davidgillon | Ebay Chair Return *Headdesk*

Friday, I didn't see it til late Saturday, the chair vendor agreed to a return, and said they would drive over to pick it up rather than paying for return mail, they also sent a bunch of details I'd requested on their other chair for sale on ebay in the hope I would buy that instead and offered to bring it over for me to look at.

Unfortunately the details actually confirmed (as I expected) that it's unusable for me as it stands, and even if I could eventually replace the back (which is the problem), I 've concluded there's no point getting a long-term spare chair that might not suit whatever back I do end up getting on the theoretical long term main chair, especially when its current back is unusable. So I emailed back on Sunday afternoon with a few details of the best route to get to me, that I wouldn't be able to confirm which days I'll be around until Monday evening, and told them there was no point bringing the other chair for me to look at (basically to ensure my enthusiasm didn't get the chance to override my sense, but also to be fair to them as they had been quick to accept it was their mistake and a return was necessary).

Sunday evening I got a return email saying "Whoa, I just realised that's too far to drive" and "We'll have to do return by mail, but I can't afford the postage right now, it'll be a few weeks."

Grrrrrrr!!!!!

They have confirmed they're accepting a return in the ebay system, and say that the money is now locked up with ebay rather than with them, but I can't get at it 'til the whole return process goes through. I think they're probably being genuine (it's a 3 hour drive each way), but it's slightly eyebrow-raising that the offer to drive over disappeared the instant the potential of me buying the other chair disappeared off the table (slight tactical error there, clearly). If they take long enough I may have to escalate the ebay problem resolution process just to cover myself. I need to check the effective dates on that.

On the more positive side of things I've finally found my draft letter to Wheelvhair Services from last year - guess the one file that didn't get transferred off the old laptop, and I'll be updating that to try and get a proper assessment, and hopefully a better chair, from them. I gave my GP the heads-up I was doing that on Friday. A plus-side of the whole ebay chair fiasco is I can now claim in the letter to have been able to 'borrow' a rigid framed chair for several weeks, and that even when it doesn't fit to the point of being painful it's a far better chair for me than the clown chair they dumped on my doorstep.