Death of Postcard seller Staplehurst

[Jotter]

Online postcard seller staplehurst's family has been in touch with me regarding the death of this popular seller well known among collectors, though ebay have given them a hard time and are indifferent to the anguish of the mess that is left behind as well as the grief of a loved one. They have sent a message to staplehurst's loyal customers, but he has thousands of bin items still advertised.

"We regret to advise that "staplehurst" has died.
We took immediate steps to contact Ebay on several occasions requesting that the 8000 buy it now listings be removed for obvious reasons.
We received sympathy and that was about all we got, our requests came to no avail.
Ebay were warned that customers would continue to purchase on a daily basis by cheque, postal order and Paypal.

If you have not already received your card(s) I regret that you now not get any.

All cheques and postal orders have been torn up or are now sitting on the doormat of an empty property.
We tried hard but met a wall of resistance, our guess is that some 70 people have been caught up in the mess.
Feel free to hammer on the door of Ebay & Paypal for refunds
One of their best, if not priceless, comments was " We are very sorry, but you are not the account holder, we can only take such instructions from him "

Beggars belief ... "

[eastlondonpostcard]

- a travesty indeed and sympathy to the family - however, as at the time of this posting there is just one edited listing left -

[kevinramsdale]

To be fair to eBay they have to be absolutely certain that any such information is true, and not the work of a malicious third party.

Having said that though they ought to be more proactive in seeking to confirm such reports, the recent feedback received is pretty conclusive in itself.

Sad news.

[kevinramsdale]

There is now a thread about this on the eBay discussion boards:

http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?th ... 5&start=40

[Jotter]

when i asked ebay for their advice to pass on to the family they did say they wanted the death certificate number before they would release the account, i suppose there are fraudsters who could hijack an account, but losing a member of the family suddenly and unexpectedly is always going to be traumatic.