eBay

When I first encountered eBay, oh 15 years ago I suppose, it seemed like a marvellous idea,and I took to it like the proverbial amphibian to water, buying unpainted toy soldiers, painting them up and selling them off (plus, adding to my own collections), all for a tiny charge, and with a global market - marvellous for a New Zealander used to being the back end of beyond.

However, with the progress of years, and the greater and greater knowledge of the Internet among the dim, the unwary, and - especially! - the sharps and con-men, it is one of the sites that seems to have deteriorated in value and virtue.

Fees for transactions have risen, repeatedly, but that is still a trifle. However, they seem to have done a deal with any and every professional purveyor of sharp practice, so that when you request a list of a type of object you want, the first 2, 5, or 30 pages of listings are all for -very- professional shops selling via eBay, and any actual 2nd hand or bargain items are buried way at the back.

If you should choose to list by price, lowest first, you get one of two responses - either the "premium products" get listed, lowest to highest, before anything else gets listed (ie same result), or else you get pages and pages of 'accessories' - be it buttons, bells, or batteries - to what you wanted all listed first, being marketed by the down-market compatriots of the premium product merchants, still trying to get your 'eyeballs' before you get to what you want to acquire.

On top of that, some of the purveyors of tat seem to feel they can ignore all classifications and stick their products into any and every category of business, the more irrelevant the better - this is how, while browsing for some SYW artillerymen, I came upon vibrating groin massagers, handpainted portraits of Jesus on velvet (autographed by him!) and the miracle dog-collar that will stop your dog ever barking*

Even more vexing, if such were possible, is that once you find something you want to buy, instead of doing the deal with eBay and relying on them, they whisk you off to the vendors own websire, where you have to spend -more- time just filling out some inane and over-intrusive questionairre about yourself, and then get presented with some tiny writing asserting your rights (none) and their rights (everything) and directed to tick a box to show you agree to these rights, otherwise the purchase cannot be completed. 


Well, being cranky, I've started reading these assertions, and as a result have declined to complete several purchases, for completely ludicrous conditions such as (a) absolutely no returns on anything no matter what - thats a popular one, (b) the vendor reserving the rights to charge 25% or 40% on top of estimated postage and packing, for reasons unspecified, (c) you agreeing to pay for any time spent in discussing errors in shipping and mislabelling, and (d) the vendor reserving the right to ship a different product to that purchased if he has business exigencies requiring this.


And eBay itself now seems massively disinterested in helping sort out any disputes, combining difficulty in initiating complaints with an extremely dismissive attitude and lassitude.


So, I've given up. I guess I bought or sold at least $50k worth of stuff through eBay, but those days are over - the girl has vomited on that train**



*If you tighten it enough, I'm assuming

** or if you prefer, Sick Transit, Gloria Munday