Did my Ebay buyer just break the motherboard I sent them? Motherboard standoffs issue.

[BrandBoozle]

So Ive had this motherboard for 2 years, decided to upgrade so I sold it on Ebay. I know this MB was in really great condition. 

I received an email and the buyer was saying "Hey it came with bend fan pins and one of the M.2 Heatsink standoffs came broken, what can we do?". I went and asked for pictures and they said they fixed the bent pins, and sent a picture of the broken standoff on the M.2 cover plate. Mind you, I've only taken this heatsink off twice, one for putting the M.2 drive in, and once for taking it out, both of which I know how to unscrew it and put it back with ease.

 

My question is, do you think this buyer is just trying to get some money back from me, broke it themselves and trying to say it came that way, or any chance it actually arrived like that when I shipped out in excellent condition?

 

I have a sneaking suspicion my buyer just yanked this off and didn't properly unscrew something on it and broke it themselves. And for my reply, is there any easy fix for this? Its hard for me to fully tell the extent of it, but I would assume it would be as easy as just replacing the standoff which is a very cheap fix.  

 

I'm attaching the picture of the MB for when I sent it, and the pictures they sent me. You can clearly see the back of the Motherboard has the standoff attached, and my guess is they only removed two of the screws on the heatsink and pulled it off. 

[8tg]

Yeah, if this was packaged well, they absolutely just ripped that off. I’ve had a lot of stuff get damaged in shipping with motherboards but board shielding and standoffs? Nah

the fan pins I could understand, they get bent all the time from bumping around in the box. But that looks like user error.

 

They will likely try and pursue this with eBay if they’re trying to do something like this now, your safest bet as the seller is to offer a full refund upon return. Get eBay involved early, focus on it being “damaged in transit”, and talk about getting the carrier’s insurance to cover the damage (not for real though) because you won’t be able to convince eBay it’s user error. Get the board back and take the loss on the shipping cost. 
If you let them keep the board they’ll go with eBay to try and get either the full cost or partial cost back fraudulently. 

[BrandBoozle]

6 minutes ago, 8tg said:

Yeah, if this was packaged well, they absolutely just ripped that off. I’ve had a lot of stuff get damaged in shipping with motherboards but board shielding and standoffs? Nah

the fan pins I could understand, they get bent all the time from bumping around in the box. But that looks like user error.

 

They will likely try and pursue this with eBay if they’re trying to do something like this now, your safest bet as the seller is to offer a full refund upon return. Get eBay involved early, focus on it being “damaged in transit”, and talk about getting the carrier’s insurance to cover the damage (not for real though) because you won’t be able to convince eBay it’s user error. Get the board back and take the loss on the shipping cost. 
If you let them keep the board they’ll go with eBay to try and get either the full cost or partial cost back fraudulently. 

Thats what I assumed what happened. I have no returns listed along with I have pictures of it attached and in tact in my own. I also work in shipping and logistics so I know my packaging is top tier.  Hopefully I can get ahead of this and report it as user issue and not mine, or handle it through USPS was the issue and not me. 

I sold it to them at a discount already so Im going to try and do my best not to let them get away with this. 

Thank you for the feedback!

[Kisai]

Chances are they snapped it off themselves and didn't realize there's a screw.

 

"standoffs" come off all the time on the chassis due to them being tighter on the screw-to-standoff than the standoff-to-chassis. If the motherboard had a standoff screwed on, and broke it, then it's likely that it hasn't damaged the the actual PCB. They might even have used the same standoffs they use for the M2's.

In which case it just needs to be screwed back in. But it needs to be pointed out that the M2's don't even need the armor plate. You can even buy M2's with their own Heatsinks (eg WD_BLACK), so IMO this is not rendering the MB inoperable.

 

[BrandBoozle]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Chances are they snapped it off themselves and didn't realize there's a screw.

 

"standoffs" come off all the time on the chassis due to them being tighter on the screw-to-standoff than the standoff-to-chassis. If the motherboard had a standoff screwed on, and broke it, then it's likely that it hasn't damaged the the actual PCB. They might even have used the same standoffs they use for the M2's.

In which case it just needs to be screwed back in. But it needs to be pointed out that the M2's don't even need the armor plate. You can even buy M2's with their own Heatsinks (eg WD_BLACK), so IMO this is not rendering the MB inoperable.

 

That installation step picture is a huge help! Thank you so much!. I more so think with that and the picture of the screw installed into the back it will help me out with questioning how that at all happened.