What could have caused this one Wii game to stop working altogether?

[Lazer77]

Here is a little story. I sold a copy of Mario Super Sluggers on eBay, which was mine for about a year. I used to play it all the time and it worked flawlessly, granted that I have not touched it in maybe 4 months until the day I sold it. When I sold it, the buyer informed me that the Wii does not read the disc. I told her to check the format of the Wii and to make sure the disc format matches up, and everything works perfectly.

I tried to be the good guy on eBay, and I regret it like I always do because eBay is full of low people the past few years (been using eBay since 2003). I told the buyer I will accept a refund if she ships it back at her own cost. So I get it back today, in some cheap little envelope, and the case is broken in the corner and beginning to crack down the side of it. The bottom of the disc is now scratched up and buffed up. From the looks of it, it appears they tried to use a disc cleaner, and they did not follow the directions very well. So now I am stuck not only losing $40 that I really could use in my current financial situation, but I cannot even sell the game because for some reason when I put it in my Wii, it does not read anymore. It simply says unable to read disc.

This is puzzling to me, because even though I am extremely upset with the buyer, I feel like they are being honest with me. Which leads me to wonder, why does this game not work anymore? I highly doubt it, in fact I am positive it is not this, but I cannot think of any other better reason. Maybe a scanner or something at the post office disabled the disc? Because it does not read at all anymore.

Can someone help me make sense of this? I really needed that money as a grad school student :bomb:

[WhipSmartBanky]

Here is a little story. I sold a copy of Mario Super Sluggers on eBay, which was mine for about a year. I used to play it all the time and it worked flawlessly, granted that I have not touched it in maybe 4 months until the day I sold it. When I sold it, the buyer informed me that the Wii does not read the disc. I told her to check the format of the Wii and to make sure the disc format matches up, and everything works perfectly.

I tried to be the good guy on eBay, and I regret it like I always do because eBay is full of low people the past few years (been using eBay since 2003). I told the buyer I will accept a refund if she ships it back at her own cost. So I get it back today, in some cheap little envelope, and the case is broken in the corner and beginning to crack down the side of it. The bottom of the disc is now scratched up and buffed up. From the looks of it, it appears they tried to use a disc cleaner, and they did not follow the directions very well. So now I am stuck not only losing $40 that I really could use in my current financial situation, but I cannot even sell the game because for some reason when I put it in my Wii, it does not read anymore. It simply says unable to read disc.

This is puzzling to me, because even though I am extremely upset with the buyer, I feel like they are being honest with me. Which leads me to wonder, why does this game not work anymore? I highly doubt it, in fact I am positive it is not this, but I cannot think of any other better reason. Maybe a scanner or something at the post office disabled the disc? Because it does not read at all anymore.

Can someone help me make sense of this? I really needed that money as a grad school student :bomb:
The bottom of the disc is now scratched up and buffed up. From the looks of it, it appears they tried to use a disc cleaner, and they did not follow the directions very well.

That's why.

[Lazer77]

Not unplayable scratched up, I have some games that look worse and play fine. Its just a bunch of tiny little buffs from a failed disc cleaning.

[WhipSmartBanky]

Not unplayable scratched up, I have some games that look worse and play fine. Its just a bunch of tiny little buffs from a failed disc cleaning.
Hold the disc up to a light and see if you can see any pinpoints of light through the disc. Perhaps the label side was damaged in some way.

[kburns10]

Scratches can be misleading (at least in my cases before). Certain scratches on certain parts of a disc can cause it to freeze at a key point or barely work at all, while really scratched up games can still play just fine.

For example, I bought NHL Hitz 2003 off of Walmart.com (never doing that again) for dirt cheap. Disc itself looked great except one small scratch. Hardly anything I thought until I tried to play. Game worked perfectly EXCEPT when trying to save my dynasty mode. The core mode of the game would freeze any time I went to save it just because there was a certain scratch on a certain part.

I'm really sorry to hear about your situation though! I've never sold on eBay, only bought items, so I'm not sure if they can work with you from this point on or not. Hope you get everything resolved!

[Lazer77]

Yeah so this (like most other eBay transactions lately) is going to complete **** basically. They are making the stupid argument that they got the game in a non-working condition, so they deserve a full refund. I am arguing that they deserve a partial refund, because I got the game with the case all cracked up and the disc all scratched up, aka, NOT the condition it left my possession in.

They are saying if I sent a working condition game, they wouldn't have had to wipe it with sleeves and everything to clean it, so its my own fault. I hate eBay, but I love those prices. I swear like 3/10 items I sell now never receive payment. And then 1/10 of the items I sell OR buy have a stupid problem like this.

[kburns10]

As a buyer, I love eBay! But from everything I've read, it's REALLY tough to be a seller there! I hope you can get everything resolved with this.

[Lazer77]

Well we both decided that neither of us are going to get it 100% our way, so I refunded $20 of the original $28. So I basically sold it for $8 because I am stuck with a non-working game now.

Yeah eBay used to be absolutely perfect. But now its a mess non-stop for me. Over the past year, here are some of the highlights of my problems. I sell something worth $10 for $2,000+, someone did this as a joke, AND left me negative feedback. So I spent literally hours on the phone with eBay trying to get them to take the feedback off and to make sure the $2,000 doesn't count toward my seller's fees (which it did). I learned that the only way to reach eBay is calling them and instead of asking for tech support (who never answers, they leave you on the line for an hour and then disconnect), call to get help setting up a new account. So that was resolved. I had to relist one item 3x before someone finally paid. I get tons of buyers who never pay for their items. Or they get their items and say they didn't want that, they misread the description (which made it very clear). I am just sick of eBay. I just wish I had another way of getting rid of my stuff for money, and good money at that. Because this is the most frustrating thing ever.

[skubish]

eBay is the only place to get good prices. There are too many stupid there that overpay for everything.

[kburns10]

Apparently Amazon isn't a bad place to sell nowadays from what I hear. But I can't personally attest to that since I've never sold any items online.

[Lazer77]

I might look into Amazon.

But eBay is excellent for getting my money's worth. I can trade a game to Gamestop for $4, Best Buy for $8, etc, but on eBay I can easily get $25-30 (many games, not all). Or I can try to trade it on CAG, but that takes a lot of patience, I don't want to have a giant stack of games sitting around collecting dust, whenever I beat a game I want it gone as soon as possible unless I plan on keeping it for a replay a year or two down the road.

But that is just my philosophy. Never trade to Gamestop, thats my code.