Warning: whiny rant follows.
\begin{rant}
Probably like most of us, I have a love/hate relationship with ebay.
I love the resource of a single site for all these sellers; being able to
find a used left controller handle to a Battlezone in Yonkers is handy.
BUT, I hate the crazy prices, shipping "costs" ($25 S/H to mail me a
motherboard packaged in only the display box (Shipping $5, adhesive tape
to stick on label $0.02, profit $19.99), deceptive sellers ("untested but
worked when we pulled it last month") and it arrives with 1/3 of the RAM
missing and battery leakage that goes through the board).
But sometimes one rude seller or buyer to put you over the edge.
Case in point (you knew this is where I was headed, right?):
Yesterday I win a Berzerk control panel on Ebay for $11.07 plus 12.50
shipping. Joystick is a replacement, but that's okay. I already have
the boards and the marquee, and I hope to get a cabinet soon.
So last night I was on a consulting job until after midnight. Auction
ends at 5:00PM. Ebay sends me an end of auction notice. Seller sends me
a paypal invoice. I don't read my mail, but crawl into bed.
Today I spend all day reading support email from work, typing careful
answers to undergraduate computer users who don't read the instructions,
and won't read my mail anyway so I wonder why I bother--they all think
they are computer experts because they know how to format a floppy disk
under WIndows. I wade through several hundered messages today.
So I get home and I have 70 messages on my home account. Delete spam.
Refile stuff from SourceForge.
Now down to the ebay stuff. I have four emails about the Berzerk control
panel. Ebay's notice. Sellers invoice. Seller's reminder. Another
reminder.
So it has been 27 hours since the auction ended and the seller has already
sent me three emails including two "you have not paid" reminders. Ebay
won't let a user send one until 72 hours has passed, but apparently not
PayPal. They let ya' crank 'em out all day.
I ask the seller (toytrackers) what the trouble is and tell him I am
getting annoyed because frankly, I am. I have enough mail to wade through
all day without somebody bugging me because I did not pay them for an
auction in just over a day.
Seller sends me a nasty email telling me that I don't know what I am
talking about, that he did no such thing, and that it is "standard" for
him to mail all buyers every day until the funds arrive. Seller's email
account is one full-name and paypal account is a completly different name
(and gender), so I'm getting a headache just trying to keep things
straight.
I try to lower my blood pressure, send back copies of all three messages
complete with headers showing the unique ID numbers from PayPal and
timestamps, and explain to him that we are getting off to a bad start. I
also send the cash with paypal to get him to at least shut up about it. I
suggest he read the ebay help pages, which say to wait 72 hours before
sending a reminder.
I get back three more emails finally admitting that he may have sent two
reminder messages, but since the first message from PayPal was an
_invoice_ that was actually only _two_ reminder messages in 27 hours and
not three, so he could not see what I was comlaining about.
What is the problem with these people? I have a +150 feedback on that
account, member since 1998. It's not like I am a new user.
I know how frustrating it is to wait forever to be paid for a sale, but
having a "policy" of sending a reminder every 24 hours until they get paid
is over-the-top. After 7 days, he gives up and leaves negative feedback.
WHAT IS THIS GUY? AN OPERATOR?
\end{rant}
-Chris
