Hi Naveen and List, It is clearly tempting for list members to opine on this rather sizable business transaction since both the buyer and -- likely more so on this List -- the sellers are extremely well-known, well-liked and well-respected. It seems unlikely in the extreme that the meteorites in dispute are not what Stefan and Martin claimed, and if I've read the chain of e-mails correctly, Naveen is not disputing that the specimens are meteorites, nor does he appear to be questioning that they are lunaites. Rather, the dissatisfaction is over the perceived quality of the specimens.
Now, I have not seen the pictures, let alone the meteorites themselves, and in any case many aspects of "quality" are in the eyes of the beholder. But the bottom line is that Naveen felt that what he received did not match his expectations based on the pictures he saw, which is why he wanted to exercise the refund option. Given the considerable sum involved, it would not surprise me if a good percentage of that capital had to go to a third party in order to secure the "big ticket items". (I know Chladni's Heirs does a decent amount of meteorite business, but it seems unlikely that they'd have those kind of reserves on hand.) Continuing this line of speculation, it is equally unlikely that the third party has as generous a return policy as Martin and Stefan do. (This is probably being kind: I doubt ANY such return policy would exist.) But if all of this is true, then surely Stefan and Martin would have been forced to protect themselves by having an alternate return policy in place for unusually big ticket items -- especially any that they don't actually hold in inventory. Call it a "restocking fee" or what-have-you. But to reiterate, this is all speculation. We don't know the original source of the lunar meteorites in question (presumably someone in Morocco), nor the circumstances and expenses incurred by Martin and Stefan to procure them. But I'd like to believe that given the collective intelligence of this group, an amicable arrangement can be reached. Cheers, Rob ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
