by robbie_olive » Jun 8th, '12, 10:05
I too have had a problem with a vendor on Ebay, and I didn't know whether to run it by you first or just put it out there, as I didn't want to get into trouble. The Ebay seller I refer to goes by the name 'kokusenya', who I think is based in Germany. He usually sells tea ceremony items, such as chawan, mizusashi (cold water containers), chaire (tea caddies), etc...
Anyway, I have purchased twice from him; the first time I bought a mizusashi, which thankfully arrived and was intact, but was poorly packed, and took over 6 weeks to get to Australia, when usually it only takes less than 1 week. Unfortunately, the tomobako that came with the mizusashi had broken, so I had to glue that up. The seller made no attempt to package the item carefully, only a single layer of bubblewrap in a carton box that could barely fit the tomobako!! I wrote an angry letter and gave him negative feedback, but no response.
It gets worse....
The second time I bought from 'kokusenya', I bought a chawan by Living National Treasure Miwa Kyusetsu X (basically, the god of Hagiyaki!) I paid for it, it arrived pretty quickly, but when I opened the package, the chawan was broken!! I was devastated, as you could imagine!!!
Rather than getting depressed about the amount of money I had just spent on it, I decided that it had to be restored. I took it to a Japanese friend of mine, who is an expert restorer, and showed him the damaged goods. He said he could fix it, but it would take about a month. I said that was fine.
A month later, my friend came around to my place and handed me the restored chawan, almost good as new, BUT, he told me that there were a couple of very small pieces that had been missing from the chawan. I said to him that all the pieces that were in the tomobako were the pieces I received in the mail. To which he replied that if that was the case, then the chawan was broken before it left Germany, even though the chawan shown on the website was fully intact!
I also gave 'kokusenya' a second negative feedback, plus a an angry letter, but have heard no response since. I have taken it up with Ebay too, but they're as useless as a toothless tiger!!
Sorry to have ranted, but I had to give you some background briefing as to why I nominate 'kokusenya' from Ebay as a problem vendor. I have definitely learned my lesson NOT to buy from this person ever again.
Cheers!