eBay advice, bike arrive with slight damage

I bought myself a Genesis bike off eBay last week. It's landed and although it was in a bike box it wasn't too well packaged inside and the cassette from rear wheel has scratched one of the stanchions on the forks. They're Rock Shox Tora forks, so no anodising on the stanchion, but still a scratch that you can feel and that I think may start to damage the seal with use.

I've sent the seller a pic and he's acknowledged that its happened in transit. He's said he's going to contact the courier.

I'm not too sure what to do. It's not the couriers fault and the damage isn't too bad, but it's not quite what I paid for. I don't want to send the bike back as its quite nice, so would settle for a partial refund and I'll try and sand down the scratch so it's smooth. Do you think this is reasonable? How much should I ask for if it's reasonable?

Any advice would be appreciated. I'm happy with the bike but wouldn't have paid quite what I did given the fork damage.

I see, could have been done better i guess.

£20-30 id go for as tora's go fairly cheap (most of the time) should you want to replace them - although not that cheap.

Cheers Josh. Will see what he says and offers.

Another little niggle is that he set postage cost at £40 and said he'd refund any difference. I recommended a courier, but he used TNT. Surely it can't have cost £40?!

That annoys me too, people that print postage labels WITHOUT the price.

i dont reckon it would have cost that much, its sound too much but you should ask how much it cost and ask him to prove it.

Or he will keep doing it as many others will.

I feel like amug sometimes,because I always put in my auctions a high estimate for postage and then surprise people with a refund in the difference as a little surprise... only one person has ever thanked me .

That is a shame. Id be sure to thank someone if they did that for me.

You can work out the approx cost using Parcelmonkey.

If it was me I would tell him to give me a refund and take it away.

ebay will certainly be on your side.
couriers can be expensive if the box is over a certain size and weight.
it seems to go from 'jeez thats cheap' to 'jeez how effin much?' with just a few cm added.

if you do send it back, i know its a right kick in the lowers, but you dont have to use the same courier. and you will then find out for yourself what it actually cost to send.

you could always start an argument and insist that you shouldn't have to be out of pocket for return shipping when the item was not as described, depends if you want the hassle. but its worked for me when the seller told fibs or couldn't be bothered to pack properly.

Thanks for all the comments, I appreciate your thoughts everyone.

Got a message back from the seller with a pretty decent offer: Get a quote from a local shop to repair scratch and he'll pay; Send forks to him and he'll get them repaired; Send forks to him and he'll swop for another set of forks.

Don't think he could have offered any better to be honest. Think I'll just have to suck up the postage. I could have posted it cheaper but I'm sure I could bump the postage up to £40 by not using the cheapest courier and getting it fully insured etc.

Thanks again everyone

Thats awesome of him!