgiveness. But when something is way way over the line, past any reasonable question, excuse, explanation, or reasonableness, then I tend to favor the harsh treatment as a deterrent to others. (And when something is in the "truly evil" category, such as remorseless murder for hire, organized child abuse, or wrecking the economy for speculative gain, then as far as I'm concerned that's where life in prison without parole comes in: lock them up and throw away the key.)
So as that applies to online selling, if something is in the broad gray zone of reasonable or excusable, it gets excused. If it's way over the line to the point of willful negligence, it deserves a penalty.
