You don’t have to closey examine this, just taking a picture of the back you would surely notice.
And this clearly isn’t PSA’s opinion, it’s a mistake/ misgrade, or its been damaged whilst being encapsulated. I have plenty of psa cards and I am more than happy with their consistent opinion/judgement, but because I buy one which was misgraded/damaged that I’m not happy with, i should stop buying PSA cards?
Cant say I feel the most comfortable with ‘The forum policy on this is clear: sellers should describe blatant issues with their graded cards, but PSA-graded cards represent the opinions of PSA. If you try to force a return because you disagree with the PSA-assigned grade, you can be reported and blacklisted for abusing eBay and PayPal policy’
I find it very hard to work with it being abuse for something so significant.
Ive got my fair share of belt notches with ebay, Ive worked solely as a business with ebay for 8 years or so now (not pokemon). Ive been through thick and thin with cases, scams, buyers remorse, Taxes, Vat, chargebacks, swaps and actual abuse of the ebay and paypal returns systems, for the past 18months I have been rewarded with their premium help service where I always have contact with the equivalent of a manager.
Why am I saying this? Because I could not be a more honest empathetic person. I am well aware of how I can straight up force a return on this but i’m not.
It is a tricky situation if an item has a 3rd party opinion, but an item having damage severely beyond this could also be seen as a fraud/failing to provide accurately described items because it has a grade to say otherwise, how do I know they have not been clearly aware of it and as others said tried to hide this, or even resealed a case and done a swapperoo. Would that still be my issue with PSA?
In this case I feel I am not disagreeing with the 3rd party’s grade as you say, but instead noticing pretty bad damage to the item. It could be also said than I would not be abusing the ebay returns policys, but in turn abusing what is your opinion on the ebay returns policys. If SMPRATTE returned a Shadowless Charizard 1st psa 10 where the seller had failed to mention a crease in the card and he felt it was done so in a manner to hide it, would you blacklist him?
That’s fine if you don’t inspect your item, but to fault a buyer for returning over damage that you missed due to not inspecting the item, and damage which is clearly not consistent with the grade assigned is scummy imo.
I edited my post after you quoted to clarify.
Ultimately buyers are paying for PSA’s opinion, which isn’t perfect, as seen in this thread. My main point is the seller didn’t grade the card. This situation can become a very slippery slope. As a seller, I personally would accept the return and message Psa.
“People suggesting the seller is hiding damage is a massive assumption” No its not, there are lots of scummy sellers, just like there are lots of scummy buyers. “It’s completely fair if a seller blocks a buyer in this scenario” No its not, its the sellers fault for not disclosing the damage. Just because you’r inventory is to big for you to list properly, does not mean the buyer has to take the hit. if you can’t manege you’r own inventory, maybe it’s time to hire some staff?
There is always the fault that the seller failed to accurately inspect their item. If I miss something, or make a mistake on a listing I go ah shit, hold my hands up and its at my cost to rectify it/take it back. As Ive been told many of times by ebay ‘Its the cost of doing business online’
Just to clarify I am not trying to start an uproar here, but I do find it hard to see how this is so frowned upon, it is after all a very unusual thing to happen, and it is not arguing over just a little whitening.
A friendly reminder to anyone in this thread, libel and defamation is against the rules. Making claims about individuals without evidence is libel.
Every seller already did hire employees; PSA. Sellers pay PSA for a service, to evaluate condition and designate a grade. They failed at their job in this scenario.
Whether the seller notices the damage or not doesn’t effect the fact that this is PSA’s fault and they have the duty to correct it.
However, if the seller DOES notice it, then it is perfectly reasonable to expect them to disclose the information. Turning a blind eye and throwing it all on PSA is just childish. With misgraded cards like this, it’s obvious that the majority of buyers will not be happy. I would completely understand why a buyer would want a return in this situation.
We may not technically have the responsibility to issue a return, but at the end of the day I want all of my buyers to be happy with what they purchase. If I can anticipate problems they may have with a product, I’m 100% going to disclose them, and hope others would hold themselves to the same standard.
