Ebay WTF #219

An old Hallicrafters radio I bought on Ebay a couple of years ago for $20, which I cleaned up and last week decided to sell because I rarely even look at it, has been bid up to $255 with an hour to go. In these hard economic times, it’s hard to understand. There seems to be money to be made just buying stuff on Ebay, freshening it up, taking a few decent photos, writing a semi-literate description, and re-auctioning it, starting the bidding very low.

I’m not complaining.

Clarinet!

The clarinet I bought on Ebay arrived, in excellent condition. It didn’t have any reeds with it, so we hot-footed it down to Old Town Music store where they sold me a couple. I had no idea what size I wanted, so got a 2 and a 2 1/2.

After some wetting of the reed I found I could get a note out of the clarinet, and following some experimentation, play a simple tune on it. Muffet also had some fun trilling and droning. But, wow, the mouth position is critical: get it slightly off and the instrument squeals like a stuffed pig. Also, I have to blow quite hard, especially to get the lower notes. I must be doing something wrong.

I love the reedy sound of it, it’s so … fruity.

Searching for an image to accompany this post (as is my wont) I came across the following. Why it appears in a Google image search for “clarinet”, I have no idea.

Irritatus Terminus – "Due what you must due"

I cancelled Ebay friend’s transaction: a simple matter as it turned out. Then I issued a Second Chance Offer to the next highest bidder (who, oddly, has so far declined it). If that times out I will re-list the item.

For your possible amusement, here is my email exchange with “Dick” (head), firstly where he replies to my question asking if he will not pay with PayPal:

What I am saying is Paypal has stated “they want me verified or on their credit card or nothing” . This has been a never ending battle with them, so I gave up on them.
1. I have a 100% rating, most do not!!!!
2. I will never let them even know what other accounts I have, much less let them access them. (verified)
3. I many credit cards with half the interest rate as there’s and ten times their limit. So why use their’s.

IF IT IS THAT IMPORTANT TO YOU—PLEASE RELIST IT.

to which I replied:

OK thanks … I will cancel the transaction if it’s alright with you

and he retorted:

You must be new to ebay, I have put up with their stupidy for about ten years. Paypal is and always will be ignorant of it’s customer’s needs and wishes. Instead of helping it is always pushing it’s own agenda. Paypal is due for a court battle soon. If someone starts a class action suit, I’ll be one of the first to join in, You’ll learn PayPal is a paper tiger after a few sessions with them. Due what you must due. I offered to pay.

Dick

I love the “Due what you must due”! I responded, tartly:

For the record, I’ve been using Ebay since 1999 – two years longer than you have – and have almost 100 more +ve feedbacks than you.

We will have to disagree about PayPal. I have had no problems.

Thanks for agreeing to cancel the transaction: the item has now been offered to the next highest bidder.

One Hundred Billion Dollars!

I am sort of tempted to bid on the Ebay auction for this Zimbabwe 100 Billion Dollar note … currently at 1 cent, no bidders, no reserve, with a day left. Shipping is a little expensive, at $10, approximately 100 times the value of the bill itself.

Ebay Rants

I continue to be infuriated on Ebay by the time lag between sellers getting your money for a won auction and shipping the darned thing to you, and buyers who win one of your auctions actually forking out the money for what they won.

Maybe most folks have a more relaxed attitude to this than I do But when I win an auction I’m right in there, usually within the hour, and always well within a day, with my payment. When someone wins one of my auctions, once I get paid, I’ll always immediately send an email saying when I’m going to ship whatever it is to the buyer, and that’s nearly always within two days.

What I can’t abide is paying some seller for something and then waiting for 5 days without any response to emails asking for shipping details, or having an auction won, waiting for half a day for payment, sending an invoice, waiting and waiting and waiting for the buyer to pay up.

Using PayPal means I can always get my money back if the seller doesn’t follow through. But with tardy buyers, it’s more difficult to handle.

I wish there was an alternative to Ebay, so that they had some competition. Yahoo! Auctions seemed to go belly up a few years ago. Perhaps Google could start Google Auctions: it needs someone with that considerable industry heft to break into Ebay’s monopoly of the online auction market.

They could start by setting up an online auction site that contained native auctions, but also made Ebay auctions visible simultaneously, with a means of making bids on them, but via the native interface. Something like that, so they would start with a sufficiently large number of visible auctions to make it worthwhile for people to join.

I could continue wittering on about this and other topics, perhaps splitting the thoughts into separate posts, but I wont.

Scuffs

When I received the new wheels I’d bought on Ebay there were a couple of scuffs on them. Nothing serious, but not evident in the photos. So I started a dialogue with the seller, who was a friendly chap, and who promptly offered a full refund. Well, says I, that’s a bit silly, because there’s only two with marks, and one of those isn’t too bad, I was just hoping for a discount really. Besides, if I send them back for a full refund, the only people making a profit on that are FedEx. So after a bit more discussion, the chap agreed to refund me $110, which was nice.

I realised after talking to him for a while, that he was *terrified* that I was going to post negative feedback. In fact he said he’d send the refund only after I posted positive feedback. Since I trusted him (although he evidently didn’t trust me!) I had no problem doing that. Shortly afterwards the refund arrived.

Searching for Stuff

Do you ever get a little bit of stuff stuck between your teeth that you can plainly feel, but not extract, with your tongue, and yet, when you reach in there with a forefinger, you can’t find it? It’s very irritating.

A strange thing happened on Ebay. I wrote out an auction for a couple of tube preamps, submitted it, and then spent about 5 minutes writing the companion auction for the powersupply. When I finished that I went to look at my preamp auction, but it wasn’t there! So I submitted it again. It still wasn’t there! Most odd. Then I realised: it had sold! Within a couple of minutes of putting the darned thing up, someone had done bought it with a Buy It Now.

This too was irritating because it probably meant that I could have sold it for lots more.

Zen Xtra 40GB

I ended up ordering one of these … Creative are selling a bunch of refurbished units on Ebay for half price.

A while back I would have been leary of buying a refurbished unit, but since I got my Canon Powershot A85 refurbed, and it was as good as new, I figure: why not?

J&G arrive later today, so updates in the LJ as time permits.

Ebay Anticipation

I have identified an item on Ebay that is extremely desirable to me, has a couple of hours left before the auction finishes, and is at a very attractive price. What’s more, the shipping is ridiculously low. I have armed my BidNip with a suitable snipe, and am nervously peaking at the price, hoping that nobody else realises what a bargain this thing is. The tension is unbearable. I may have to lie down.

Last night we watched SpaceBalls. I wasn’t very impressed, except by Rick Moranis, whose Dark Helmet costume was hilarious.

Quote: (after lifting up his helmet) “I can’t breathe in this thing!!”

Forgive Me …

But I have had another Ebay “moment”. ::Looks shameful and averts eyes::

On the other hand, I restricted myself to only two Frappuccinos today.

Aren’t I the Bees Knees?!