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Non-Returnable Slide Policy
There are several reasons we decided on this no-return policy regarding slides sold
through Ebay auctions, and these may be of interest to you:1) We have experienced situations where buyers attempted to return slides
after they copied or printed or scanned them for their own commercial use.2) With our individual slide offerings, claims that the slide has a scratch or
a bent mount or some other technical flaw simply are not credible because
when that slide left our hands it did not have such flaws, for if it did we
would not sell it. Minor flaws would be mentioned in the item description
or would show in the large scans we display in our auctions. It happens that
upon occasion the recipient accidentally damages a slide when unpacking it
or in handling it. Though it has been almost non-existant in many years of
doing this, the postal service may very occasionally have mishandled or mis-
delivered an item. In that case your beef is with them. Insurance is an option
to be considered. The simple truth is, we've no way of knowing what's done
with slides after they leave our hands.3) In the case of our large 20, 30, 40, 80 or 100-Slide Lots, we do not keep
records of each and every slide in these Lots so we have no way of knowing
that the slides we shipped are the same slides we would get in returns.4) Most of the slides we offer on Ebay are slides owned by veteran slide col-
lectors who have asked us to liquidate their collections. We pay them promptly
for their sales, and our policy isn't to ask them for refunds. Ebay and other out-
side services also receive their fees from our sales. In most cases these are not
refundable so we cannot recover these costs.5) Our scans are so large and detailed that, in the case of individual slide of-
ferings, bidders can clearly can see what they are bidding on. Careful reading
of our item descriptions of large Lots will give you a very good idea what
you are bidding on.6) Descriptions such as image "sharpness" and the like are somewhat subjective,
especially when we are dealing with slides taken before the mid-1970's. This is
for two reasons. Many railfans didn't have the more sophisticated cameras we
began to use in railfan photography after the early 1970's. And the standards
for what is a good train image were not as high in those earlier years as they
are today. You cannot fairly expect a slide taken in 1959 to be as technically
perfect as a good one taken today. This is not to say there aren't many excel-
lent color images taken in earlier years, but in general railfans in those years
simply were operating in a different paradigm.7) In rare special cases where we feel we have made description errors or
errors in the sale, we may - completely at our discretion - offer either equal-
value exchanges or credit against our future auctions. The amount of these
credits will be less our non-recoverable costs.After many years in the vintage slide auction business we believe this to be a sound and
reasonable policy for this type of rare merchandise and hope you can see the logic in it.
If this is unacceptable, we respectfully expect you will pass on our auctions.Thank you for understanding.
Andy Romano
trainutz.com
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