I was looking at a Sterlingworth "20" ga. on Gunbroker and noticed the serial number on the trigger guard was for a 16. Not knowing if it was a case of a swapped trigger guard or a mistake in listing description I contacted the seller. Asked him which is was a 20 or a 16. He said it was in fact a 16 and called it a "good spotting" of the error on my behalf. But he never corrected the listing or restated the gauge.
Now some poor guy just bought a "20" ga. that will magically grow to a 16 in shipping. The dealer has 800+ feed backs so he is no novice in Gunbroker sales. And he had both time to change listing and plenty of time to make the listing a easy transaction for the buyer. At the risk of pissing off the Gunbroker police the seller was Springhouse. So if you deal with him be prepared for a few surprises. The buyer will have to decide either to keep the 16 or pay shipping both ways and try to get his money back.
So here are the possible outcomes. A buyer gets stuck with the gun that was wrongly described and could have easily been corrected in plenty of time before the sale ended. Mistake was made but not by the buyer and not fixed by the seller. Or he returns it and takes a loss on the shipping both ways, say it isn't so but you know that is how it works, almost always. The dealer will either get another negative feed back, which has not bother him before, or the feedback will just get lost on the internet. I have seen it before several times where bad feed backs just go away.
What should happen with two negative feed backs, in a year time, is loss of selling privileges for 30 days. Repeat offender should be barred. Never going to happen I know. And contacting Gunbroker is a total waste of time. I have been there and done that. It is crap like this that makes Gunbroker a bad place to work with when buying a gun from some dealers. No help and no enforcement of what should be basic rules.
