Should I let this go to an eBay open case?

[james13v]

Originally Posted by NewYork

I know it may not help in the details of your actual dispute, but what I have begun doing, as a gift to myself, is being very generous (to myself) by letting things go in a way that closes up the case in the most likely way that the buyer will leave good feedback and move on.

It's hard to see $5 get wasted when you go back to the store in the mall to buy the pair of sneakers you saw yesterday and they're not on sale, and you end up paying $5 more. But it's REALLY REALLY hard to let go of $5 when someone is just taking advantage of you because they can, and pulling it out of your wallet. Those situations, I've found, began to cause me $100 worth of worry and frustration, and I'd focus so (too?) hard on not getting ripped off.

No matter how much injustice goes on in a transaction, nobody at Ebay is going to look at the case with as much concern and interest as you do. I used to follow through with emails and threats and explanations to ebay and/or the buyer and over time I realized that it's kind of the Wild West, and in the interest of keeping things streamlined and focused on moving forward, I would write off more and more. Sometimes it REALLY hurt, and sometimes it was easy to get over, but in the big picture I feel I'm better off taking a loss here and there because I could really get hung up on something because I was technically in the right. Or obviously in the right. But Ebay is not fair, and some buyers are absolutely stupid and/or crooks and I spend my time wrapping it up with a quick resolution and good feedback no matter what the cost.

Reminds me of this. Our brains are so silly

Let’s say you are on your way to the theater with a ticket worth $20 and a $20 bill in your wallet. When you arrive at the theater you find that you’ve lost the ticket. The question is: Do you buy another ticket with your $20 bill? Most say no. Now take the same scenario but instead of having a ticket worth $20 and a $20 bill, you have two $20 bills. You arrive at the theater, but this time you’ve lost a $20 bill. Same question: Do you buy another ticket? Most say yes. Like the previous example, this make no financial sense because twenty dollars is lost in both scenarios. However, for some reason people feel that the lost ticket is worth more than the lost twenty. Point is, when it comes to money, we understand things relatively instead of absolutely.