eBay Stupidity

I've blogged about how shitty a website it is before, but this post will focus on a different aspect of the beloved auction site--shitty people.

I've noted that many people seem to think eBay is the only place to buy products on the internet, and that may explain why most of the people who buy things from my auctions are completely retarded. In the past month, I've sold probably 10 items on eBay, ranging from old clothes to new cell phones to guitar pedals. From these 10 auctions, only about 2 were completed smoothly. In one case, a man (presumably a very old man) from Montana bought a mount for a GPS unit from me. Upon completion of an auction, the winning bidder is sent a "YOU'VE WON AN ITEM, PAY NOW DUMBASS" email. When I hadn't received payment three days after the auction ended, I attempted to email him, only to immediately receive a wonderful "mailer daemon" email not found reply. This guy had been bidding on items for months with a non-working email. I then sent him a message through ebay's messaging system, however, this system heavily relies on the fact that when you receive a new message, an email is dispatched to let you know you have a new message. Quite the Catch 22. I eventually had to use his address information I got from ebay to look him up on google phonebook and actually CALL him to request he pay. I left a message on his answering machine, and that night I received a request from him via ebay for the item total. THE AMOUNT YOU BID PLUS THE SHIPPING COST IS THE TOTAL. Honestly, how can someone without the reasoning ability to determine the final cost of an auction use a computer at all? And when he finally did pay, he used a money order which I explicitly forbade in the auction listing. I seriously considered just keeping the money order and sending him a piece of paper with MAILER DAEMON ITEM NOT FOUND written on it.

The next sale I made, the winning bidder contacted me after the auction and tried to renegotiate the price based on the fact he found the same item at Circuit City for less. I declined his request.

The other winning bidders all took between 3 days and week to pay via paypal. I realized people are busy. I realize people have full-time jobs and may not check their personal email on a daily basis. But come on, if you know you're bidding for something on ebay check your mail every so often to see if you've won. It takes literally 2-3 minutes to checkout via paypal. If you can't make time for that in less than a week you have serious problems.