2100 Crazy eBay

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I'll go months with no problems on eBay, and then all of a sudden things go crazy, even with people I've bought from over and over. I don't understand. It's happened like that several times - months of no problem, then one problem after another over a short time.

I bought some sew-on doflinkies. The description said there were 30 in the package. The "hang on a display hook-type" package arrived still sealed, and it says "count: 30" on it. But I counted the doflinkies through the plastic, several times, several ways, and there are only 28 in the package. Three stacks - 9, 9, 10. It's obvious that the one stack is higher than the others.

I contacted the seller. He sells hundreds of these things, and he says he'd never heard that before. He wants me to send the package back and he'll replace it.

I bought an orange silk sari with gold stripes on the pallu and gold butis on the body. What arrived was an orange artificial silk sari with a turquoise and gold zari pallu.

I contacted the seller, and sent her a photo of what had arrived. She says she can't locate the sari I had bought, and she can't understand that I received a sari with a turquoise pallu, because she has never owned a sari with a turquoise pallu. I know it came from her, because there was a second sari in the same package that I HAD purchased from her. And it's not like I've mixed it up with another, because it's unlike any other I had ordered. She has refunded my payment, and said I can keep the sari, but I'd feel guilty about keeping it. I intend to return it to her. Maybe when she sees it she'll recognize it?

I bought a turquoise kurta with beading around the neckline. It arrived with beads missing, threads hanging, right at the front of the V-neck. I can't repair it easily by moving beads from the back, because the facing covers the stitching.

I sent the seller a scan of the damaged section, and she has refunded my payment in full and said I can keep the kurta anyway.

I bought a large number of bars of Coast Original Blue soap as a gift to The Man, who loves the stuff. Coast had replaced the Original Blue scent with Pacific Force scent a few years ago, and he doesn't like Pacific Force. Original Blue is next to impossible to find, so I was in extended communication with the seller as to whether she was sure it was really Original, and I checked with several other of her buyers who verified that what they had received was absolutely the original scent. When it arrived, the outer packaging said original blue. I gave one test bar to The Man a week ago, and he says it's Pacific Force, not the original. I guess I'm stuck with that purchase, because all I have is a handful of conflicting opinions. I've been trying to find Coast Pacific Force so I can conduct my own sniff comparison, but neither my local grocery store nor pharmacy seem to carry it.

This has all happened in the past week, after months of nothing but perfect transactions. Some of them, like the kurta and the sari, leave me feeling vaguely guilty.

Maybe the eBay gods are trying to tell me something?

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Breaking news - the news station I'm watching has Obama taking Pennsylvania and Florida, which are significant to the outcome. On the other hand, that's with like 5% of the precincts reporting. I don't know how they can predict a victory on such a small sample.
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