gringobill Report post Posted December 21, 2011 So I won a Chase Pattern Osborne splitter on ebay a week ago last Sunday. It looked pretty rough in the photos with rust and crud all over it but seemed to be intact with all the parts. I figured with a little love and a lot of elbow grease and TLC I could restore it to working condition and have a very cool old working tool. So to start with I have never had any communication from the seller (who has 99.9% positive feedback,) inspite of sending him emails after winning the item, paying for it within an hour of winning and to check to see if it had shipped. Never heard a peep out of the person. So the big day arrives this past Monday 9 days after the auction closed, and it arrives and the box is in tact and looks good. I open it and it's packed in that "styrofoam popcorn," and some empty boxes, it looked like it was well packed. It was sent by USPS Priority Mail. I don't know if it was insured because I can get the seller to respond. So when the splitter came out of the box it was in four pieces, it is totally trashed. The cast iron frame is broken in four places and I am just sick!!! I immediately start emailing the seller to figure out what to do and I sent photos of the carnage. It is now Wednesday morning and I have not heard word one from the seller. I should say here that I think the thing started out in one piece and that the good ol "Postal Service," threw the box off a 10 story building and when it hit.....that was it! At this point I'm really torn about what to do. What I'd like to do is get all or most of my money back and keep the splitter and see if I can braze it back together and use it. I'm a decent hand with an oxy-acetylene torch and I am semi confident I can put it back together. However brazing cast iron and keeping it from cracking is a bit of a trick and I'm not interested in a $255 experiment ending up with a pile of junk pieces. Of course trying to talk to a human at ebay is like calling Obama and getting through. They have all the "FAQ's" and their other handy dandy automated systems that we are supposed to use to solve all of lifes problems. I'm trying to maintain my composure about the seller not responding to any of my emails, giving him the benefit of the doubt it is right in the middle of the Christmas/holiday season and he may have gone to grandmother's house or may be in Hawaii or something. But my patience is wearing thin. My pragmatic logical brain is saying "box it up send it off, get my money back (maybe) and there'll be another splitter like it again on ebay sometime!" My emotional side is saying "keep it, hopefully fix it and have a great story to tell." Dang it's always something!!!! Bill Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dirtclod Report post Posted December 21, 2011 If you paid with paypal or used your credit card file a claim/stop what ever it's called with paypal or your credit card company. Save the boxes and take pictures of every thing save your emails showing that you have tried to get in touch with the seller and print the auction out. Keep a paper trail along with pictures. Paypal or your credit card should put a hold on the payment. If you sent a money order i'm not sure what to tell ya. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Luke Hatley Report post Posted December 21, 2011 THAT JUST SUCKS...........I had the same problem with a 5 'n'1 machine...no response from the seller and e-bay was NO HELP...i will not buy any mechinal items there now, what the saying "buyer beware" Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bruce johnson Report post Posted December 21, 2011 I have only had to deal with an Ebay problem once and they got right on it. There should be some protection through Paypal also. Dealing with postal insurance is not pleasant and the shipper's responsibility anyway. They are the ones who paid for the insurance. For the claim they will want you to save everything - box, packing materials, and all the pieces. The catch is that the the post office can claim the item was not properly packed and deny the claim. From another experience, packing peanuts around cast iron is not proper packing so it wouldn't surprise me to see it denied. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Art Report post Posted December 21, 2011 Hi Bill, I have welded cast iron with good, bad, and ugly results. You need to tap the welds pretty hard with the peining end of a ball pein hammer, takes a lot of practice. Brazing might be more successful. I would make a claim through eBay and PayPal. I always use PayPal with eBay and the few times I have had problems, I let them fix it. They usually guarantee transactions and in my instances they came through, usually a full refund. They like to take some time to let things clear, but they do come through. They (both eBay and PayPal) get their vig on the other end, but as a buyer, it works. If you really want a Chase splitter, have Bruce Johnson keep an eye open for one in the condition you want, Bruce has probably forgot more about those than anyone else knows, and he seems to find them pretty regularly. Art So I won a Chase Pattern Osborne splitter on ebay a week ago last Sunday. It looked pretty rough in the photos with rust and crud all over it but seemed to be intact with all the parts. I figured with a little love and a lot of elbow grease and TLC I could restore it to working condition and have a very cool old working tool. So to start with I have never had any communication