why I avoid ebay - part II

Well, my auctions are finished on ebay - my main items sold for about half of what I was expecting, but I had several others go out for more. Then there was the old synthesizer that no one looked at last year that sold for $152 (Wow!), so I came out about where I was hoping to overall. Since I was done, I was seriously considering taking one last potshot at Cristofe - but decided instead to share it with you folks instead....


Hey cristofe, I sure hope you read this before you construe this as harassment and report me. Cause here's the deal - my auctions are over, my goods are delivered, and my money has been collected. You've seen my feedback rating - I've been here several years longer than you, yet only have a tenth the rating you have. That's because I don't need eBay as much as you. I don't care if they cut me off, you might. After all, if they accuse me of harassment, I'll have to give them the entire transcript of our communication (including this) and they'll see that: 1) You sent unsolicited email criticizing shipping costs on an item you didn't bid on. 2) You said I had a "piss poor attitude" and told me to "have a nice life little man". Since you don't know anything about me at all (except that I've been on eBay for 10 years, and have bought and sold some music gear and at least one phone) the little man crack can only be interpreted as an insult. 3) You unjustly accused me of gouging my customers (who didn't seem to feel that way - and I never heard from eBay, so I guess they didn't either), and threatened to report me for harassment if I stood up for myself. Well guess what, I learned a long time ago that you don't back down from a whining bully. I'm not saying you're one, but I've read your feedback. So unless your next message is an apology, just keep it to yourself - or I'll do what you threatened to do. Either way, I'm done with you.

And so I am.

The Joy of Axe

I've been playing guitar for a long time, at least 30 years, and while I'm not the best by any stretch of the imagination, I'm good enough to play in public each week at church. I started out with a generic "Student guitar" - it had 6 strings and functioned mostly like a guitar was supposed to, but it didn't sound particularly good, nor was it the easiest to play. The strings were about 1/4 inch above the fretboard at the bottom, and it sounded like it was made of cardboard. Years later, I was playing music with my friend Phil, and he loaned me his dad's old Epiphone acoustic guitar. It sounded better (with the right strings) and was a little easier to play, but since it had been used for slide guitar work, the strings were still fairly high. Then I bought a used electric - small, single humbucker - that had an adjustable bridge. That made it a little easier to drop the strings more, but the neck wasn't exactly the best. I also got a used Applause acoustic electric which had a better quality neck, but had annoyances of it's own.

Time passed, and I picked up some NEW guitars, a pair of Danelectro guitars. Guitar magazine had called the new Danelectro line the best cheap guitar you could get, so at some local shops I picked up a black and white DC3 and a black Convertible. I also traded the little white electric guitar and some cash to the neighbor for his Ibanez RG170. I worked with those 4 guitars for a while, and it came down to the fact that I played the Ibanez the most, the Applause the least, and the Danelectros somewhere between. So I sold the Applause at a rummage sale, and the Danelctros on eBay (I paid $200 for one, and $225 for the other - they sold as a set for $500! I guess they were a wise investment) I took that money, and bought an Ibanez Talman TCY20 and an Ibanez GSR200 bass guitar (I'd wanted a bass guitar to begin with, but mom got me a guitar instead). I was pretty happy with this arrangement - I play electric guitar Sunday mornings, bass guitar Sunday nights, and had the acoustic electric at home.

Then I got a guitar synthesizer.

The Roland GR1 guitar synth isn't a synthesized guitar, but rather, a synthesizer you play with a guitar (instead of a keyboard). It uses a special pickup that sends a signal for each individual string to the synthesizer, where it detects the pitch of the string and sounds the corresponding note on the synth. It works great, and when our keyboard player moved to Indiana, there was no one to take his place - except me. The only drawback is the pickup - you have to stick it (and the largish control box) to your guitar. I did, it worked great, but was a bit clunky. Then one day, I was looking through a Musicians Friend catalog, and I saw a listing for a Godin xtSA guitar for under $1000. It had the same pickup arrangement as my Ibanez (which I liked a lot), as well as acoustic piezo pickups in the bridge (which I had been seriously considering adding to the Ibanez). The real kicker was the built-in Roland compatible interface (which meant no more box stuck on the front of the guitar). One income tax refund later, I am the proud owner of a transparent red finished xtSA. It's almost as pretty as my curly maple finished Talman, and sounds better than anything I've yet owned. In the past I always bought the best guitar I could get with a limited amount of money.

