My experience of eB** is very limited. Henry is the one who normally 'eB**s',
sometimes much to my displeasure. It
flabbergasts me that he can simply press a button and find people willing to
publicise the fact that they have, and are willing to sell, such items as (to
quote one of my favourite novels) ‘T.V.-character
lunchboxes, rusty oil lanterns, Eastlake furniture, Esso-station green glassware,
gold-tone Japanese watches, Toby jugs, trompe-l’oeil majolica lobsters... every
imaginable style of pseudo-baroque 1960s brass lamp... bear-traps and
alpenstocks and Chinese shipwreck pottery and an oil painting of King Charles
II... lutes and flugelhorns and jade dildos... and a whole, real, stuffed
mountain goat with testicles the size of a man’s fists’.
I have only used the eB** once: to sell a pre-owned modern ‘sport-utility
vehicle’ we bought in a fit of desire for a snorkel on our beaten ’52 Landie. I found this new thing far too big and
complicated. It could not be fixed with
a simple kick to the wheel and a spanner up the exhaust. It would need taking to a dealership, heaven forfend, for any
repairs. Luckily, though alas not soon
enough to head off this costly mistake, I was able to source a snorkel (probably
knocked together from leftover bathroom plumbing) from our local scrapper and
attached it to the old Landie very adequately myself. The new vehicle now being surplus to
requirements, I listed it on eB**.
My mobile phone had never been as busy as that day. What I didn't know before listing the car was
that eB** could provide my mobile number for potential buyers to call or text
me about the item. The first man to ring
was a very polite gentleman in Kent, who was looking for a Land Rover for his
aged mother, so she could battle the flood-plains in style. He offered more than the asking price and
said he'd fly up the next day to pick it up.
Sold. I removed the listing from eB**. This didn't stop people constantly calling
and emailing saying they'll offer twice what we asked, and in cash. All very suspicious. We met the man from Kent and business was
concluded. I removed my details from eB**,
starting with the mobile number, and have never looked back.
The Other One, on the other hand, is a regular to eB**.
Lately, she's been surfing for maternity wear in which to clothe
her trendy new bump. One day I heard an
excited screeching from the sitting room and I rushed in, with a bucket of hot
water and a towel (some habits die hard) expecting the unexpected; but it was
just The Other One jabbering about some vintage t-shirt for a rock band I had
never heard of. There wasn't even a hint
of Braxton Hicks, let alone premature labour.
Quite disappointed, I put the bucket and towel back in the kitchen.
She bid straight away and ended up winning the item. However, what she forgot to factor in was the
actual paying for it. She was a bit
short on funds until pay-day, a few weeks away.
Somehow, she and the seller come to an agreement to wait for her pay-day.
A week after pay-day, she finally remembered to pay for the
item. When it didn't turn up the next
day, she sulked and immediately complained – not even to the seller, but
directly to eB** itself. I had to remind
her that some courier services don't know how to find the castle at first, and
those that do are in such a state of disbelief that they often forget they're
to deliver a parcel. Had she enquired as
to which courier it was?
We happened to be out in the garden picking strawberries
when a delivery man turned up with an unrelated item. He apparently had left a note two days
earlier, but we now suspect Patches ate it, judging by the suspicious red
cardboard traces round his muzzle.
Armed with this new information, The Other One eagerly took the
Landie to the local delivery depot and picked up her t-shirt. At home once more, however, she was dismayed
to find it didn't fit over her bump. Or
rather that it stretched rather badly, making the god-awful graphic look even
more god-awful, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.
She grabbed her laptop sulkily and immediately started a
dispute – her reasoning being that an advertised size 8-10 should ‘totally’ fit
her, as she is a size 10, O.K., or sometimes 12; or at least was, that size before the bump arrived. I leave her to it – shaking my head at the
silliness that seems to have rubbed off on her since she left Scotland for
California all those years ago.
At any rate, Blame Nation (as I am now calling her) lodged a
complaint with eB** about misrepresentation of the item. This led to two weeks of further faffing
about, including at one point her offer of accepting a partial refund if she were allowed to return the shirt after
cutting out the main design, which could then be sewn onto a more appropriately
sized t-shirt.
To my very great surprise, The Other One won the dispute and
even had the initial shipping charges refunded to her; try that one on an ordinary department store. Apparently, eB** are either idiots, or the
Buyer is their god. In any case, a damned
pity for the seller if you ask me. Where
do they stand when the face of stupidity looms up against them over a simple
case of buyer's remorse? A couple of
questions before purchase would have solved this before any money had to change
hands. Such questions as, 'Would this
fit a pregnant size 10-12?' It is, or
ought to be, the virtual version of trying things on. It might also help to measure yourself whilst
you're at it, in case you're far fatter
than you realise. Or you could
always resell it at a profit, like we did with the electronics-laden
pseudo-Landie.
Just where, pray tell, has all the common sense gone?
