Allan, here's what to do:

Keep track of the time the package spends at your place. If and when he asks for it back, you charge him a storage fee and do not ship it back until he pays. You are allowed to do that.
As far as police involvement, he is setting himself up for jail time and hefty fines, PLUS restitution if you decide to take him to court. He is perpetrating fraud, it seems.

If the seller has rejected receipt of you sending it back, then it belongs to you. Sell it.

Well, hopefully this saga is finally over:  the seller complained to Paypal toward the end of October, and Paypal got in touch with me and sent me money to ship the set back to the seller.  I finally had time to do that on Saturday, and hopefully this'll be over and done with now.

We'll see.  I had a great clerk at UPS Store, and she and I entered the details on what books were being shipped back (with some annotated comments on missing pages, 1st GH price not struck through, etc.).  Hopefully that's the end of this saga, but I'm not holding my breath.  If things take another turn, I'll let everyone know

David:  unfortunately I forgot again to measure the 1st GH before handing it off to UPS  If it bounces back my way again, however, I'll certainly do so.

grodog wrote:And, at long last, the seller has managed to accept the box back, on the 2nd delivery attempt in the 2nd return.  

Huzzah!  

So good you posted it twice, Allan?! Hurrah!!

The concept of a freebie woodgrain is one thing, perhaps, but better that that's "sorted" properly. Fingers crossed that no-one else is burned quite so badly...

Ah; no probs on the measurement for the 1st print GH: I'm still fairly sure that's a normal copy they just forgot to amend, given the approximate measurement provided by the seller was near as could be to the regular issue. (I guess I'd better dig out some copies to show what I mean sometime, rather than just talking numbers).

Cheers,
David.

grodog wrote:Perhaps I spoke too soon:  it sounds like the seller's trying to say that I struck the price through on the 1st GH before sending it back  

Fortunately, I had the UPS Store clerk validate all of the contents and enter them into their electronic shipping manifest, including the fact that the $1.75 was not struck through  

This guy is a real piece of... work.

grodog wrote:Perhaps I spoke too soon:  it sounds like the seller's trying to say that I struck the price through on the 1st GH before sending it back  

Hmm... you have told them you're considering legal action against them for that nice attempt to get you stitched up, I trust?

grodog wrote:Fortunately, I had the UPS Store clerk validate all of the contents and enter them into their electronic shipping manifest, including the fact that the $1.75 was not struck through  

Allan; I don't think I'd've been as careful as that. Kudos.

(The only bright side is that if they've now /actually/ gone and struck through the price on that copy, they've neatly slit their own throat given that they claimed they already had someone lined up who would pay $1,500 for that alone... or some such wibble. [/sarcasm])

d.