I'm not sure if I'm putting this in the right category or not but here goes. It's a long story, but I really appreciate your thoughts on this and what I can do.

A while back I listed 75 pieces of Franciscan Apple dishes, basically 12 place settings plus some odds and ends, on eBay. A lady contacted me after the auction ended begging me to sell her these dishes. I should have gotten on here then and asked what I should do, but here we are almost a month later and we're trying to come to an agreement.

She sent me a check for 200 plus half the cost of shipping. These plates are very expensive by the way, and I didn't want to let them go for that little, but after a few emails back and forth I wanted to be nice and let her have them. I had them listed at 300 starting on eBay and I had 10 watchers. I told her I wanted to relist them but she begged me to let her have them. I shipped them in August with insurance and shipping confirmation. I packed these dishes with so much bubble wrap and so many packing peanuts it was insane. When this lady got these dishes she tells me that there are all kinds of pieces that are broken. She sends me pictures of the boxes and it literally looks like someone hurled them down a series of escalators. One box didn't even come. She tells me that it looks like the boxes got untaped and retaped. There are only packing peanuts in one box.

This whole situation sounds really sketchy. She turned in 9 items to the post office that were broken, but thinks that I should reimburse her for the ones that were only chipped because she wants to keep them. Also, she wanted me to file the claim showing prices of how much it costs to get each item replaced, not how much she paid for them. The post office said I have to file the claim based on what she paid for them. She was very upset when I told her this. Shouldn't she be claiming the dishes that got chipped the same way she's claiming the ones that got broken? I'm not going to reimburse her for the damages that are the fault of the post office.

The Post office may or may not claim the damage was the result of inadequate packing. With items like this a professional company to package saves a lot of time and money - but, of course, that advice comes too little too late.

The reimbursement you receive will be based on what she pays, that being the agreed up value (between you and the purchaser) of the dishes.

Do you have a breakdown of the value of each piece?

If I were you I would cancel the entire transaction and tell her to return whatever dishes she has. I would not negotiate the chipped ones with her.

The breakdown that we agreed upon was $2.67 per piece, because we divided the $200 between the 75 pieces. I wish I could cancel the entire transaction. She wants to keep the dishes though, so she won't send them back. She didn't even want to part with the chipped ones. These boxes were very damaged though. I'm not kidding. I saw the pictures and there's no way this happened unintentionally.

How do you think they got so damaged? Keep in mind I investigate all sorts of craziness - did she already have a broken set, bought a set from you, claimed the broken set was from you after damaging the boxes?

I can't imagine why anyone would deliberately damage the boxes (and merchandise) - although I in no way disbelieve you.

I just can't figure out what's going on. Maybe you can't, either.

Or is this a money making scheme for her? Buy for less money, claim more money from the Post Office?

That's what I was wondering. I can't figure this out either. I sold them to her against my better judgement. Now I'm kicking myself. She's being super nice about it, but I just can't make any sense of it and I don't want to pay her for the dishes that are chipped that she's keeping but I have the feeling that this is going to be a bigger mess than I feel like getting into if I don't.