from the seller (who has 99.9% positive feedback,) inspite of sending him emails after winning the item, paying for it within an hour of winning and to check to see if it had shipped. Never heard a peep out of the person. So the big day arrives this past Monday 9 days after the auction closed, and it arrives and the box is in tact and looks good. I open it and it's packed in that "styrofoam popcorn," and some empty boxes, it looked like it was well packed. It was sent by USPS Priority Mail. I don't know if it was insured because I can get the seller to respond. So when the splitter came out of the box it was in four pieces, it is totally trashed. The cast iron frame is broken in four places and I am just sick!!! I immediately start emailing the seller to figure out what to do and I sent photos of the carnage. It is now Wednesday morning and I have not heard word one from the seller. I should say here that I think the thing started out in one piece and that the good ol "Postal Service," threw the box off a 10 story building and when it hit.....that was it! At this point I'm really torn about what to do. What I'd like to do is get all or most of my money back and keep the splitter and see if I can braze it back together and use it. I'm a decent hand with an oxy-acetylene torch and I am semi confident I can put it back together. However brazing cast iron and keeping it from cracking is a bit of a trick and I'm not interested in a $255 experiment ending up with a pile of junk pieces. Of course trying to talk to a human at ebay is like calling Obama and getting through. They have all the "FAQ's" and their other handy dandy automated systems that we are supposed to use to solve all of lifes problems. I'm trying to maintain my composure about the seller not responding to any of my emails, giving him the benefit of the doubt it is right in the middle of the Christmas/holiday season and he may have gone to grandmother's house or may be in Hawaii or something. But my patience is wearing thin. My pragmatic logical brain is saying "box it up send it off, get my money back (maybe) and there'll be another splitter like it again on ebay sometime!" My emotional side is saying "keep it, hopefully fix it and have a great story to tell." Dang it's always something!!!! Bill Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glockanator Report post Posted December 21, 2011 I would contact pay pal if that is who you payed through. As far as fixing it ( I am a welder by trade) I dont know if you have ever done any brazing on cast iron before but you will need to heat everything up at an even temp. Dont jut try brazing it! It will just make it worse. If you dont have to proper tools to pre heat it the way it needs to be done I would take it too someone who can. Thats my two cents. I would try and get my money back first before trying repairs though. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
King's X Report post Posted December 22, 2011 I just shipped an item back that I won on eBay that was broken when it arrived. I just opened complaint where the transaction is listed. It was handled between the seller and I since I purchased through Paypal. It totally sucked and I know how you feel. I hope things work out for you! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
electrathon Report post Posted December 22, 2011 Challenge it through Paypal, they will refund your money. Paypal will almost always side with the seller, no matter the circumstances or who is at fault. They will not care if you send it back or not, that will be between you and the seller. Aaron Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gringobill Report post Posted December 22, 2011 Hi Bill, I have welded cast iron with good, bad, and ugly results. You need to tap the welds pretty hard with the peining end of a ball pein hammer, takes a lot of practice. Brazing might be more successful. I would make a claim through eBay and PayPal. I always use PayPal with eBay and the few times I have had problems, I let them fix it. They usually guarantee transactions and in my instances they came through, usually a full refund. They like to take some time to let things clear, but they do come through. They (both eBay and PayPal) get their vig on the other end, but as a buyer, it works. If you really want a Chase splitter, have Bruce Johnson keep an eye open for one in the condition you want, Bruce has probably forgot more about those than anyone else knows, and he seems to find them pretty regularly. Art Hey Art, Amazingly I filed a claim with ebay this morning, mainly telling them that I had been trying unsuccessfully to contact the seller of the splitter and in about 30 minutes I got a message from PayPal saying the seller had refunded all of my money and I got an email from him confirming that he agreed that the splitter was sure torn all to heck. He didn't mention me sending him the pieces back so I tied into it today and brazed it back together and I think it's going to work. I sure wasn't going to attempt to weld it. I have done a little bit of welding of cast with nickle rod and it's pretty tricky with the peining and all of that. I just went ahead and brazed it with brass rod and I think it's going to hold together. I will try to post some before and after pix of it. I know Bruce is a fan of Chase pattern splitters and I may try to see if he might have a better blade for this one. The one on it is pretty pitted and at minimum needs to be reground and sharpened to be useable. Anyway, thanks