I happened to see a carpet kit on eBay for the boot of the MGB. Since the current bid was only $5, I put it on my watch list. I e-mailed the seller to see if the kit is made by Moss Motors (where my interior upholstery kit came from), and he replied:
I didn’t check out the website, and forgot about it for a while.
Then I was curious about the kit. Moss charges $110 for theirs; not a lot, but if this guy’s kit was comparable and could be had for much less, then maybe it’s worth another look. Since the photo he used was scanned from the Moss catalogue, I thought I’d see if he had any photos of his product. I sent:
This morning I got the following reply:
Okay, I’ve admitted that I forgot to check the website. Sometimes I get in a rush, and I forget things. Heck, you can see that in some of my posts. But I’ve just gotten out of bed, I’ve only had a couple sips of coffee, and this is the first thing I read when I logged on. Maybe he’s not trying to be rude, but I’m taking it that way.
So I went to his website. Same photo, taken from the Moss catalogue. :rolleyes:
Should I make a scathing reply? Or is that just my pre-coffee irritability coming out?
“I did check your website and was only able to find pictures from the Moss catalog. You may have been installing these kits for years, and they may be an excellent value, but I can’t tell that from the website since there are no pictures of your actual product. I would seriously consider one of your kits only if I could see the kit itself, or at least a photo. I recommend you buy a digital camera. I can’t imagine I’m the only sale you’ve lost because of this.”
Not scathing, but gets the point across. How was his feedback, BTW?
Good reply. The seller has 99.1% positive feedback. 1133 total feedback. One negative in the last 12 months, nine total negatives. 1016 positives. One neutral in the last week, three in the past six months, five in the past 12 months. The latest neutral says ‘Not quite as nice as I’d hope for but OK’. (That was for an interior carpet kit.)
The 99%ish feedback may not be the whole picture either. I think people are hesitant to give negative feedback out of fear of a retaliatory negative. If you read through all the positives you may find a number of positives with comments such as “I got what I payed for” or “Prompt shipping, but quality not up to par.” If it were me, I think I’d just get the last word (politely, like I suggested above) and pass on dealing with him otherwise.