Am I an idiot, or nuts, or is this a language issue?

Just call your credit card company and tell them not to process this charge. If the seller doesn’t get payment, they won’t ship it but you won’t pay for it. You may get banned from their website.

And I don’t think you’re an idiot or nuts. You’re very knowledgeable but you may have suffered from your first senior moment, and that happens to all of us at some point in time.

 

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@kirispupis, I assure you that I'm kicking myself for buying the coin without checking what I thought was the previous sale. Had it been 3 pm instead of 3 am, I almost certainly would have. But naively, it simply didn't occur to me that a MA-Shops dealer, even one I never heard of, might misrepresent provenance, intentionally or otherwise.

It isn't necessarily an excuse for my carelessness, but I couldn't really sleep, what with my eye still hurting more than 48 hours after my second cataract surgery, and what with thinking about my poor sister, and still not knowing what happened to her, or how she died, or why I wasn't notified right away by the Embassy, or even where she's buried or if anyone there in Hungary even knew that she was Jewish, or who's living in her house now. (I'm in the process of retaining an attorney in Budapest to look into all these things.) So I was trying to distract myself.

I believe it's R2. More importantly, under these circumstances, why should I necessarily trust that this dealer's photo accurately represents the coin? Photos can be misleading, just like words. For example, I was considering this coin as a considerably cheaper (and rarer) substitute if I should receive a refund:



Until I found this auction photo of the same coin from a year or two ago:




(If you zoom in, the scratches on Constans's face are much more obvious in the earlier photo.)

 

Donna,
Pour moi, en tant qu'utilisateur pointilleux de la langue française, "le même exemplaire" est un peu ambigu mais indique à 99% "l'exemplaire ...de la vente xxx".
Si c'était la même monnaie on devrait trouver : "exemplaire de la vente xxx" et dans le cas présent on devrait trouver : "exemplaire identique à celui de la vente xxx". Donc à mon humble avis soit le vendeur utilise la langue avec une excessive désinvolture, soit il y a volonté délibérée d'embrouiller l'acheteur.

 

My advice: NEVER trust French language people. NEVER ! Here in Montreal, I’m surrendered by them: I don’t trust my friends, don’t trust my neighbors, don’t trust my family, my wife or even my two kids. They all are a bunch of hypocrites, des salauds, des emmerdeurs de la pire espèce! Point final !

 

those are literally 3 different coins...

 

No. NAC 2013 = Leu 2020.

 

You have an air-tight case!!!!
I can’t imagine MA-Shops would not strongly support you!!!
I doubt if that slimy dealer would agree to a refund. I hope I am wrong!

 

I agree it is a different coin. Was the seller intentionally dishonest, somewhat unclear in the language, or just made a mistake? I don't know. In any case I would expect the dealer to cancel the sale upon a timely request. I would just send a simple message like, "Upon checking the NAC reference, I find it is not the same coin as in the listing, so I would like to request that you cancel the sale."

 

Let's see what he says in response to the "essay" I already sent him! I certainly hope he goes ahead and cancels the sale without arguing about it.

 

à Montréal on aurait plutôt attendu des espèces de crisse de fefi de câlisse. Mais peut-être que ça se perd...

 

Somehow I missed the part when something that got lost in translation should be a case of deceiving unknowing sellers. Yes, some sellers do this kind of advertisement some way or the other, like Franks Robinson. I don't bother, but of course anyone can chose not to buy from these sellers. Whatever the case, the solution has already been represented and can clearly be found in the terms of sale of the seller:

Seems more then honest to me.

I voted for none of the options, because it lacks the most relevant one: "oops, something went wrong here, but hey, doesn't matter because I can easily return the coin according to the terms."

Have good recovery from your surgery.

 

I think the seller's statement can be translated to mean that "a coin like that one" was sold by NAC, not necessarily the same coin.

I think in French "la meme" can be used to mean both. So I don't think you have been deceived. However, since the coin has not been shipped and the seller incurred no costs, he should allow for a termination of the deal.

German allows for more precision:
"die selbe Münze" = the exact same coin and
"die gleiche Münze" = "the same coin, but not the exact same coin"

 

Except the EUR->USD bank transfer fees which could be high (up to 5%)

 

For those who have pointed out that I should simply have read the dealer's terms of sale and asked for a refund without going into the reasons, mea culpa. Another thing I did wrong! All I can say is to repeat that I've been distracted lately.

In any event, the dealer has initiated the processing of the refund, so I should see a credit to my American Express account within the next few days -- hopefully in an amount close, if not equal, to the charge, given the currency exchange issue.

This was the dealer's explanation:

"I will return you don’t worry . I never write than it is the exemple of nac or leu but i write than is the same type maybe when youd id make the traduction from french to english it was wrong

when you buy in France by internet you have 14 days for cxancel your order."

The last statement is interesting -- 14 days rather than the 8 days mentioned in the terms of sale. I wonder if that's a legal requirement.

This was my response, which I couldn't resist:

"Thank you very much for the refund. Obviously there was a misunderstanding, based on the Google translation into English. In the future, perhaps you could use a more specific word to indicate 'the same type,' rather than 'the same example,' which is how your statement was translated. I showed your description to a number of native French speakers, all of whom agreed that the way you phrased it was ambiguous, and that my confusion was understandable."

My only remaining decision is whether I should bother to respond with an explanation to the following email I received today from MA-Shops itself:

"Your MA-Shops order was cancelled by the seller (Cheilan).

As owners of the MA-Shops online marketplace, we value your feedback.
Kindly reply to let us know whether you were satisfied with MA-Shops and the seller.
If you encountered any problems that led to the cancellation, please explain in a reply email
Thank you for your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

MA-Shops Customer Service"

Thanks for all your advice, even if it proved in the end to be much ado about not very much.

I see that the current voting in the poll is 15 for the "I would want the coin anyway" option, to 12 for "I would want a refund." The coin is now available for purchase again to all 15 of you if you want it!

And now I have to decide what to do with all that money I just saved. I'm feeling kind of turned off to solidi for the moment, as unfair as that may sound. So something else, perhaps.

 

Et voila, you got your money back!

Well, new auctions pop up every day, so you'll find a new target without a doubt. Or perhaps a different goal? ;-)

 

Congratulations, Donna.
I recommend waiting, until you receive the money, before you reply to the MA-Shops email.
I took French in middle school, high school, and college, but I was never very good at it. I had to take it, to graduate from college. However, that was a long time ago.
I didn't have enough confidence, in my French skills, to give an opinion, about whether the seller's listing was misleading.
I wish, I had taken a screen shot, of the original seller listing. Maybe someone else did.
Because, now, it seems, that the current seller listing, makes no mention of the NAC auction.
https://www.ma-shops.com/cheilan/item.php?id=15251
However, it seems sort of dumb, to say something like (even if that's what he/she said, which I don't know) "A similar coin, sold for 4,500 Swiss francs, at NAC auction X Lot Y". Why say that? It reminds me, of a television advertisement, for gold plated coins. It's like, the seller is trying to lure an un-knowledgeable person, to buy the coin.
Maybe, the seller learned his/her lesson, sort of.
Or, maybe, the seller is just trying to hide his/her tracks.

 

@sand, it's fascinating that he changed the listing to delete any reference to the NAC coin! Here's the original listing, with the "LE MEME EXEMPLAIRE" language at the bottom:

 

The best explanation is, having realized his listing is confusing, he's clarified it.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

 

Yes! - it's a general EU thing:

https://www.eccireland.ie/shopping-...u shop online you,cost of returning the goods.

There are some exemptions, of course - lottery tickets, for example!

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Does it apply to purchases at auctions, or are those an exception?