More adventures in eBaying

[grrgoyl]

I won an auction back on Feb 13 on eBay. What the auction was for is absolutely irrelevant to this story, but suffice to say it will make a handy travel companion to my personal DVD player in June when we fly back to Connecticut (and involves portable battery charging. There. I've said too much). I am exceedingly patient when it comes to waiting for online purchases to arrive (on the outside at least), but after two weeks I felt enough was enough. I emailed the seller, then emailed him again. He wrote back to say the item hadn't even shipped yet. His excuse? Incarceration? Coma? Alien abduction? All perfectly acceptable, legitimate reasons. But no. He said he "forgot about his eBay transactions." I don't know how he could miss the four emails that get sent at the end of an auction automatically. He said he was just "trying out the eBay thing" (explaining why he had only one feedback. Never freakin' again). I was gobsmacked. Well, while you are dabbling in auctions for the sheer fun of it, over here is a real, live, flesh-and-blood buyer who shelled out good money and is waiting for their item. Here's the part where you ship your item in exchange for actual, legal-tender, cold hard cash, which is really the whole point of holding an auction in my opinion. But what do I know? I've only been doing it for 6 years. I invented a trip happening this weekend to add strength to my outrage, but he won't even be back in the country until Mar 20. He offered to refund my shipping, so I left neutral rather than negative feedback. Not that this bozo will care, since eBay is apparently just a little experiment for him.

In unrelated news, at Tery's urging I've removed the plastic insulation from our windows, so those of you in the Denver area, prepare for the temperature to drop to 9 degrees.