When is it okay to demand a refund?

[KWAddict]

Having read the initial post and the rest of it from what I understand it's really not either you or the sellers fault at least initially. Fedex broke your cage.

Yeah, its his fault for asking to send money as gifts and not having the necessary capital to easily replace a broken item, but like you said, its a side business. He should have immediately taken the issue up with his shipping company.

But that's not what happened. I'm not trying to be rude but it's obvious you didn't ACTUALLY read everything in this thread. It has been stated many times the money was never requested to be sent as money/gift. The buyer did this to try to help the seller out. She has also been lectured about why this is a bad idea and gets it. It was immediately taken up with the shipping company. There are many reasons why many believe it to be the sellers fault. Let's go through the events again.

- Enclosure paid in full ($325) on 2/7/17.
- Enclosure estimated timeframe ~ 2 weeks. We'll call it 2/21/17.
- Enclosure not completed until sometime between 3/20/17 and 3/27/17.
- Enclosure arrived 4/3/17 damaged. It may very well have been FedEx's fault BUT the package was very poorly labeled.
- Refund immediately requested on 4/3/17. Seller persuades buyer into allowing him to immediately build a new one and have it shipped out to her.
- Shipping claim filed immediately as FedEx picked the enclosure back up on either 4/4/17 or 4/5/17.
- Seller takes it upon himself to decide not to immediately build a new enclosure and to wait for old one to return to use scraps because he has blown all of his funds.
- As of 4/23/17, a refund has been requested many times. He has not even begun to build a new enclosure in lieu of a refund. He has claimed to have no way to give her a refund. FedEx still (supposedly) has not delivered enclosure back to seller.

The bottom line is it has been two and a half months since an enclosure was paid for, in full. Side gig or not, this is irresponsible and just plain wrong. If you aren't building quality enclosures that can be shipped, provide horrible customer service, and don't know how to manage your finances well enough to right your wrongs when you do mess up, you don't need to be taking money from people.

OP, do you know if there was any shipping insurance placed on the enclosure? I don't imagine this to be the case but some people even abuse shipping insurance. He sends a subpar enclosure that he can recycle materials from. Enclosure is "damaged" in shipping. He gets enclosure sent back and cashes in from the shipping insurance. He "fixes" the enclosure as cheaply as possible, ships it back out, and not only makes money on the enclosure but probably tucked a couple extra hundred dollars in his pocket from the insurance check FedEx gives him.

It also sounds as if there is more incriminating evidence coming from the buyer's most recent statement.