Grumpy Young Woman: Adventures of an eBay addict
Amber McNaught writes...
This week I've been rediscovering just what it was that made me stop using eBay too often. I, you see, am a recovering eBay addict. A few years ago, I was never far from the refresh button, bidding and selling and gradually working my weary way towards Powerseller status. I never actually made it, though, because one day I woke up and realised that:
a) I just couldn't be bothered any more
and
b) I'd sold almost everything we owned
The plan was never to ditch eBay entirely, but simply to have a bit of a trail separation. I'd stop selling, but would continue buying (have you spotted the fatal flaw in that little plan?) and everything would be hunky dory...
Except it wasn't. Almost overnight I came to realise that almost everything being sold on eBay was rubbish. Everything, that was, except the things I wanted to buy, which would invariably sell for much more than they were actually worth. Ebay and I didn't speak for a long time after that realisation hit me, but eventually I started buying the odd thing here or there, and two weeks ago I bought a pair of boots...
Actually, "won" is the appropriate word here, because, at £1.20, these boots were as good as free. I actually felt quite guilty as I paid for them by Paypal, but told myself that hey, if the seller wasn't willing to sell them for that price she could have set a reserve price, or just started the bidding higher. Her loss, my gain, and as it's all about me in my life, I paid up and promptly forgot about it.
The boots didn't come back into my mind until two weeks later, at which point I shot the seller a quick email asking if she'd mailed them yet, and refraining from adding that I should bloody well hope she had. But she hadn't. And do you know why she hadn't? For the oldest reason in the book: her dog ate her homework boots. No, I didn't believe it either. I suspected she had just decided she didn't want to sell them for the princely sum of £1.20, but as there wasn't much to be done about it, I told her just to refund my money and we'd forget about it. That's when the fun really started.
The seller couldn't refund my Paypal payment, she said, because her Paypal account was "broken". Maybe the dog ate that too, who knows? She could, she said, send me a cheque for the money, but given that my house is nowhere near the bank, and the trip there and back would cost me more than the cheque was worth, I told her to either send it in cash or contact Paypal to resolve the problem with the account.
A few days later, I received a cheque for £1.20. Sigh.
I should probably point out here that I wasn't actually bothered about the money. I may be Scottish, but I'm not that much of a miser. No, it was sheer bloody mindedness that made me contact this woman once again to point out that "I can't accept a cheque" does not mean "send me a cheque, please" and that she'd have to find some other way to refund the money. Well, they don't call me "Grumpy Young Woman" for nothing, you know.
I thought that would be the end of things, but apparently not, for just two hours after I sent my final email, the seller replied... to say that the boots were fine now and she's be posting them out that day. No, the dog hadn't regurgitated them: in the short time between receiving my email and replying to it, the seller had somehow managed to have them re-heeled. Whew, lucky the dog only ate the very tips of the heels, eh?
So the saga of the boots continues, and at this point my breath is bated as I was in excitement for my dog-eaten £1.20 boots to arrive, telling myself that this must never happen again, and then finding myself clicking back onto eBay, even as I think it. Apparently, I never learn.
The lesson in all of this? Check the seller's feedback before you bid, folks. Or, better still, go to the shops, like normal people do.
Amber McNaught is a freelance writer and Shiny contributor. She just won a pair of shorts on eBay, and she really hopes the seller doesn't own a dog...