This time I bought the best guitar for what I wanted to do. I really should have done that a long time ago...

This is why I avoid ebay...

You attract some real a$*****$ on ebay. I get this in my inbox...

Dear tuesdayniteink,

$17 to ship two ounces of plastic???

- cristofe

So I send this...

Dear cristofe,

If that's what the shipping calculator says. You don't have to buy it...

- tuesdayniteink

But that's not good enough for our correspondent....

Dear tuesdayniteink,

The eBay shipping calc is pure BS. It does not work properly. I ship hundreds of pieces of musical gear all across the US every year. I KNOW what it costs to ship a GK2. But you are so very right. I don't have to buy it. You can keep
your broken pickup. Best of luck, you'll need it
with that piss-poor attitude.

Have a nice life little man!

- cristofe

So I respond...

Dear cristofe,

Really, how did you get such a rating and still think shipping is always what you expect? 8 time out of 10 the ebay shipping calculator estimates low and you end up spending more to ship than it estimated (yes I too have done a lot of shipping on ebay sales - you're not the only expert). And even though it may be 3 ounces of plastic, it's in a box that UPS says is 1 pound, and they'll charge $8.00 to ship. Then there's the fact that I live in the sticks, and I have to pay more money to get the package to UPS in the first place (whether I drive it in or UPS picks it up on my request). Then there's the chunk ebay charges me to use their service, and the tape I have to buy, and the boxes I have to scrounge up, and the time I spend doing all this stuff anyway.

But you know all of this - you just want to slam me because it makes you feel superior. And someone else has already decided that the shipping quote was fair...

- tuesdayniteink

and he comes up with this....

Dear tuesdayniteink,

"Then there's the chunk ebay charges me to use their service"

And that gives you the right to gouge your prospective buyers? Au contraire, eBay has VERY
strict guidlines regarding attempts at circumventing fees through the use of excessive
shipping charges. Since you've insisted on being a smartass about this, I've decided to let eBay
Security deal with you. Don't be suprised if your
auction gets pulled. DO NOT reply to this mssg.
Any further attempt at communication from you
will be construed as harrassment and will be reported as such.

- cristofe

Gee, do you suppose I hit a nerve? I know what was going on, he wanted to buy it (it being a broken Roland GK2 MIDI pickup), but he was hoping to pay a lot less than $17.00 to get it. But here's the real money outlay on it...

UPS shipping will be around $8.00 - I know this because I am constantly shipping small boxes conatining 1 lb cell phones to Motorola and that's what it costs. The UPS office is 15 miles away across town (30 mile round trip) - My car gets @19 MPG, so it's 1.5 gallons of gas at $4.00 so there's another $6.00, so we're up to $14.00. Ebay charges fees, and if the GK2 only sells for $.99 (the current bid) nearly all of that will be eaten up by the ebay fees. Do I have to buy a box? Is the 20 minutes I spend driving across town have a value? I doubt ebay will do anything in response to his threat, otherwise they'd have to dump over half the sellers (I ship enough phones to know $25 is way the hell more than it costs to ship any phone, Nextel only charges $12 to ship next day. I use the calculator because it puts a fair shipping estimate up from and personal so you can decide if you want to bid on the item or not. I don't sneak extra fees in after the fact - and on several item I used the same flat rate other people were charging for similar items (including wonderboy) - I guess we were all price gouging, but since he wasn't interested in those items he doesn't care.

The guy's a whining putz - as I discovered looking through his feedback. Sure he had a lot of positive feed back, he also had several suspicious deletions, and bad bids from people he probably pissed off. Even when people left positive feedback he'd whine about something else they said. He's a real prick.

And that's why I avoid ebay...


P.S. Do you like the little bit at the end - Don't try to tell me I'm wrong again, or I'll go crying to mommie. What a wuss...