The most recent bad trader thread has me thinking about a trade that I had a while back and how I might have handled it incorrectly. I came to an agreement with a new trader for a couple BCS variants and since they were new I asked them to ship first and they had no problem with it and did so. Unfortunately, their package was damaged in transit and the main bottles were damaged and the rest was returned to the sender. I stated that was no big deal and we looked to find a suitable replacement and finalize the trade. We were unable to come to terms of the new trade and we simply let the trade expire in the system. Should I have handled this differently? I figured since I wasnt out any beer and he could no longer fulfill his end of the trade that was the best way to go about it. What say you BA forum?
In my opinion. If you both amicably came to the agreement this was a fine way to handle it. Communication and agreement is key and if both sides work on it the system works great. In a perfect world, they would have got the remaining brews back, re-packed and replaced the damaged bottles and the trade would be completed as planned. This is not always possible when limited brews are involved.
Honestly, I think it's up to both of you on how you want to proceed. There's no right or wrong way, if neither of you ended up pissed off and salty over the trade (which it sounds like that's the case). Are we talking VR and Rare, or coffee and BW variants? If it was the hard to get ones, then I'd most likely have given them tips on shipping (use a heavy duty styro shipper for difficult to replace bottles) and sent them something good anyway since that's obviously a tough blow to take. If it was easier to get variants like coffee and BW then I'd just say it was a lesson learned, but maybe sent them a small box back anyway. Since you said this was a new trader, and they seemed reasonable, I think doing that for them in good faith might be good. It would show them that the community is fair and generous and not turn them off of trading. Again though, you didn't really do anything wrong. You both agreed to let it expire and move on, so I think you're ok here with how it was handled. Maybe see if they've tried trading since then and if not send them a little surprise box and outline how you packed it and let them know you just wanted to be generous and help them in the future.
Yeah it was for Coffee and BW so it wasn't uber rarz or anything. The box was returned to him and one of the main halves of the trade was broken. I offered to cut the deal in half but he wasn't interested in that so we discussed some other options on his end and couldn't quite come to an agreement and we just let it expire. I appreciate the input on this one even if it was a while ago since I wanted to make sure I hadn't completely screwed someone over for being new.