Sure I would personally accept the return/refund. The issue I have is the instant libel of people saying the seller is intentionally hiding damage. That is childish. Especially if they process a return, there are no damages in that scenario, other than the card! 
This isn’t a matter of agreeing with psa’s opinion, as I’m sure everyone would agree, no psa employee would give this a psa 10 after seeing the damage. It’s about the card being heavily mis graded or damgaged. I don’t see it as a slippery slope either. Arguing whether a psa 9 or even 8s should or shouldn’t be a 10 fair enough, this is completely different.
It’s inherently a slippery slope, and it already exists. I’ve had numerous returns over the years from buyers who disagreed with grades. This situation is a misgrade. Majority of the time it’s not this situation.
Yes. It is. Where do you draw the line? Everyone has their own standard of what is acceptable. A white dot, a knick, a micro-scratch, I see these posts all the time. Dont buy psa graded cards if you’re gonna argue with sellers about the grades. Go buy raw mint and put them in a binder
Fair enough, my initial post probably came off like an accusation of intentionally hiding the damage which was not the point I was trying to get across. More-so that the damage was hidden (the reason for being hidden, such as intentionally being hidden or that the seller missed the damage is irreverent imo, the outcomes are the same) from the buyer by not being highlighted in the photos or description.
Clarifying what I said above… I would accept the return for an issue such as this if the buyer opened a case. If a buyer simply messaged me I would give the default reply that PSA’s grade is an opinion and they have the financial guarantee for a reason while urging them to not return the card, but if the case was ultimately opened I would accept. I would do so knowing that I had no choice but to accept it and then I would promptly block them.
Would I try and get them added to the blacklist here? Certainly not. Would I think they were a bad person? No. Would I blast their name anywhere? No.
But my experience selling on eBay and the Pareto principle have led me to learn that blocking a small percentage of buyers who lead to “defects” on eBay will lose me only a small percentage of sales if any, while losing me a ton of headaches. The last thing I want on eBay is a headache, so when I notice a damaged case, or a misgraded card I set it aside in a pile to deal with later. The last thing I ever want is to list a card that can cause me a headache because enough happen on their own.
I personally take a front and back photo of each lower value card and try to do 6 or so photos at different angles for higher end cards. It is impossible to capture everything though. By taking 6 photos of a card I am likely spending 2-3x longer with each card than the PSA grader did when they assigned a grade to it and I just suck at taking photos to begin with. The PSA grade is there to give the buyer an idea of what they are getting into and 99% of the time that works just fine. I can’t inspect 100 cards to possibly find 1 bad egg.
I also agree that the accusation of intentionally hiding the damage here is wrong, and is not the point of this thread. It has the same possibility as the buyer not seeing it, but neither really being something that should end up as a buyers issue as they can only go by what is described/shown?
A little off topic but the whole business plan of huge inventory and that making it okay for service level to be of a lesser quality is the way the world has gone. Similarly a massive cash flow is seen as being a successful business and can sustain a failing business for a long time. Quantity over quality = 2020
While your situation sucks, it’s an extreme exception. A business will just absorb the loss rather than hire people to critically examine every single card in case 1 out of 1,000 was misgraded. The point of paying for a card to be graded is so you don’t have to critically examine everything.
Even the idea of hiring staff is just paying someone at best to take front and back photos. That still won’t rectify this exceptionally rare issue.
Cool, whats your ebay so i can block you? Lol. I buy psa10 without bothering to look at edges or anything else, and if i have a stack or cards to list, i list them with the same mindset. This is exactly why sellers have to jump through hoops to not deal with anal retentive buyers. We have to list psa10 cards as “used” with descriptions of “the card listed is the card photographed, feel free to ask for my photos” etc etc
No. It isn’t. Quite simple, draw the line at cards with creases getting psa 10s. And thanks for the advice but I will continue to buy PSA cards, so long as the seller provides clear pictures 
Agreed it is an extreme exception, and I feel some have seen it as an everyday abuse of a buyers remorse / Being a jerk about grades.
I just wanted to share the situation with others
Yeah yours is a clear cut misgrade. Might even be encapsulation damage, tough to know for sure. But it’s just a shitty situation all around. Psa dropped the ball. If you bought it from me I would just process a return/refund.