the buyer took the partial refund approach
So, it sounds as though they were just fishing in that case for a cheaper deal.
Indeed, which i was disappointed about because he bought it in an auction style listing and thus, someone would have happily paid the 2nd highest bid price, much higher than what i ended up getting.
As a seller I try to make sure things are in decent condition, well described and have all faults fixed (where reasonable). I have a default "full refund only" policy, unless the buyer asks sensibly and can provide evidence of a problem which genuine makes the item less than 100% useful, but still useful enough not to send back
The buyer did send some pictures as evidence, but TBH they looked a lot like someone had opened up photoshop, used the spill tool and put that black and then got the brush and just clicked a few times with the white.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/677635/pixels.jpgThe buyer was a "3d effects artist" and needed it for work and that the "dead pixels" made it very hard for him to use it, if the person was local I would have driven there and checked it out, but they're half way across the country, he paid $1200 for the monitor and got a $400 refund for "3 dead pixels", 3 in 4096000 isn't too bad... plus the monitor was still under warranty ( 3 year) so I felt pretty mad.