ePain in the ass

i think i might be done selling shit on ebay…

…which is a shame, ’cause it’s a good way to scramble out some extra money when you’re cleaning up (or out, or both) your place. hell, that’s what brought about the last thing i sold:

it’s fun, it’s quirky, and i loved using it in college – but a corded phone would drive me nuts now and i don’t ever see myself getting a land line again. also, i was describing this to my buddy’s kid, and i needed a visual, so i just looked it up on ebay ’cause that’s where my browser was at the time (go figure) – and i was shocked to see the phone bid up to fifty bucks! i watched and only to see it close out for a buck and a quarter!

$125.00? for something i’ll never use again? sign my ass up for this!

of course i’ve always said ebay runs off what i call the “bigger idiot” theory – i.e. he as an idiot to hold on to his childhood shit, but the bigger idiot will pay twenty for that two dollar toy…and the even bigger idiot will bid it up to fifty.

well apparently that $125 was paid by the head idiot. i watched another when it went up and it only went for fifty. i through mine up and it only went for twenty-five, which was my opening bid.

no biggie – i’ll never use it again, and holding on to that kind of shit is the gateway to hording. “fuck it”, i thought…what’s done is done. ME had warned me about how ebay now has a policy whereby until you build up a “reasonable selling history” (i’ve been buying and selling for over a decade, but apparently that isn’t enough) they hold the funds in your paypal account until it’s confirmed that product has been shipped, received, and all is well…

…which seems like buyer protection but is really just them being able to keep your money in an interest-baring account somewhere and keeping the interest your money earns for themselves. doubt me? keep reading.

so i knew i wouldn’t get my dough right away. not a real big thing, but the way they handle shipping now sucks balls. it used to be you could:

a. buy your shipping on paypal and it deducted directly out of what they paid you
b. you put the money in the bank from paypal, which took a couple days, than you shipped
c. you paid out of pocked for shipping and reimbursed yourself out of the paypal money hitting a couple days later

now? you pay out of pocket for shipping no matter what – bought the label off ebay, and they deducted the fifteen bucks out of my bank account instead of taking it off the payment…but then they release that much in funds to your paypal account for other use if you desire…

…so now they have the fifteen they just released in their account PLUS the fifteen they made me pay out of pocket BOTH in their account somewhere, drawing interest.

ingenious for them, shitty for us. can you picture if you have five or six items up at once? i could have had to scramble up seventy-five bucks for shipping so they could spot me back? that’s just all sorts of fucked up!

i won without trying, though – i bought my label on paypal and had to pay for it, but then had to cancel it due to the buyer needing it to go to another address. and then i dropped the released funds into the bank account, which hit right around the time the paypal transaction hit so they canceled each other out. i then just paid the shipping out of pocket and now have to wait two weeks for the actual refund on the cancelled paypal postage…

…which now that i read that out loud is far from “winning” – even in the charlie sheen sense of the word.

well, fuck – i was right from the first line. this is a pain in the ass!