OK, so I haven’t been doing a lot of hunting on eBay lately because I haven’t had a lot of money, but every once in a while I pop on just to see if there’s anything I haven’t yet gotten of the Disney character I collect. (He’s a relatively minor character, and there’s not a lot of stuff out there with him, so he’s a cheap collectible, and every once in a while something new pops up that I haven’t seen before.)
Lo and behold, last week I found a new figurine I hadn’t seen before, so I bid on it. The seller actually had two auctions up of the same figurine, so I figured she bought a lot of them or something - not unusual for eBay. I had to bid against someone, but hooray! I won, and for under $10. Neat! A new addition to my collection, and a bargain to boot.
So I get my notification, pay promptly through PayPal, and get my response back from the seller (I will say “he” but I don’t know what gender they may be). “Uh, what auction is this? I sold this to someone else.”
Excuse me?
Then a second e-mail. “Oh, no, wait - I accidentally listed the same auction twice. Um, sorry.”
Now, how someone who obviously sells a LOT over eBay can’t keep track of what auctions correspond with what items, or even how many items they have listed, is beyond me. Granted, it’s a quick business, but still, you’d think one corresponding auction number to each item would be a simple matter.
But, you know what? Fine. People make mistakes. To his credit, he offered to either refund my money or give me another figure and throw in another one free, but he was offering me two characters I have no interest in, so I wrote back and said I was really disappointed and he could refund my money. (Um, well, actually, I didn’t just say “really disappointed” - I was kind of ticked at the time that I didn’t get what I paid for and what was promised me, so I said something along the lines of I’d take his word for it that it was an accident, but he’s lucky I don’t report him to eBay for fraud. Hey, I felt I got gyped, but I got over it - I wouldn’t really do that unless he was a jerk about it.) So he refunded my money.
Now that left us with the matter of feedback. eBay is based on feedback, taking “let the buyer beware” directly to the hands of the consumers. My choices in this matter were to leave positive, neutral, or negative feedback. I looked at his record - 207 feedbacks, and every one of them was positive. That’s a pretty good record. So I didn’t want to leave him negative, because he was quick to realize his error and refund my money. But at the same time, I didn’t really think I could leave positive, because I wasn’t a satisfied buyer. And not leaving feedback at all didn’t seem appropriate, either - as an eBay buyer and seller, I consider it the responsibility of everyone to leave feedback. So I decided to go with neutral, saying that he listed the wrong item and didn’t realize it until after I’d paid, but he quickly refunded my money. That’s fair, isn’t it? It’s certainly the truth, and I could have been vindictive if I’d wanted to.
Evidently, he didn’t care for my reply, so in retaliation, he left me negative feedback, with some nasty comments about being a “complainer.”
:mad:
Listen, you goat-felching bottom-dweller, you post an auction that doesn’t even exist, you don’t catch it until after I’ve paid, and you’re bitching because I left you neutral feedback? Your 207 other positives aren’t good enough for you? Hell, neutrals don’t even affect your overall rating, so what are you bitching about? I was honest, and you leave me negative feedback? WTF? Keep your fucking precious perfect positive status, you jerk, and next time don’t double click on the submit button.
Fortunately, we’re both able to reply to feedback left for us. Of course in response to my feedback he was polite and apologetic, but in the feedback he left for me he was vindictive and petty. I basically repeated what I wrote for him in response to what he wrote for me, and that’s fine.
Whatever. I’m learning a lot about some of the knee-jerks out there anymore. When I first started on eBay I used to get pissed because people would put “$4.00 shipping” in their auctions and the package would come with $1.63 of postage. Now I understand that people usually code it “shipping and handling” because it’s easier to set a flat rate for postage across all their auctions than try to figure out how much postage would cost for each individual item. It took me a while to get into the groove of things, I understand that now with a little more experience, but with idiots like this who can’t even keep their auctions straight it’s sometimes just a pain in the ass to deal with it.
Of course, I’ll keep shopping on eBay - I gotta get my fix. 
And my new challenge is to find that particular figurine again!
Esprix
