Penny For Your Thoughts

To make some extra cash, I have been helping Juliet with eBay sales. She has been selling mostly items of women’s interest, primarily clothes. Sometimes she is just getting rid of stuff she will never get around to using, sometimes she procures a cache of unused lingerie, sometimes old clothes, sometimes new clothes, sometimes lipstick, and of course art supplies. Anyway, the how and why is not the point. The point is that she got me into it partly to utilize the full market; she was forced to block some outrageously difficult “customers,” and since they had an unfair view of her, Juliet thought it would be better if I created a profile to sell the stuff, so she could vicariously sell to (and sometimes buy from) the people she blocked from her own profile.

I have seen some of the nasty emails she has received in the past from some disgruntled people who seriously need to re-calibrate their Priority Meters. I have seen some nasty emails that really bothered her. And when my girlfriend is bothered, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset… and when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset… PEOPLE DIE!!

Back to the point. One item I sold was a stick of pristine-condition Maybelline lipstick. For a penny. A PENNY. Plus ninety-nine cents shipping. To put things in perspective, just think about the price of stamps, envelopes, and the gas and time you spend going to the post office. Yeah. Um… yeah. Obviously, this was not the highlight of my day. That was a couple weeks ago.

So I sent it. This dude never got it. He wrote:

any idea when im going to receive?
i bought 3-4 items from others the same day and yours is the only one i haven't received..

Thanks for the effort of capital letters. And there are three periods in an ellipsis. But whatever. The smell of douche was in the air, so I carefully wrote back:

The item was shipped last week. I do not know what happened. If you do not receive it by the end of the week, I will happily refund
your money.

Time passed. He wrote back:

no lipstick yet, i dont want a fucking 1cent refund, i want the lipstick. where's the lipstick? your suppose to per ebay rules as a seller ship items with a tracking number and insured so buyers dont lose on shipping cost. where's my lipstick?
are you a scammer?

No. No, no, no, no. I read this and numerous thoughts clashed in my mind simultaneously, with a deafening crackling sound:

1) Calm down… have some dip.
2) Yyyyeah… there’s no need to resort to profanity, much less slander. You’re going to regret that knee-jerk response.
3) Um… isn’t your outrage a little disproportionate to the value of the item? It was for a penny. The smallest possible denomination of American currency. It quite literally couldn’t matter less. You are quite the drama queen, aren’t you?
4) If you really don’t want the refund, then can I keep the money? Ohh, I think you do want it.
5) I am sorry that a refund seems inadequate to you, but that’s pretty much all I can do for you. Shit, I want Firefly to come back with new episodes, but throwing a temper tantrum and jumping up and down in your mom's shopping cart doesn’t alter the fabric of space-time.
6) If I were a scammer, I would pour my effort into something a little more lucrative than penny auctions. You’re funny. Never mind the fact that scammers do not give refunds. Checkmate. Thanks for playing.
7) You have made the mistake of thinking I am working the make-up counter at Macy’s. I am not a salesperson; eBay is a glorified garage sale, so I do not have to take this manner of abuse through a fake smile. I’m not your punching bag. In the words of Robert Carlyle, “Fuck that.”
8) If we’re going to quote eBay stipulations like it’s the Old Testament, then I’m your huckleberry. eBay clearly states on every single item’s page: “Sellers are not responsible for shipping service transit times.” Are we done here?
9) eBay actually says nothing about insuring items. Because that would be absurd.
10) Unfortunately for you, the lack of delivery confirmation also means that there is no way of proving that you are not scamming me. That goes both ways, so you should probably not invoke that little point.
11) I’ve spent enough time on this already!! But it’s worth a blog post… oh, yes, I am going to blog about this.
12) Remember a few short years ago when all deliveries for anything required six to eight weeks? Yeah. Think of that.
13) If you want to be taken seriously, try using proper capitalization, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
14) If you want to be taken seriously, try not being a dick as your first tactic. You’ll get more accomplished if you work with people.
15) Thanks for cutting the new guy a little slack. Common practice is that people are very generous to newcomers, understanding that they need to build up their positive feedback.
16) I sent the item. I do not know why you have not received it yet, but I did send it. After your refund, enjoy the now free item you will inevitably receive in the mail.
17) Wait. None of this makes sense. How can anybody be this insane over a penny auction? Over any auction, really.
18) Wait. This doesn’t… make… sense…
19) Coruscant… that does not compute… uhhh… you’re under arrest!
20) Ohh, I’m afraid… that the deflector shield… will be quite operational… when your friends arrive!

Within five seconds, my logical brain shut down, and everything went dark. Eventually, I woke up in the creek with a lampshade on my head, four salmon fillets in each pocket, and the words Sous les pavés, la plage! written in toothpaste across my bare chest. I don’t know what happened. But then I went back to the house, got cleaned up, and began crafting my reply.

However, Juliet advised me that the best/only course of action in order to avoid being burned would be to not reply AT ALL and report him to eBay with my request to cancel the auction. Otherwise, eBay might see it as an argument and I might lose the case. So by playing my cards right, I can avoid tarnishing my burgeoning seller rating. After all, the whole point of doing penny auctions in the first place was to beef up positive feedback, since I’m a new user. There was no winning against this particular douchesickle. And of course he will be blocked from future dealings.

That fucker’s lucky he pulled that shit on me and not her. Because that would be calling down the thunder. I have his address, for fuck’s sake. Cedar Rapids, IA. There’s a fantastic Shotokan dojo in that city, run by a former student of the illustrious Sensei Nishiyama, I believe. Sensei Banks takes the KC dojo on a field trip once in a while to train there. I’d love to stop by…

My point is this:

The customer is not always right. They certainly do not have the right… the right to verbally assault and slander at will. Too many people out there forget this. You can’t just flip out and say anything you want and have amnesty under the laws of Customer Service Jihad. It doesn’t work that way. There are rules and repercussions. The customer is, in fact, usually wrong (and often apparently illiterate).



…It was a PENNY.