for the reply and I'll let you know how it turns out. Bill Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glockanator Report post Posted December 24, 2011 Hey Art, Amazingly I filed a claim with ebay this morning, mainly telling them that I had been trying unsuccessfully to contact the seller of the splitter and in about 30 minutes I got a message from PayPal saying the seller had refunded all of my money and I got an email from him confirming that he agreed that the splitter was sure torn all to heck. He didn't mention me sending him the pieces back so I tied into it today and brazed it back together and I think it's going to work. I sure wasn't going to attempt to weld it. I have done a little bit of welding of cast with nickle rod and it's pretty tricky with the peining and all of that. I just went ahead and brazed it with brass rod and I think it's going to hold together. I will try to post some before and after pix of it. I know Bruce is a fan of Chase pattern splitters and I may try to see if he might have a better blade for this one. The one on it is pretty pitted and at minimum needs to be reground and sharpened to be useable. Anyway, thanks for the reply and I'll let you know how it turns out. Bill Glad it worked out for you Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gringobill Report post Posted December 24, 2011 The Paul Harvey, "Rest Of The Story." I got all my money back. The seller told me to keep the pieces of the splitter saying that maybe I could "use it for parts somewhere down the road." So far so good. So I got busy disassembling it and cleaning it up so I could see if I could repair it. It took a good dose of penetrating oil, a long time on a wire wheel, some emery paper, a flap wheel on an angle grinder and a session on a belt sander but I got the pieces cleaned up pretty well. As I said the blade is pretty pitted but I have honed it and it will do in a pinch. Hopefully Bruce Johnson can find a better one. After getting it apart and all the parts cleaned up I partially reassembled the frame minus the springs, blade, rollers and anything else that might be damaged by heat. I bolted the four feet to a piece of sheet metal so that along with being put back together every thing was pretty square. I am attaching a "before and after photos of it. I also prepped the four places where it needed to be brazed filing out a "U" shaped groove to be filled with the brass rod and did a lot of scrubbing of all those joints with a stainless steel wire brush. Then started brazing which took awhile, I had to braze four sides of four breaks. When the brazing was done I let it cool as slowly as possible (I didn't bury it in lime or ashes to further delay the cooling,) and crossed my fingers. I was hoping I would not hear any cracking as it cooled and luckily I didn't. So it turned out pretty well, no cracking that I'm aware of and seems to be sturdy and pretty square. I am amazed that it broke the way it did because when the thing is put together it is sturdy, a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. I reassembled it and it's taken a lot of fine tuning and adjusting. These splitters have a lot of places to adjust, a lot more than either of the other two splitters I have, one of which is another old Osborne model 86. Now I'm trying to figure out exactly how it works as it works differently than any other splitters I've used. So at the end of the day, a deal that looked like a real disaster turned out way better than I initially thought it could. I need to remember this incident next time something looks like it's headed south and I start twisting off because over the years I keep being reminded that most of the time things end up working out far better than I expect they will. I hope all of you have a very blessed Christmas and that 2012 is the best year ever! Bill Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ara Report post Posted December 27, 2011 As the privileged spouse of a veteran letter carrier I have to throw an opinion in here. My bride, who busts her butt and back six days a week with no days off save Sundays and holidays, pretty much agrees although she is used to whiners on both sides of the mailbox. Something that arrives Priority Mail looking pretty good from the outside and loaded with cast iron and styrofoam peanuts on the inside--and being found to be busted all to hell and back when opened--well, the physics don't work on that one, pardner. To sustain multiple fractures in something as stout as cast iron and still have the container it arrived in look "pretty good" just doesn't compute. For that damage to have occurred in transit the first thing to disintegrate would have been the packaging. The first thing. The heavy contents would have torn the packaging from the inside out as multiplied impacts occurred and that apparently didn't happen from what your initial report said. Sounds to me like you paid for a pile of scrap iron and that you were fortunate enough to break even in the end. The stated laxity of the seller in regard to communicating with you raised immediate suspicions on my part. I'd have to bet it was packed that way. Glad to hear all's well. The post office has it's share of crybabies and losers working in its bowels but there are solid gold employees who take their jobs very seriously as well. Remembering that is always appreciated by those who deserve more respect than they are generally afforded. Best in '12. ara Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites